Although you may never have heard of him, Joe Bageant was perhaps the preeminent gonzo-journalist and moral-voice of his generation. Author of Deer Hunting With Jesus and Rainbow Pie, Joe quietly led one of the most experience-rich lives you could imagine. He grew up in the hard-knocks region of West Virginia; he joined the Navy as an under-age teenager during wartime; he lived in Colorado during the 1960s in a broke-down bus, worked as a beat-writer, and kept company with some of the greatest counter-cultural American icons including Hunter S Thompson and Timothy Leary.
Not only this, he was one of the most thoughtful, sober, and brutally honest chroniclers of the United States' descent into a consumerist/corporatist police-state. The video linked below is only a brief sampling of some of Joe's thoughts/feelings on what America has become since WWII, and the challenges that stand before us in saving our collective futures.
Joe passed away two years and one month ago from cancer. His website lives on. Here is one audio with him on mutated consciousness and willing prisoners of predatory (extractive) capitalism.
