The guy who said that just

because you're paranoid doesn't

mean they're not out to get you

was an optimist. In the

suspiciously smooth fit between

your persecution fantasies and

their sadistic plans, an even

worse option is available: Not

only are you paranoid, not only

are they out to get you -

they're out to get you because

you're paranoid.

Jim Goad's The Redneck

Manifesto: How Hillbillies,

Hicks, and White Trash Became

America's Scapegoats, recently

released in paperback, allows us

a kind of access to racial and

political thought in the '90s

from an unpopular and therefore

very strategic viewpoint that

has some right to be considered

paranoid. But in years to come,

people are going to feel like

ninnies for having read Nick

Hornby and Hugh Gallagher novels

instead of this. At least

they'll have an excuse - from

its bibliography (the trail of

serious research is papered over

with key references to works by

Monetary Science Publishing, The

Southern National Party, and a

tome on The Phoenician Origin of

the Britons, Scots and

Anglo-Saxons) to its rhetoric

("I'm going to fist-fuck you

with the facts" - preceding an

illuminating and clear

discussion of the history of

class in America), it seems

designed as a flak magnet.

Which is a pity - The Redneck

Manifesto is also an extremely

substantial political argument

from a position so marginalized

that people like to pretend both

that they understand it

perfectly and that it doesn't

exist. They also tend to assume

that the people in question -

"white trash" - are so

cretinously stupid that they

really shouldn't talk at all. Is

this what our (magnanimous, to

be sure) granting of "voices" to

the oppressed was supposed to

achieve? Or is this just one of

our era's moral failures, the

magnitude of which we're just

beginning to grasp? Goad's

central point about liberalism:

"Just because something's a good

idea doesn't mean you can't

brainwash someone with it."

Goad's excruciatingly close

study of his own illegitimacy,

of exactly why he's got no right

to speak, is what makes the book

so convincing: The uncanny

effect of a person who has had

thrust upon himself every

possible warning signal and then

has started to collect those

warning signs like a hobby. Goad

calls himself "low rent, low

class, lowlife" and then points

to those very indicators and

uses them to show why you might

be the one who's insane.

Because what's so threatening

about Goad's weirdness and

alienation is how it could be

yours, too. This is how the

floor moves out from under the

reader, in a totally generic

tale of individual frustration:

Like some other people, Goad

voted for Anderson, Mondale,

Dukakis, Andre Marrou; he voted

for California's Proposition

103, reducing car insurance

rates in 1988. All of his

candidates lost; the insurance

bill was simply ignored. Goad's

radical conclusion: He's never

had a say in anything. Well

Jesus, Jim, that's like

complaining that you put a

quarter into one of those

gumball gift dispensers and

don't get the skull ring! That's

like being mad at not winning

the lottery! That's like ...

wait a second. Why did we think

Goad was so naive? Why are all

our metaphors for political

participation so fucking

trivial?

The body politic is now so vast,

so industrialized, that it can

speak only in the way subatomic

particles do: through statistics

that nobody even pretends

represent a fixed reality. The

only way we can touch base with

popular politics is through

simulations: The ground of

what's convincing and real is

something that can only be

imagined with the help of a

computer. And the fact that we

can sagely discuss these

simulations, use them to make us

feel less frustrated than Goad,

should not be as reassuring as

it apparently is. After all,

it's not as if we got the skull

ring, either.

While our present political

situation beggars the

imagination, Goad tries to

imagine something better, in an

odd, extended fantasy sequence

about having every black person

in America over to his house to

talk ("I hope you like

mayonnaise on Wonder Bread and

peppermint soda.") That he is

evoking the generic baby-kissing

imagery of every US politician,

including Jesse Helms, shouldn't

disturb us as much as the fact

that this is now the only way we

ourselves can visualize any kind

of meaningful communication:

Clinton hosting a TV talk show,

a million living rooms on the

screen rather than viewers in

living rooms watching it. The

one thing the public sphere

cannot admit: a public sphere.