I lost a friend today, even though he was a friend I had never met.

It was 2007 when I bought Joe Bageant's book "Deer Hunting With Jesus," which he subtitled "Dispatches from America's Class War" and which explained quite well why it is liberals have lost all touch with working-class Americans.

It was a wonderful book, and from that day forward I found myself visiting Bageant's <a title="Joe Bageant" href="http://www.joebageant.com/" target="_self">Website</a> to read everything else he wrote about what is happening to our country. He came out with a second book in 2010 -- "Rainbow Pie" -- that until just recently wasn't even for sale in this country. I had to order it through Amazon's UK store to be able to read it.

[caption id="attachment_973" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Joe Bageant, 1946-2011"]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/bageant2_4.8.09.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-973" title="bageant2_4.8.09" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/03/bageant2_4.8.09-300x215.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="215" /></a>[/caption]

I found myself listening to interviews he did -- mostly in other countries -- on the Internet and watching videos on YouTube. Bageant was saying things that either weren't being said by other writers or at least weren't being said anywhere near as well as he was saying them.

But late in 2010, he wasn't posting as often on his site, and on January 4th of this year, he put a short note on the site that said he was undergoing chemotherapy for an extremely serious form of cancer.

At one point, he said he was feeling better, but today I saw the news that he had actually died on Saturday.

It's a damn shame. He had worked as a journalist for most of his life, but it was really only the last few years that he became a major voice for working people in the United States.

Read his stuff.

It's well-written, impressive in its focus and extremely strong.

I was most impressed by one of the later chapters in his first book, in which he discusses the appallingly low level of literacy in the U.S. and explains how, because of that, folks get fooled by what he calls the "American hologram." It's the difference between the perception of what we're told our country is and what it actually is.

For instance, we're raised to believe in the Horatio Alger story, the idea that anyone -- if he works hard enough and is lucky enough -- can become rich. The reality, however, is that there is more upward mobility between classes in Western Europe's social democracies than there is in the U.S.

I would have loved it if Bageant had lived long enough to comment on a statistic that came out the other day, that from 2000-2007, fully 100 percent of income gains in the U.S. went to the top 10 percent of earners. I doubt it would have surprised him. He seemed to know better than anyone just how the game is rigged these days.

Funny thing I remember reading in his obit. He made a lot of money off his first book, and he seemed almost embarrassed. I heard he gave most of it away.

A helluva guy.