We are experiencing record levels of drug addiction and death. At the same time, we are witnessing a stunning political upheaval in which a political novice is usurping the electoral process. About this figure, a conservative columnist says: “Donald Trump is epically unprepared to be president. He has no realistic policies, no advisers, no capacity to learn. His vast narcissism makes him a closed fortress. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know and he’s uninterested in finding out.”

How and why is this happening? Let me explain.

Jack Kennedy campaigned amidst the poverty in West Virginia’s Appalachian region in 1960. Lyndon Johnson followed up with his 1964 anti-poverty program after JFK’s assassination. In his ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign, Robert Kennedy spoke after witnessing the poverty and degradation of the Appalachian region of eastern Kentucky:

For the fortunate among us, there is the temptation to follow the easy and familiar paths of personal ambition and financial success so grandly spread before those who enjoy the privilege of education. But that is not the road history has marked for us.