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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIn the Heart of Trump Country
Last edited Mon Oct 10, 2016, 01:37 PM - Edit history (1)
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/10/in-the-heart-of-trump-countryThe Hillary-for-prison sign outside Mine Lifeline on Main Street was so enormous that it attracted attention, even though its message was so ordinary in Logan County, West Virginia, that the sign seemed festive rather than threatening. People driving by often stopped and took selfies in front of its photograph of a peeved-looking Clinton behind bars. Rick Abraham, who founded the mine-safety company, and had put up the sign, was delighted by the response. He thought he might construct a three-dimensional prison with Hillary in it, if he could find the time. He would put it on the roof of his building, which would be nicely theatrical, although bad for selfies. The Clinton Foundation pay for playits obvious! he said. Shes a criminal, she should be in jail! If I had done that, I would be in jail. She knowingly put all that information on a private server to shield it from FOIA. Deleting those e-mailshow can that not be obstruction? And using her BlackBerry in the Kremlin? She just has a total disregard for everybody. Theyre the Clintons! Theyre crooks!
Abraham had also planted a Trump billboard outside his businessthis, although even larger than the Hillary sign, was so common a sight that it barely registeredand he was in some ways an emblematic Trump voter: a white Protestant man in the dying coal industry in southern West Virginia, which is one of the parts of the country most deeply and unshakably loyal to Trump, and most deeply and unshakably hostile to Clinton and President Obama. In Logan Countys Democratic primary in 2012, Obama was soundly defeated by Keith Judd, a Texas felon serving a seventeen-and-a-half-year sentence for extortion. The mayor of the city of Logan (pop. 1,649) recently made it known to Clintons campaign that she was not welcome and should not come. Like most West Virginians, Rick Abraham was angry with the President for hastening the decline of the coal industry with what he regarded as excessive environmental regulation. Like most Trump voters, he considered Obamacare a scourge, and since he selects insurance policies for Mine Lifelines forty-odd employees he could argue in detail that nearly everyone in his company was worse off than before.
And yet in other ways he is not the Appalachian Trump voter as many people elsewhere imagine himignorant, racist, appalled by the idea of a female President or a black President, suspicious and frightened of immigrants and Muslims, with a threatened job or no job at all, addicted to OxyContin. Those voters exist, but the political thinking of many others in Trump country is more ambivalent and complicated and non-inevitable than is apparent from signs hung on Main Street or carried at rallies. The perception that people in West Virginia are voting for Trump because they are racist or ignorant is significant, though, since its one of the reasons theyre voting for Trump in the first place. When people talk about Trump, they talk about how they dont like the establishment or the élites, Charles Keeney, a history professor at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, in Logan County, says. When they say that, they mean who they see on televisionthey envision people in New York City making fun of them and calling them stupid. Every time you leave the state, you get itsomeone will say, Oh, youre from West Virginia, do you date your cousin? Wow, you have shoes, wow you have teeth, are you sure youre from West Virginia? So when they see that the media élite is driven out of their mind at the success of Donald Trump it makes them want to root for him. Its like giving the middle finger to the rest of the country.
Another important factor is immigration, but not for economic reasons. In West Virginia, there are practically no immigrants. But Trump has promoted the idea that someone who cares about the fate of people new to the country must care less about those who have been here longerand this idea resonates among people who believe that the rest of the country doesnt care about them at all, and doesnt see them as kin. When Clinton talks about Trump voters, she tends to divide them into two categories: bigots (her basket of deplorables) and people suffering from economic hardship. Whats missing from Clintons two categories is a third sort of person, who doesnt want to think of himself as racist, but who feels that strong borders describe a home. There are many such people, and not just in West Virginia.
Abraham had also planted a Trump billboard outside his businessthis, although even larger than the Hillary sign, was so common a sight that it barely registeredand he was in some ways an emblematic Trump voter: a white Protestant man in the dying coal industry in southern West Virginia, which is one of the parts of the country most deeply and unshakably loyal to Trump, and most deeply and unshakably hostile to Clinton and President Obama. In Logan Countys Democratic primary in 2012, Obama was soundly defeated by Keith Judd, a Texas felon serving a seventeen-and-a-half-year sentence for extortion. The mayor of the city of Logan (pop. 1,649) recently made it known to Clintons campaign that she was not welcome and should not come. Like most West Virginians, Rick Abraham was angry with the President for hastening the decline of the coal industry with what he regarded as excessive environmental regulation. Like most Trump voters, he considered Obamacare a scourge, and since he selects insurance policies for Mine Lifelines forty-odd employees he could argue in detail that nearly everyone in his company was worse off than before.
And yet in other ways he is not the Appalachian Trump voter as many people elsewhere imagine himignorant, racist, appalled by the idea of a female President or a black President, suspicious and frightened of immigrants and Muslims, with a threatened job or no job at all, addicted to OxyContin. Those voters exist, but the political thinking of many others in Trump country is more ambivalent and complicated and non-inevitable than is apparent from signs hung on Main Street or carried at rallies. The perception that people in West Virginia are voting for Trump because they are racist or ignorant is significant, though, since its one of the reasons theyre voting for Trump in the first place. When people talk about Trump, they talk about how they dont like the establishment or the élites, Charles Keeney, a history professor at Southern West Virginia Community and Technical College, in Logan County, says. When they say that, they mean who they see on televisionthey envision people in New York City making fun of them and calling them stupid. Every time you leave the state, you get itsomeone will say, Oh, youre from West Virginia, do you date your cousin? Wow, you have shoes, wow you have teeth, are you sure youre from West Virginia? So when they see that the media élite is driven out of their mind at the success of Donald Trump it makes them want to root for him. Its like giving the middle finger to the rest of the country.
Another important factor is immigration, but not for economic reasons. In West Virginia, there are practically no immigrants. But Trump has promoted the idea that someone who cares about the fate of people new to the country must care less about those who have been here longerand this idea resonates among people who believe that the rest of the country doesnt care about them at all, and doesnt see them as kin. When Clinton talks about Trump voters, she tends to divide them into two categories: bigots (her basket of deplorables) and people suffering from economic hardship. Whats missing from Clintons two categories is a third sort of person, who doesnt want to think of himself as racist, but who feels that strong borders describe a home. There are many such people, and not just in West Virginia.
After this is over, it's going to be almost like Reconstruction. These people are going to have to be brought back into the Union somehow. And we won't be able to stop modern-day Confederates (ironic, since WV was formed because it didn't want to secede with the rest of VA!) from running for office, or sending Federal marshals down there (where? Everyplace except Berkeley? ) like we did back then.
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In the Heart of Trump Country (Original Post)
KamaAina
Oct 2016
OP
Sad they can't understand that Donald Trump would be the first one to ask if they date their
sinkingfeeling
Oct 2016
#1
sinkingfeeling
(51,457 posts)1. Sad they can't understand that Donald Trump would be the first one to ask if they date their
own cousin.
DinahMoeHum
(21,791 posts)2. I wish Joe Bageant was still here amongst us.
Gawd do i miss him - he was spot-on in his essays about people in the Appalachian region.
http://joebageant.net/
Poor, White, and Pissed
http://joebageant.net/?p=674
Drink, Pray, Fight, Fuck - How the Scots-Irish Screwed Up America
http://joebageant.net/?p=675