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Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin voted for Trump.
By the narrowest of margins. If 35,000 among the three states combined, had voted differently, Trump would have lost. This was the narrowest possible victory and the country is paying because Trump managed to thread the needle. That's fine, it is what it is, but in now way should we cater to rural voters more than we already do. We have farm subsidies, we have the top five states on Disability all residing in Appalachia and the South, we have massive Disability fraud in places like Kentucky where lawyers are collecting money to file claims on their behalf. All this while rural voters elect a clown like Trump who proceeds to create pay to play schemes on an hourly basis. The head of the EPA was living in a lobbyist's apartment, come on!!!
We need to stop treating rural voters like children, they are adults. If they cannot adapt to modern society, if they refuse to go to school, if they keep waiting for coal to return, then they deserve to live with the repercussions. No more coddling, no more trying to "understand" them. Ugh.
Again, you have fallen into the trap. While Vance's success and dogged determination to succeed are admirable, his experience is NOT that of most people from Appalachia, nor is his family's extreme behavior and volatility typical.
Vance's family does share the common trait of great loyalty to their original home and family closeness, even through times of familial conflict. They are clannish, something often seen in Appalachian immigrants north - but much of this is due to being mocked and viewed as lesser by natives of their new place of residence.
Shoot, I'm from the manicured rolling meadows of central Kentucky, the legendary Bluegrass with million-dollar thoroughbreds, and have a graduate degree and I do speak grammatically and I have never aimed a shotgun at anyone and I've worn shoes since before I could walk - yet I ran into to some of these same stereotypes when I lived in Cincinnati when I first began my career. I was from Kentucky and I didn't speak with a Germanic Cincinnati accent - and that was enough for the tired old - even then, old - stereotypes and prejudices to be hauled out (ironically, I have some German ancestry myself).
So, while I admire Vance for his good qualities, I deplore that he used his family as he did - to indict everyone from a multi-state region for their supposed dysfunction, based solely on his own dysfunctional experience with his own family. It's too bad that his readers who are not very familiar with Appalachian culture and people and history are buying this very incorrect and very damaging theory - though it's certainly helping Vance's pocketbook.
Who was it in the Bible who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage? Story's kinda familiar...
He's talking about people living in poverty, based on his experience living with those people and being in poverty. He's not talking about every single person living in poverty, or every person living in those three states.
What makes you think your viewpoint is more valid than his? He's the one who lived it while you grew up with the wealthy.
Again, you have fallen into the trap. While Vance's success and dogged determination to succeed are admirable, his experience is NOT that of most people from Appalachia, nor is his family's extreme behavior and volatility typical.
Vance's family does share the common trait of great loyalty to their original home and family closeness, even through times of familial conflict. They are clannish, something often seen in Appalachian immigrants north - but much of this is due to being mocked and viewed as lesser by natives of their new place of residence.
Shoot, I'm from the manicured rolling meadows of central Kentucky, the legendary Bluegrass with million-dollar thoroughbreds, and have a graduate degree and I do speak grammatically and I have never aimed a shotgun at anyone and I've worn shoes since before I could walk - yet I ran into to some of these same stereotypes when I lived in Cincinnati when I first began my career. I was from Kentucky and I didn't speak with a Germanic Cincinnati accent - and that was enough for the tired old - even then, old - stereotypes and prejudices to be hauled out (ironically, I have some German ancestry myself).
So, while I admire Vance for his good qualities, I deplore that he used his family as he did - to indict everyone from a multi-state region for their supposed dysfunction, based solely on his own dysfunctional experience with his own family. It's too bad that his readers who are not very familiar with Appalachian culture and people and history are buying this very incorrect and very damaging theory - though it's certainly helping Vance's pocketbook.
Who was it in the Bible who sold his birthright for a mess of pottage? Story's kinda familiar...
Wait a minute. I never said Vance was typical. Indeed, he is not. At all.
Did he really use his family? I don't think so. Those who may have felt used or abused were long dead before the book was ever begun.
Is he casting aspersions on an entire group of people from only his family as an example? Only if they may think so. Vance saw a lot of the same things happen outside his family, and he also saw how many other families were entirely different in the ways they displayed their emotions.
There really isn't anything that's extremely unusual with any of the extremes Vance mentioned; many of us have known families who acted similarly in everything that Vance chronicled. The dysfunction is not rare at all, and it's not confined to just one group or region.
Vance didn't need the pottage. But I think he did need an accounting and a coming to terms with everything he had observed that troubled him so much all his life. He did lift a lot of burdens from off his shoulders while he's still young when he wrote the book.
He's only in his 30s now, so purging some old demons and exposing them to the sun may have been his way of ensuring he would not perpetuate his family's behavior and take it on to more generations. He's married and has children of his own.
Was he right or wrong? Who's to say except the individual who reads the book? We all know stereotypes tend to just get passed on for as long as they are allowed. Vance doesn't say anything except for his own thoughts. He leaves that other question up to the rest of us.
The book was no trap for me. I saw others lead similar lives to the Vances, but my own wasn't like theirs. I don't paint with a wide brush either. I only repeated the things I read in the book.
Oh, his story is actually quite typical for the region (and many other regions) and poor whites in general. There’s a lot of anger, resentment, aggrieved entitlement and entrenched poor cultural values...just the same as you’d find among the poor of every other race. There’s nothing atypical about his experience.
In fact, there was little difference in his story and the story of Michael Patrick MacDonald who wrote “All Souls,” which is a book about the poor whites who lived in the Southie neighborhood of Boston. Poverty, drug abuse, domestic abuse, lack of education, serial myopia, and in the Boston story, crime that would make your hair stand up.
Nah...the book is pretty spot on. Boston and Kentucky are too far apart for those accounts to be eerily similar without being factual.
This is absolutely correct.
Every state has their own "Hillbilly Elegy" parts. It surprised me when I witnessed it in Wisconsin. Also just watching shows like "Judge Mathis" (filmed in the Midwest) and "People's Court", (filmed in the northeast) you see the worst of the people in those regions, like the same behaviors in "Hillbilly Elegy."
And republicans are trying to win by bashing "the coastal elite."
Tit for tat.
Lol...but that doesn’t count for some reason.
Quote:
Originally Posted by tallydude02
This is absolutely correct.
Every state has their own "Hillbilly Elegy" parts. It surprised me when I witnessed it in Wisconsin. Also just watching shows like "Judge Mathis" (filmed in the Midwest) and "People's Court", (filmed in the northeast) you see the worst of the people in those regions, like the same behaviors in "Hillbilly Elegy."
Absolutely. The phenomenon isn’t new. I live in rural Arizona. We see it here all the time.
If 35,000 among the three states combined, had voted differently, Trump would have lost. This was the narrowest possible victory and the country is paying because Trump managed to thread the needle. That's fine, it is what it is, but in now way should we cater to rural voters more than we already do. We have farm subsidies, we have the top five states on Disability all residing in Appalachia and the South, we have massive Disability fraud in places like Kentucky where lawyers are collecting money to file claims on their behalf. All this while rural voters elect a clown like Trump who proceeds to create pay to play schemes on an hourly basis. The head of the EPA was living in a lobbyist's apartment, come on!!!
We need to stop treating rural voters like children, they are adults. If they cannot adapt to modern society, if they refuse to go to school, if they keep waiting for coal to return, then they deserve to live with the repercussions. No more coddling, no more trying to "understand" them. Ugh.
We need to stop treating rural voters like children, they are adults. If they cannot adapt to modern society, if they refuse to go to school, if they keep waiting for coal to return, then they deserve to live with the repercussions. No more coddling, no more trying to "understand" them. Ugh.
The candidate who "understands" what enough voters in the pivotal states care about is going to win, whether or not such voters have viewpoints that others perceive as out of place today. I can't disagree that Trump has many despicable personal qualities, but he was very smart in terms of understanding the psychology of many American voters. His 2020 opponent would be well served in spending more time with the people in as wide a variety of purple state locations as possible - and less time behind closed doors with blue state donors. Booker has taken a reasonable first step by reading this book and explaining how it relates to his experience in a very different American environment.
Every state has their own "Hillbilly Elegy" parts. It surprised me when I witnessed it in Wisconsin. Also just watching shows like "Judge Mathis" (filmed in the Midwest) and "People's Court", (filmed in the northeast) you see the worst of the people in those regions, like the same behaviors in "Hillbilly Elegy."
Dysfunction exists at all levels of society and with other cultures moving in and clashing with our own, it will get worse.
Plenty of rich people up to no good as well. Watch Real Housewives of Dysfunction. Any upper class suburb will have it's share of ugly secrets.
Every state has their own "Hillbilly Elegy" parts. It surprised me when I witnessed it in Wisconsin. Also just watching shows like "Judge Mathis" (filmed in the Midwest) and "People's Court", (filmed in the northeast) you see the worst of the people in those regions, like the same behaviors in "Hillbilly Elegy."
Statistics are hard.
Yet they show things.
People in "those regions" have little hope because there are no jobs. Their trees and coal and other valuables have been bought up by capitalists and exploited, leaving them with scrub growth and polluted streams and mountains with the entire tops cut off.
Noticing that idiots are everywhere will do nothing to solve the persistent problem of ignorant generations with no hope of advancement. Education and government/charity help will.
All of the books I have read on the subject (and I also lived in WV and TN, so have some experience) were written by folks who lived most or all of their life in those very places. Many of them became educated (to whatever degree) and therefore were able to put into words what was largely ignored and forgotten by the rest of the country.
You are correct that Appalachia is by no means the last remaining problem in the USA. We have lots of ignorant people. Education is the key, IMHO...and it is slowly happening. Look at these teachers strikes in WV and other places...that is a true revolution. In former days they would not dare do such a thing because the Coal Barons would cut them off at the knees.
An interesting anecdote - when I lived in WV it was near Richwood (Webster Country). A child of mine recently married into an Ohioan family who are hard working salt-of-the-earth people. BUT, they sent their children to college and the kids became professionals (at least some did). I got to talking to the dad one day while visiting and it turns out his Grandfather was from Richwood, WV. Wow - a tiny tiny town in WV.
His family left two generations ago - for jobs. I asked him if he'd ever been back (it's not that far from where he now lives) and he answered in the negative. He has no desire to even visit the family historical roots.
(told as a story only - take from it what you will - the important part is that many have left and are doing better elsewhere)...
It may be that we have to abandon all these areas we destroyed and turn them into National Parks. The number of folks who live in these places is tiny...and getting smaller. Relocation is the only salvation I can see because their entire birthright doesn't belong to them (it was sold to London and NY, etc. long ago).
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