Hillbilly Elegy

[Ranjr]

I've had them come after me.  Be a good one for story time.  The Boston Mountains are named after the phrase "hard as Boston."

How poor people vote Republican swirls in that eddy you so well describe.

[The Grand Nudger]

Do you have a purrty mouth?

I think that Vance is a sort of well intentioned quisling in this respect. Plenty of people internalize the propaganda meant to manipulate them..but he's a good disseminator- and the rightwing grievance is a mirror image of what probably is a true claim down at it's very core. He's exactly the sort of cheerleader you want for these ideas and..if his life experiences genuinely lead him to hold the positions he uses these narratives to advance (which we have every reason to suspect is true) - then all the better for both parties - to the detriment of the hillbilly..yet again.

[Ranjr]

I have a damn purty mouth.

That's why I don't close my eyes and float on my back in the common pool.

[The Grand Nudger]

Here's a salient aspect of why Vances story might actually be true to him, but a strange exception to hillbilly culture.

He describes the decline of ohio industry and it's effect on the migrant whites who flocked to the area. He omits that the historic decline of those areas was precisely and intentionally due to that migration. People who had been, for centuries, exploited to the point of abject poverty were seen as safe alternatives to the striking and unionizing labor force - and they were. So they brought them in. Part of why the natives, as it were, rejected them and othered them was that they were very literally there to steal their jobs at the explicit request of their boss, for far less pay. This would be repeated again, in short order, replacing them and relocating factories even further into the impoverished south - and then ofc, beyond the shores of the us entirely.

At the time...hicks rednecks and hillbillies were commonly seen as more detestable than The Blacks, and only slightly less so than criminals..which they all were one way or another, anyway. This isn't because they were hillbillys, or because hillbillys saw themselves this way - but because they had ceased to be hillbillys and become migrant sub-white laborers. It's a tragic arc. They were no longer the people of the mattewan massacre - but far more likely to have sided with the pinkertons and the owning class. That became their driving ethos and subsequently the core thrust of contemporary right wing nutball shit.

Thing is, most of us didn't go that route - and it was only open for a brief time and there were just too many of us to leave and not enough of us who could. If Vance is accurately describing a culture in decline, it's his own, and pursuant to a very specific and very well studied migration in living memory. It's as different from hillbilly culture as it was from the industrial midwestern culture that rejected it, and which it...in turn... sabotaged. My wife recognizes his story and his politics from her childhood in ohio. My grandmother recognizes the story of migrant white labor from kentucky losing their jobs but from a full generation before ours (and a different state) and doesn't recognize his politics as anything that any hillbilly she knew held. I think she'd even agree with him about the sorry state of those migrants, she decided that shit wasn't for her after all, and moved to the deep south. I only recognize his politics. I was born in kentucky, grew up all over the south, came back to kentucky with my gaggle of heathens to work the land, lol.

[Silver]

Just because:

[The Grand Nudger]

The bouquet totally does it for me.

[Spongebob]

I read a piece on the Independent about rural support for Trump. This is a highly generalized conclusion, granted, but I suspect it offers some valid insights. People of Appalachia would likely be included in this assessment. The conclusion of the author was that support for Trump stemmed largely from the lack of job growth and development in rural areas as compared to metropolitan areas, creating the need to blame others for their lack of prosperity. Americans (actually, all humans) are quick to blame others for their circumstances. Trump and many others, mostly Republican, have spent years offering up evil villains to fill this role; Mexicans, Muslims, gays, blacks...anyone but white rural inhabitants. And when Obama was elected, that was just the final straw; now no one in government was on their side. Given the extreme pressure to conform in small communities, this creates people who become solidified in support for politicians that don't actually offer them policies that they actually need. They just get firebrand rhetoric that casts blame on others. In some twisted way, rural people see Trump as one of them. I have no idea is this is something Vance was attempting to convey in his book but if he was, then I don't understand the controversy because it appears to be demonstrably true.

Here's a link to the article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tru...14131.html

[Silver]

I read a piece on the Independent about rural support for Trump.  This is a highly generalized conclusion, granted, but I suspect it offers some valid insights.  People of Appalachia would likely be included in this assessment.  The conclusion of the author was that support for Trump stemmed largely from the lack of job growth and development in rural areas as compared to metropolitan areas, creating the need to blame others for their lack of prosperity.  Americans (actually, all humans) are quick to blame others for their circumstances.  Trump and many others, mostly Republican, have spent years offering up evil villains to fill this role; Mexicans, Muslims, gays, blacks...anyone but white rural inhabitants.  And when Obama was elected, that was just the final straw; now no one in government was on their side.  Given the extreme pressure to conform in small communities, this creates people who become solidified in support for politicians that don't actually offer them policies that they actually need.  They just get firebrand rhetoric that casts blame on others.  In some twisted way, rural people see Trump as one of them.  I have no idea is this is something Vance was attempting to convey in his book but if he was, then I don't understand the controversy because it appears to be demonstrably true.

Here's a link to the article: https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/tru...14131.html

Jobs die, unfortunately, especially when a certain areas are expecting to continue to work when they aren't progressing any other part of their towns.

If anything, conservative ideology has it in their minds that Republicans are looking out for them. Except that when one looks at conservative policies, the only people being taken care of are the rich one percent.

And these conservative minded individuals who profess such undying loyalty to the Republican party are taking advantage of the programs in place instituted by the Democrats who actually care about the people.

The disconnect is baffling.

[Spongebob]

I can accept that people don't like being cast into a stereotype; that makes sense. But if a story revolves around some element of society that is real and true, then it should be fair game. One could argue that there's a responsibility to present a wholistic painting of a community, but if you do that, the core story gets lost among the details. And understand that Vance's story is one in millions. There are likely many other stories from Appalachia that are equally or more interesting, but if they revolve around people living mostly undramatic lives, then there's little chance anyone will be willing to read about them.

[Ranjr]

I enjoyed John Yount's Hardcastle.  It gives perspective to more recent stories.