This Appalachia Life: My Mother Wasn't Trash

[Squinch]

1. I have not read Hillbilly Elegy, but I interpret the excerpt differently than the article author.

Not having read the book, I might be missing a context that proves the article author's point, but I suspect I'm not.

The article quotes this line:

"I don't know what the answer is, precisely, but I know it starts when we stop blaming Obama or Bush or faceless companies and ask ourselves what we can do to make things better"

. The author concludes that this line by the author of Hillbilly Elegy comes dangerously close to victim blaming and Republican-style bootstrapping.

If the 2016 election and the attitudes of my West Virginian relatives are any indication, the quote's advice is exactly where Appalachians need to start if they are going to end the plunder of their lives by corporations.

I was always surprised in my visits to WV during the Obama administration at the misinformation that even educated people spouted. "Obama ruined the coal industry; Obama's taxes are killing us; Obama only cares about guns." These were the most common refrains I heard, and yet not one of them contained even a kernel of truth.

Many Appalachians are people who depend on government to survive, but who hold their prejudices so dearly that they voted for a man who clearly was going to screw them, just like the robber barons who have always screwed them, just as the article describes. And they passed on a candidate who had a really innovative plan for the economies of the rust belt and the coal belt, bringing clean energy industry jobs in to replace the lost coal and oil jobs. The plan was ingenious, and it probably would have worked and worked quickly.

But the people the article describes rejected that because of blaming the wrong people and because they never actually took the time to compare the two candidates to figure out which one would have benefitted them.

The quote is right. The people of Appalachia need to actually look at what -and who - are causing their plight, and learn to vote in a way that makes sense.