Thanks for the thoughtful piece. I’ll admit to harboring negative stereotypes of Appalachian people, even though I know people with roots there who I have nothing but respect for. Part of it comes from living in an Appalachian transplant neighborhood in the Midwest as a child, where the stereotypes of Appalachian attitudes towards education, race, religious tolerance, violence and even incest seemed all too frequently realized, and part from the historical portrayal of these people as “ignorant hillbillies” in the broader American culture that goes back two hundred years.
I think for a lot of left leaning people outside the region, this election tested what empathy there was towards the poor and downtrodden of Appalachia. It felt that the outrage many liberally minded people felt towards the environmental destruction and anti-labor practices rampant in the region, as well as sympathy for the destruction wrought by oxy and meth was rewarded by a big “fuck you”. It seemed as if the voters there, who may be quite perceptive of the ofttimes condescending attitudes of urban liberals towards them, remained oblivious to the emotional manipulations of callous conservatives and the obvious snake-oil salesmanship of Trump. This in turn only added to the urban liberal conceit that these people are too stupid to see they are being played, and are undeserving of sympathy for their plight. Of course, this will just feed the arguments of the Right that Democrats have nothing but contempt for them and their values, but that’s a card conservatives have been playing for years in the region, as we’ve seen it become more solidly Republican. What remains to be seen, is now that there is no one stopping the Republicans from fucking them over, is how long will it take for people to realize they are being used?
