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CU Medallion [55732]
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The view from blood red Trump country.
Jan 7, 2021, 10:14 AM
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On here I have often described myself as living in "blood red Trump country". Please let me explain.
SWVA is kind of a mix of Appalachia and Piedmont North Carolina. Like Appalachia, many of our folks are farmers, veterans, law enforcement, etc. and are fiercely independent. To give you an idea of the patriotism and sacrifice of the area, WV has the highest per capita population of veterans and the boys from our area were the heaviest casualties on D-Day in WW2.
Like Piedmont NC, this area has suffered greatly from NAFTA and other changes to the economy. NAFTA and other factors killed the textiles and furniture businesses in our area almost overnight. Roanoke also had the railroad industry, which has struggled mightily and coal. So the area has shrunk and most young people who can leave do. Those that remain behind are very traditional and many are veterans, law enforcement, etc.
So our politicians tend to be strong gun advocates, anti-immigrant, etc. Most are Trump lovers.
All three of the GOP reps from our area in Virginia voted for the opposition to the EC results.
Also, you may have seen a WV state delegate was part of the mob that stormed the Capitol. I don't mean he was a peaceful protestor. He was one of the ones who went in. See below.
So all this is to give you a perspective on how strong the feelings are and how deeply this goes. Unless this part of the US population's concerns are actually addressed, what we saw yesterday will not end.
OTOH, they did hurt the chances of a mid-term GOP wave in '22. Bigly.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/briannasacks/west-virginia-republican-delegate-storms-capitol
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Legend [19929]
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Yeah, the POTUS has bigly misled them
Jan 7, 2021, 10:16 AM
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Sad!
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Hall of Famer [24734]
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T-Rump and his "Bigly"... Nothing more appropriate. Nada.***
Jan 7, 2021, 10:21 AM
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All-In [40656]
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It pains me that these folks are forgotten
Jan 7, 2021, 10:26 AM
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I grew up in Greensboro, but worked in Hickory and Lenoir for two summers. The utter level of poverty in these regions is borderline third world. They had every level of furniture manufacturing in this region and it was all stripped away, as you said, overnight with NAFTA. Everything they knew and the only way they could make money was stolen from them at the drop of a pen and nothing was done to remedy it.
I believe Trump has been the first president to give them a true "voice" and sense of being since they lost all of that. When you are able to mobilize a struggling community, things like yesterday happen.
The democrats have done the exact same thing with BLM and poor inner cities. Its just not quite an "aw shucks" moment when good ol' boys from the backwoods are the ones doing it.
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Legend [16240]
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The free market and capitalism shifted production away
Jan 7, 2021, 11:24 AM
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from these areas, not the government. Should we be regulating private business more? Forcing industry's hand through collective action? Should we compel business owners to bow to a set of rules that cuts into their profit-making ability in order to address the needs of the workers and the communities they reside in? Not talking poisons or pollution controls here, but simple responsibility to providing jobs to a particular area?
Left leaning policies of more government intervention are seen as the path to Marxism, while the laissez-faire approach has contributed to the demise of much our manufacturing base, especially in certain geographic areas of the country where the costs of modernization outweighed the costs of relocation. Corporations have a legal obligation to protect and maximize the value for shareholders. If left solely to their own devices, why should we expect them to make sacrifices when it is against their fiduciary responsibilities?
To me, neither approach should be demonized the way they are by the other. Fact is our society and nation requires a healthy combination of both. There are functions government should play in a protective manner for the citizenry, both health, economic, and defense. But we are nothing, and will shrivel and die, if free enterprise and its inherent contributions to innovation are squelched.
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Letterman [257]
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Their “concerns” were about things that never even happened,
Jan 7, 2021, 10:27 AM
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because they were lied to by the guy they worship. It’s their own fault for believing his constant lies. Bill Barr, bi-partisan Secretaries of State, election officials, Trump-appointed judges, and the Supreme Court all addressed their concerns, but they ignored them. Instead, they chose to believe lies by the Lord and Savior Trump. They have no one to blame but themselves (and Trump if they want to look elsewhere).
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All-In [40656]
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Thinking yesterday was just about the election results
Jan 7, 2021, 10:28 AM
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is very LDE.
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Letterman [257]
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Well they were there to “stop the steal...”
Jan 7, 2021, 10:43 AM
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But ok, I’ll buy that. Who knows what else those nut jobs are upset about. Probably still enraged Obama wasn’t born in the US
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All-In [40656]
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Well yes, the core reason they were all in one spot was
Jan 7, 2021, 10:44 AM
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"to stop the steal", but these are very angry, very neglected individuals that have had this anger pent up for a very long time.
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Letterman [257]
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I hope our government continues to neglect the type
Jan 7, 2021, 10:48 AM
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of people who are dumb enough to believe what Trump tells them. Can’t fix stupid
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All-In [40656]
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This will only result in more of what happened yesterday
Jan 7, 2021, 10:57 AM
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No citizens or group of people should feel neglected.
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Letterman [257]
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You’re right, theoretically they shouldn’t. I wish everyone
Jan 7, 2021, 11:11 AM
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could feel included. But unfortunately, those people have chosen to follow people who mislead them, and lack the intelligence to realize it. On top of that, they clearly lack true American values as seen yesterday when they tried to overthrow our Democratic election. So I’m good with our government continuing to neglect them. We shouldn’t be catering to their demands.
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Oculus Spirit [97702]
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Oh this is the real deal. BLM and Antifa don't scare me
Jan 7, 2021, 10:33 AM
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a bit. What happened yesterday, and what Trump is trying to do, does. Far more than anything we realize.
I have a lot of friends who are ardent Trump supporters. Like fanatical about him. And these were people who voted for Ronald Reagan, GWB, etc. Rational conservatives. College educated. They see the issues just as I do. To this day, I agree with probably 95% of Trump's rhetoric. That's NOT my problem with him at all. But there are people who can be told what they want to hear, and then just become zombies supporting the person. Is this what hot women feel like? I mean they can tell some schlub what he wants to hear and he's putty in their hands, literally. Anyway, they believe his message so much, that they then can not conceive of him lying, deceiving, or doing anything wrong. Again, like the average Joe with the hot woman. I swear it has to be a similar mental mechanism at play.
Trump is to Washington what Fox News was to the mainstream media. Dems have a ton of leaders to follow. Their message is saturated on TV, and everywhere. They control half the government. Then you have the pubs and the GOP. The vast majority of conservatives are disgruntled with the GOP, and the Mitch McConnell's and Lindsey Grahams of the world. Enter Trump. He's a different breed, and he takes ALL the support that the GOP barely had, and coaleases it around himself. Trump has the following of a majority of republicans now, many who can't stand their party otherwise who have waited decades for change. He's a rock star to them, the messiah, the answer to their prayers. Finally, a leader who tells them what they want to hear, and not some dem-lite spineless GOP representative who is all heels.
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All-In [34102]
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Re: Oh this is the real deal. BLM and Antifa don't scare me
Jan 7, 2021, 10:38 AM
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I think that's a really interesting view and I sort of get it with Trump being like Fox News.
However, I think you oversimplify the Dems who "have a ton of leaders to follow" versus Pubs who supposedly don't. Right now our Congress has tons of leaders from both parties. I don't think the constituents of the Democratic representatives are any less critical than the Pub constituents of their leaders.
I've got a friend who hates Biden and thinks the Squad is great. I don't particularly care for either of them. It runs the gamut with other Dems I know. Same with Pubs.
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Hall of Famer [24468]
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Go big or go home.***
Jan 7, 2021, 10:36 AM
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Orange Blooded [2692]
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I don't think that's a fair assessment
Jan 7, 2021, 10:40 AM
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My Dad grew up in central WV. Granddad was a coal miner. Philippi, WV was a lot like District 9 of the Hunger Games, except people there would give you the shirt off their back. They definitely weren't traitors. They knew how to take care of themselves, no matter how desperately poor they may have seemed, and politics did not really matter to them.
I bet if you did a survey of yesterday's traitors in the insurrection, you would find they actually have very little in common with the average poor rural American farmer, coal miner, etc. I'd bet you would find they are primarily from middle to upper class backgrounds, some college, and some professional degrees.
These people that flew in from all over the country weren't desperately poor outcasts. They were tied into the Trump network. Qanon. Patriot Prayer, etc.
Let's stop pretending this action was somehow derivative of a JD Vance caricature of Appalachia. It's insulting to my people, lol.
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Heisman Winner [119684]
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Also Antifa
Jan 7, 2021, 10:47 AM
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If you deny that, youre an idiot
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Orange Blooded [2692]
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CU Medallion [55732]
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110%er [5791]
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Just a piece of advice, don't let Mrs. APM see this
Jan 7, 2021, 11:03 AM
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and see you refer to her as your "wide".
Probably won't end well.
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Orange Blooded [2692]
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I hear ya
Jan 7, 2021, 11:08 AM
[ in reply to well, in January last year I saw with my own eyes a ] |
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And I didn't say you were wrong.
We've also had unorganized militias in Appalachia forever. Ever hear of Matewan? And, I seem to recall there have been violent wildcat strikes in SWV many times over the years. These people are fighters for sure.
I'm just wondering if we aren't possibly conflating regional economic pressures and gun rights advocacy into the pro-Trump "Stop The Steal" propaganda, kind of unwittingly.
But I'm not there, so you'd know better than me.
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Oculus Spirit [81047]
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CU Medallion [55732]
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lulz. Some dem boys have let themselves so since serving
Jan 7, 2021, 11:56 AM
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back in 1978.
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Hall of Famer [20540]
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Re: The view from blood red Trump country.
Jan 7, 2021, 10:51 AM
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I am through that area a lot - Virginia, West Virginia, Southern Ohio - and I see the same stuff you do. My last trip through there the TRUMP signs were on every barn up and down I-77.
You drive through Charleston - West Virginia's capital, not our Chucktown - and you see desolation on the fringes, old boarded-up Piggly Wiggly's and Family Dollars and rotting old mill houses and almost nothing in terms of new construction until you get to the city core, where they're trying - without nearly Greenville's success, though there are a couple of cool streets - to breathe some life into the Downtown area.
It's a shame, because it's rugged but a pretty area. But the coal industry is drying up and it's not coming back and nothing has come up to replace it. And even with coal most folks were just scraping by.
What becomes of those people? The Dems certainly haven't answered that and don't seem interested in the question. They refer to those as "flyover" states and "flyover" counties and prefer to count big blocs of votes in downtown ATL and Charlotte and Richmond. So how are the blue-collar West Virginians' tomorrow going to be any better than today? All that's left for them right now is another day of trying not to drown.
Invective doesn't help. Blame doesn't help. These people just want jobs and a tomorrow that looks all right, and we need to collectively figure something out while we're trying to Save Planet Earth and be Woke and all the stuff the liberals are so concerned with, because a future that doesn't include everybody isn't going to be good for anybody. Do that and the crazy starts going away tomorrow.
Don't, and the problems will just continue to escalate.
Much as I hate Big Gub'mint, might the make-work projects of the Great Depression be some sort of short-term answer? We keep talking a national infrastructure revival...why not make the rural areas that are drying up and causing such desperation the focus of that and build a ton of infrastructure - dams, highways, next-gen high-speed train systems, new power plants (ideally thorium) - that would prep these states for future investment while at the same time providing jobs and hope for the future?
Just a thought. Because letting them continue to drown slowly like we're doing isn't any sort of answer. It's just slow death...for everyone, really.
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Heisman Winner [111493]
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Re: The view from blood red Trump country.
Jan 7, 2021, 10:57 AM
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You try to build a Nuclear Reactor on top of some local's secret Ginseng patch and there will be hell to pay. The Chinese pay top dollar for that stuff. It could be a major export for them. Outside of that and Mothman, I see little going for that state.
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CU Medallion [55732]
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eh...
Jan 7, 2021, 11:05 AM
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CU Medallion [55732]
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CU Medallion [55732]
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BTW, you ever been across the river to that frou frou
Jan 7, 2021, 11:07 AM
[ in reply to Re: The view from blood red Trump country. ] |
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'hood in Charleston? Got some cool restaurants and stuff there.
And there's a good pizza/bar joint on the other side, not far from the Capitol building.
Otherwise, Charleston WV is pretty rough.
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Oculus Spirit [78865]
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when I am in Charleston WV
Jan 7, 2021, 11:38 AM
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I always get seafood because Charleston and the Fresh Seafood Co. & Market in the Capitol Market has an excellent big fish sandwich
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Hall of Famer [20540]
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Re: when I am in Charleston WV
Jan 7, 2021, 11:54 AM
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I will try that the next time I am there. I've seen it but never been inside.
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Hall of Famer [22939]
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Remember when WV became a state because
Jan 7, 2021, 10:58 AM
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because they DIDN'T want to secede from the Union? Good times.
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