Christy Ratliff is sitting in a folding chair in a public school gym in Grundy, Virginia, waiting for her number to be called. She arrived at 4 a.m. on this October Saturday to secure her position in line to have eight teeth pulled. Genetic gum disease, she explains, has left most of them rotten or broken. She hooks a finger to pull down her lip and show me gruesome damage—the kind most dentists see only in textbooks.
Ratliff is 29 years old.
Grundy, the seat of Buchanan County, sits deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. This weekend, it’s hosting a free clinic courtesy of Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit like Doctors Without Borders, but for places in the United States where the health outcomes are as grim as those in many developing countries. RAM founder Stan Brock once suggested that because Grundy is so inaccessible, his volunteers should literally parachute into town, as he once did while working in rural Africa.
Despite all the faith these locals have put in Trump, his second term is threatening their precarious existence. Few places in America are as reliant on the federal government. According to a recent study, 45 percent of the personal income of Buchanan County residents comes from Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and government disability programs. Federal dollars also account for about 15 percent of the county budget, subsidizing nearly every aspect of local life—education, economic development, disaster recovery, housing, sewer infrastructure. And Trump has succeeded in jeopardizing or eliminating nearly all of it.
“We live in a remote part of the world,” the driver says, declining to give his name. He’s here for denture work because Bradshaw has no dentist. He grew up in a holler, and like generations of his people, worked in the coal industry, including once for a company owned by Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.)—until his paychecks bounced, a chronic problem at Justice’s mines. Now he works in logging. He has no health insurance, he says. Like 80 percent of McDowell County’s voters, he cast his ballot for Trump: “He’s kicking ass and taking names. He’s cleaning up the gangs. He’s doing awesome with the immigrants, too.”
They don’t know shit about those things because they discard any information that makes them uncomfortably while privileging any information that affirms their pre-existing position or prejudices. I pride myself that I’m pretty good at arguing with people, and IRL, I tend to take a much softer tone because I have to deal with these fucks day-in and day-out. There’s no block function in meatworld if I find them too tedious. And let me tell you - you can lay it out in terms they absolutely understand, and in a week, a day, an hour, they will revert to their prior position. They don’t ‘forget’ what was said, they disregard it. “Well, it’s just my opinion. Who knows what’s true anyway? There’s a lot of lies on both sides.”
Their positions are not predicated on their knowledge, nor are they interested in retaining knowledge that contradicts their positions.
Fucked if I know. Really wish that ‘demographic destiny’ bullshit peddled in the late 2000s worked out better.
Honestly, I think that’s partly why the conservatives are all having a collective freakout and back someone like Pedonald.
Wish I had that kind of optimism anymore.
Heh, I’m not sure I’d call it optimism. I’m pretty sure a lot of the reactionary voters have at least some dim awareness that adherence to xtianity has been falling off a cliff for many years, and that America is increasingly less white, more accepting of LGBTQ, etc…
In fact, I seem to recall one of their thought leaders explicitly saying that Europe is increasingly more fascist-friendly in certain countries because more refugees were admitted.
I’ve definitely have seen online trolls on various platforms actively hoping to see Republicans win here for the same reasons, and then put policies into place that would actively reverse such things - close the borders to all but whites, revoke gay marriage, crush trans, crush non-xtians, and deport anyone non-white (or worse). I’ve seen some of them champion things like repealing Virginia v. Loving and sending out government goons to round up “race traitors” for murder.
Republicans really do feel entitled to say some of the very worst things online, that’s for sure. Especially after Pedonald “won” the first time. As an example, I saw some of the very worst of this kind of thing on Diaspora. I cannot imagine dipping into something like 4chan at that time, Jesus.