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.”
I’m about 99% sure you’re a fucking troll, but what the hell maybe somebody can scroll by and learn something. Bc clearly your mind is already made up and you know everything there is to know about anything.
But for anybody who maybe doesn’t have it all figured out yet, this is why it’s not such a brilliant fucking idea to lump all poor people together and strip away their humanity regardless of whether they’re actual rabid Nazis and Nazi supporters or just people stuck living in poverty and under the boot of the oligarchs who targeted and captured them decades ago.
I very much understand. I live in a blue dot in a red state. I grew up in a red state. The oligarchy that you’re just now noticing is something I’ve been pushing against my entire life. When I was a kid, wealthy conservatives started buying up all the local radio stations across America. Then they started buying up all the local TV stations. Then they started buying up all the social media networks.
So I know this is probably so beneath you, but just try to put yourself in the shoes of one of these people for a second. Just for a moment, for shits n giggles imagine these are just humans like you and me.
How does any human come to hold any set of beliefs or make decisions about anything? It’s not a trick question or even rocket science. It’s basically just input and output. They take in information and that information typically influences the future decisions they make.
Regarding oral health and cognitive abilities, you’re actually so fucking wrong here it should almost be a crime for you to be so ignorantly confident.
I’ll post the links here in just a second, but I promise you, oral health is significantly correlated with both quality of life and overall health, including cognitive functioning.
•Recent Research Points to a Two-Way Relationship Between Mental and Oral Health
•Oral health: A window to your overall health
•Number of teeth present in the mouth was found to be a predictor of cognitive status. This association showed a gradient effect, so that the lower the number of teeth, the greater the risk of exhibiting cognitive decline.
If you’re living in poverty, struggling with health issues, and working to scrape by day to day, believe me, life tends to get a little rough. Sometimes you can barely keep up with the things going on in your own world, let alone outside of that world. So when you do have a second to check out what’s going on outside of your own surroundings, how do you do that?
Radio, TV, and social media right? Or have you ascended to some plane of higher consciousness that allows you to tap into a collective hive mind and become one with the rest of the world? Regardless of how you have ascended, most people are limited to readily available technology for their information. Guess who controls all of that information?
You know the reason I’m even on Lemmy is because Reddit is now as controlled as Facebook and other social media. People kept telling me I was being paranoid because I kept saying I was pretty sure state police or affiliates (who just happen to be official partners with ICE and the federal government) had been monitoring and censoring discussions on my local subreddit for quite some time. So, imagine how surprised I was to read an article in national news about DHS records of ICE contractors and state fusion centers specifically monitoring my city’s subreddit? Answer: Not very.
So, not only are oligarchs keeping you and everyone around you uneducated, sick, and poor, they’re also tightly controlling and even censoring every obvious way you have of sharing and discussing information. Why do you think that is? 🤔
Have you ever looked at a presidential map of Democrat’s victory in 1992 to their loss in 1988? Probably not because most people don’t really talk about it.
Here’s 1988:
Here’s 1992:
What is it that you think made all those states (full of rabid Nazis these days) go from showing such sweeping support of Bush in '88 and Reagan the two elections before, to suddenly flip blue for a godless demoncrat? Is it because red states just love the Clinton’s so much they couldn’t resist? Obviously they despise them now, and Clinton dropped the act by the time he ran for his second term, but most people seem to have forgotten that •Clinton ran as a populist during his first term.
He reached out to these people and said I hear you, I see you, I know you’re hurting and you need help. Let me help you. Surprisingly it worked. Unsurprisingly, it was after this election oligarchs began snatching up radio stations across America and tightening their grip on information coming into these states.
So, when you lump all these people together and refuse to see them as humans, just what the fuck do you think you’re accomplishing? You’re providing the administration with ammunition and propaganda they will then use once it’s time for them to make the rounds only to remind these people that the rest of America truly does hate them. They see them as deserving blame for their own situation and unworthy of the basic standard of living that every American should have, and is more than entitled to.
But these people have nobody to blame but themselves, right? So when JD Vance is making the next rounds, he doesn’t even have to promise these people anything for their support. He just has to remind them of what every radio, news, and internet source tells them already. The left hates you because you’re not one of them.
So, regardless of whether they vote or don’t even bother to vote, why the fuck would they suddenly mobilize in solidarity with people that refuse to even see them as human?
Fucking ironic. I can’t tell if you’re illiterate or trolli g yourself, but I can’t take anything you say seriously after that blatant bullshit.
Lemme summarize the rest of this dribbled you embarrassingly vomited onto this thread I front of god and everybody.
God, could you imagine if you put this time and energy into resisting the Nazis instead of trying to convince them to touch tips with you?
Tell you what, try reaching and reasoning with one of these Nazis. Didn’t work for Neville Chamberlain, or anyone else who’s tried it to fascists throughout history, but hey, you’re a special little camper with ambitions so maybe you can disprove centuries of precedents when dealing with autocrats in power.
And when ICE is dragging you out of your home and laying you on your stomach, maybe you can plead with your neighbors who have been salivating at the mouth for that to happen, to listen about how its not their fault and big ol’ meanies took advantage of them. I’m sure they’ll listen and the ICE Gestapo thug won’t ship you to a concentration camp, or just execute you.
Or maybe you can present all the evidence of Trump and MAGA republicans mass raping kids from the officially released Epstein files. I’m sure each and every one will magically grow a conscious and believe what you tell them. Its not like they’ve spent the last 10 years denying material reality for what Trump tells them, right?
/s
Face facts. The fantasy world you and I grew up in that said communication and cooperation will stop evil has fucking ended. Things have reverted back to 1930’s Germany. And trying to hold hands and tickle the ballsack of the Nazis didn’t work back then, and spoilers: It won’t fucking work now and all evidence shows that.
You are living in a fucking fantasy. Get with reality or gtfo of the fucking way.
Look, I don’t get paid to do this and I want to enjoy the rest of my weekend with my family. Plus I still need to go vote. I said what needed to be said and backed it up with citations.
I can’t stop you from spreading propaganda, so if you want to keep helping them divide and conquer, go right ahead.
You post horrible takes for free?
If arguing with me is fucking up your weekend, you got bigger personal problems. Also, why would I give a shit about what you do in your free time or want?
Assuming we even have a fair and free election… which the dumbfuck Nazis you support are now rallying behind Trump stealing as more info and misinfo comes out about it.
And what you said was ultimately worthless, inaccurate and conjecture to defend Nazis. Congrats!
I’m not the o e parotting the same tried and truly failing method of trying to court Nazis that the UK liberals in the 1930s did, and the establishment Dems have been doing for decades.
You are.
Psychological projection is an ugly color on you.
Brother, the only person falling for their divide and conquer is people like you stuck in the 90s. Instead of unifying with the left that’s actually paying attention and sounding alarms, you rather bury your head in the sand and pretend we can all still get along. Just like any establishment Dem.
Can we skip the part where people with your delusion shit the bed publicly and control over resistance of Nazis is given to those of us who accurately recognize the threat and resist it with action? I really want this Neville Chamberlain chapter to just end. So gtfo out of the way, or get with the program.