Wednesday, May 14, 2008
Indigestible Appalachia
Hillary won West Virginia yesterday. It doesn’t mean a thing for the nomination, the mathematical stakes were settled long ago, what even the narrative crafted by the press. It doesn’t mean a thing for the general election, Obama has plenty of suction in swing states all across the country. The win only has significance for a single constituency, and yesterday they lost a very important fight – the people of the Appalachians lost yet another chance to join contemporary American, to participate in the wave of modernity that passed over progressive states like Iowa a century ago. The only losers yesterday were the Appalachians, the Scots-Irish, the hillbillies, the forgotten rednecks of every remote draw, valley and hollow back in the Appalachians. Up along Hell-for-Certain branch and all the other tiny green places of the oldest mountains the descendants of King James’s army sent the twenty-first century a message:
Fuck you.
I am a Southerner by birth, and the older I get, and the longer I live in California I grow prouder and prouder of that fact. But (and listen for my Granny spinning in her grave) I am an Appalachian first. And stupidly proud of that fact. Like all of us mountain people are stupidly proud of our stubbornness. When you are stubborn, when stubbornness is all you have left, you are either proud of it or you lay down and die. And the people of Appalachia are not big in the lay-down-and-die department. They are more members of the “Live free or die” school. They are more of the “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” school. The “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands” school.
Why did they vote of Hillary? Undoubtedly because she is white. Hillary was able dig into her back of southern affects and find an appropriate twang. She talked a lot about giving people money. I can say with the contempt born of familiarity that the folks left in West Virginia are big on taking government money. Senator Byrd if very good at prying it loose from the feds – he gets back $2.45 for every dollar the state pays in. If you had any get-up-and-go in West Virginia then you’ve been leaving for the last 60 years, from the moment they put in enough roads that people could finally leave. People like my father and his PhD. Or my uncle and his medical technology start-up. They weren’t born into coal money – far from it. They are from a little down in central West Virginia, Weston. Once they got educated they did the only thing anyone with sense would do, they left for greener pastures.
So why did the people left in West Virginia vote so overwhelmingly for Hillary? Because they are among some of the proudest, most stubborn and willfully ignorant people on the planet. They could climb into their Chevy and drive to DC, Chicago, California. They could start a new life where there are jobs and education and opportunity, but they don’t want to. They don’t like the 21st century. Hell, they didn’t like the 20th very much. They don’t know why exactly, but you can’t make them. There isn’t enough dynamite in West Virginia to move these people.
In nothing else, Obama is a man of the 21st century. Racially mixed, progressively educated, he just looks *new*. He looks now. Obama believes in people organizing and helping themselves – something that you think would resonate in pro-labor West Virginia. But Obama is nothing but the shock of modernity in a good suit, the threat of how different the twenty-first century is going to be. Even if they can’t articulate it, break it down into an anatomy of change, they know in their heart of hearts that Obama represents the future, the need to adapt, to embrace the new. That he has the balls to show them this in the light of day, the audacity to suggest that the 21st century is coming, whether they like it or not.
They didn’t vote for Hillary. They voted for the past. Obama just kept saying, “Change is coming.” The people of the Appalachians have a one size fits all answer for outsiders who think they know what’s good for everyone:
Fuck you.
Fuck you, 21st century.
Fuck you for not getting us ready. All you did was keep cutting down our trees and mining our coal.
Fuck you for not bringing in new blood.
Fuck you for not educating us, or creating opportunity here in these hills.
Fuck you with your globalization and wage slave jobs.
Fuck you with your “difference” that doesn’t seem to have any room for us.
Fuck you for making us the last acceptable racist joke of the 21st century.
Fuck you for leaving us behind, like you’ve been doing for 200 years.
For leaving us with nothing but our pride.
Our pride. You can have that when you pry it from our cold, dead hands, you high-hat motherfuckers.
Because that we will not abide, 21st century.
Fuck you.
Fuck you.
I am a Southerner by birth, and the older I get, and the longer I live in California I grow prouder and prouder of that fact. But (and listen for my Granny spinning in her grave) I am an Appalachian first. And stupidly proud of that fact. Like all of us mountain people are stupidly proud of our stubbornness. When you are stubborn, when stubbornness is all you have left, you are either proud of it or you lay down and die. And the people of Appalachia are not big in the lay-down-and-die department. They are more members of the “Live free or die” school. They are more of the “Why don’t you go fuck yourself?” school. The “You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold dead hands” school.
Why did they vote of Hillary? Undoubtedly because she is white. Hillary was able dig into her back of southern affects and find an appropriate twang. She talked a lot about giving people money. I can say with the contempt born of familiarity that the folks left in West Virginia are big on taking government money. Senator Byrd if very good at prying it loose from the feds – he gets back $2.45 for every dollar the state pays in. If you had any get-up-and-go in West Virginia then you’ve been leaving for the last 60 years, from the moment they put in enough roads that people could finally leave. People like my father and his PhD. Or my uncle and his medical technology start-up. They weren’t born into coal money – far from it. They are from a little down in central West Virginia, Weston. Once they got educated they did the only thing anyone with sense would do, they left for greener pastures.
So why did the people left in West Virginia vote so overwhelmingly for Hillary? Because they are among some of the proudest, most stubborn and willfully ignorant people on the planet. They could climb into their Chevy and drive to DC, Chicago, California. They could start a new life where there are jobs and education and opportunity, but they don’t want to. They don’t like the 21st century. Hell, they didn’t like the 20th very much. They don’t know why exactly, but you can’t make them. There isn’t enough dynamite in West Virginia to move these people.
In nothing else, Obama is a man of the 21st century. Racially mixed, progressively educated, he just looks *new*. He looks now. Obama believes in people organizing and helping themselves – something that you think would resonate in pro-labor West Virginia. But Obama is nothing but the shock of modernity in a good suit, the threat of how different the twenty-first century is going to be. Even if they can’t articulate it, break it down into an anatomy of change, they know in their heart of hearts that Obama represents the future, the need to adapt, to embrace the new. That he has the balls to show them this in the light of day, the audacity to suggest that the 21st century is coming, whether they like it or not.
They didn’t vote for Hillary. They voted for the past. Obama just kept saying, “Change is coming.” The people of the Appalachians have a one size fits all answer for outsiders who think they know what’s good for everyone:
Fuck you.
Fuck you, 21st century.
Fuck you for not getting us ready. All you did was keep cutting down our trees and mining our coal.
Fuck you for not bringing in new blood.
Fuck you for not educating us, or creating opportunity here in these hills.
Fuck you with your globalization and wage slave jobs.
Fuck you with your “difference” that doesn’t seem to have any room for us.
Fuck you for making us the last acceptable racist joke of the 21st century.
Fuck you for leaving us behind, like you’ve been doing for 200 years.
For leaving us with nothing but our pride.
Our pride. You can have that when you pry it from our cold, dead hands, you high-hat motherfuckers.
Because that we will not abide, 21st century.
Fuck you.
