Brandon TurbevilleNatural Blaze
January 2, 2018
While America’s military continues to march across the world, destroying nation after nation and the U.S. State Department funds color revolutions in others, the CIA also continues it’s own campaign of control and manipulation in virtually all the rest. But, moral questions aside, Americans back home aren’t even reaping the benefits of empire abroad. With an economy continuing to mire in depression, crumbling infrastructure, more difficult access to healthcare, tainted food supplies, and a police state that is deepening by the day, the American people are becoming accustomed to lower living standards and all the hurdles associated with it. Indeed, there are parts of the United States – Detroit, Flint, and much of the rural south, for instance, - that resemble a third world country more than anything one might expect to see in “the greatest country in the world.”
Nowhere are the crumbling standards of America more evident than in Appalachia, an area that is often forgotten whenever any political discussion is held. That is, until politicians breeze through the region and attempt to soak up some disgruntled white, formerly working class votes. After election time, however, the candidates put Appalachia and its residents out of their minds and continue business as usual. Economic depression, drug addiction, crime, poverty, and environmental degradation are all part of Appalachia now. They are not the only part, of course, but they have unfortunately become the main backdrop to a region that has suffered the setbacks of every bad decision coming out of Washington and its respective state governments.
Not having the benefit of being made up of mostly protected or chosen minorities, Appalachia is merely forgotten by most Americans or used as a backdrop of mockery and derision by Hollywood producers and academics. When it is remembered, the residents are painted as dirt poor rednecks, racist, misogynistic, dumb hillbillies. One need only listen to a recent broadcast on NPR where Appalachia was being discussed as if it were a foreign country to see how distant certain demographics are from other elements of society.
