Covid and Overdoses
TIM BARRUS, NEW YORK TIMES
I am a communist. America is a Failed State. America is also the biggest Narco-State in the world. I live in Appalachia, and, respectfully. I am here to tell you that Appalachia is lost. Addicted. There is no hope for us. We are the dead. Give me one reason why a simple geography would be so relevant as to represent all the people who hate us. We are your boogyman. We live in the hollows. The coal mountains. Trailers. Cardboard hovels. Peasant shacks, and how many of us have had poverty porn shoved into our face – and we do not recognize ourselves. We try to forget the family pop corn dinner. Our children are forcefully yanked from their families to go live with nice white people foster families because those children need water to survive. We get our water from the state park in buckets. We are the stupid family and our children are the stupid children. The War Between the States is now. Struggle for needles. Covid and the overdoses. Simultaneously. No calvary. The hospitals closed. The gas station is done. Bridges rusted. Nowhere safe. No food to buy. Or steal. Jesus is a fairytale. How do we advocate for democracy when the animal isn’t real either. What is there to struggle for. We have no housing. A lot of our kids go into the military, too. They return in caskets. The New York Times cannot bring itself to find someone who is POOR TODAY. To tell this story. America spits on us. We are ground down in America. There is nothing here to save. Save somewhere else.