http://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/15/opinion/appalachia-trump-coal.html?comments#permid=31085665

Appalachia. The nearest doctor who will treat us is a hundred miles away. Everyone I know is sick with something. Because we get such little and inferior medical care. The power company has released so much vile poison into the river, all the fish that we used to rely on are dead. Wildlife thinned out a long time ago. We all burn wood for warmth. You have to chop it to survive all year long. When you are old, it’s hard. The elderly give up. Not everyone has a car to get to welfare. It is common for Social Services to remove children from families because that family has no running water.

Addiction kills us like dust. The only way out of these hills is to leave all the pain inside your supposititious head. Entire families turn into corpses. There are no machines to dig the graves in the graveyard. Families dig their own graves. Everyone around me worships the Confederacy. We still do abortion by coat hanger. Safer methods do not exist in this place. Speaking of place: women know it, children know it, working men know it, the worshipping know it. One thing we all share is hunger and hate. The grocery store dumpster is clean as a whistle. There is competition to get there first.

No one finishes high school. The books there are fifty years old. The teachers are old. The building is old. Special education is the biggest class. Birth defects and cancer are a dime a dozen. Minorities slink around out of fear, and they live at the edge of town. Not in it. We just love Appalachia.