Pride and pain in Trump country
Chris Arnade
Wednesday 7 September 2016 06.00 EDT
... One of them is Jerri Baird, 27, raised in a small home four miles from the closest town. Her dad was a nurse, and her grandfather mined coal. She started using drugs at 14. Her stresses came from many directions, including growing up gay in a Pentecostal church. “I was bad in school. Didn’t ever feel I fit in. Grandfather smacked me in the face when he found out I liked women. Strong coalminer slap. Right across the face.”
Like many others, she notes the drugs offered relief from the boredom. “There was nobody doing nothing where I come from. Nobody working. Nothing.” When I asked her what she planned to do when back in town, she looked quizzical. “Like for work? I mean, there are no good jobs around. I done a few things. Clerked at restaurants, gas stations. Those sort of things. But that isn’t much of work to brag about” ...
At the Highland Free Will Baptist church David Garrett ... spoke to me just after Sunday service ... “Sometimes it just isn’t enough. I have to bury too many congregants, many who kill themselves. One woman who I knew since she was a baby shot herself in the stomach with a .38. The world is too material, and people don’t think they need the community. Brother. Do they ever need it” ...
At the other end of the city, beneath mountains layered from mining, is a shopping plaza with Walmart and other discount brands ... Wooden tables and metal benches lining the plaza are filled with workers taking smoking breaks. When I ask one group of workers and their friends about coal, it sets off a chain of comments that spin into a long political argument – all polite. Obama is largely blamed, and the phrase “Obama’s war on coal” is being thrown around ...
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2016/sep/07/kentucky-trump-obama-unemployment-drugs
