deb - I started reading Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War yesterday. It's by an experienced journalist who grew up in small-town, working-class Virginia, and returns to live there in his 50s. The book is about class - about how college-educated left-leaning people and working poor white people are utterly segregated and unable to communicate with one another. Looks priceless, and has SO much to say, implicitly, about this campaign and why it is that poor white people so often vote for the very people who keep them stuck in poverty. I need to know this! I've been realizing how selectively ...

deb - I started reading Deer Hunting with Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War yesterday. It's by an experienced journalist who grew up in small-town, working-class Virginia, and returns to live there in his 50s. The book is about class - about how college-educated left-leaning people and working poor white people are utterly segregated and unable to communicate with one another. Looks priceless, and has SO much to say, implicitly, about this campaign and why it is that poor white people so often vote for the very people who keep them stuck in poverty. I need to know this! I've been realizing how selectively respectable it is for educated white people to hang out with people of color, but how unrespectable it is for educated white people to hang out with white people who are just barely hanging on and who get called "white trash" or "redneck." And maybe are missing a few teeth and overweight and love Dale, Jr. So much to learn here!

Let's say it was WV instead of Virginia. Why would he return? Because we are our own tribe and because it's home. Hard to explain. As you may or may not know from my coments, WV isn't the most accepting state for gays or lesbians or bisexuals. I'm trying to tell my friends a little at a time. One of them contacted me today and I hadn't seen her in a bit and she had remarried. So I got up the courage and told her about myself, but I was really scared because she is a regular church goer. And you know what she said?

It’s
abit of a shock because I never would have guessed it, but I also feel bad
because you kept this to yourself for so long. Did you think I’d not be
f...

Let's say it was WV instead of Virginia. Why would he return? Because we are our own tribe and because it's home. Hard to explain. As you may or may not know from my coments, WV isn't the most accepting state for gays or lesbians or bisexuals. I'm trying to tell my friends a little at a time. One of them contacted me today and I hadn't seen her in a bit and she had remarried. So I got up the courage and told her about myself, but I was really scared because she is a regular church goer. And you know what she said?

It’s
abit of a shock because I never would have guessed it, but I also feel bad
because you kept this to yourself for so long. Did you think I’d not be
friends with you? Silly, girl.

Back to the premise of your book. Here in WV we can be very accepting and loving, but at the same time easily swayed by the so called "moral values" of a system that holds down the working poor. It's fascinating and at the same time shameful that the poor would vote into office a system that rewards the rich.