What do you say to people that have completely lost all hope that things will ever get any better? The mountains of Appalachia stretch all the way from southern New York to northern Mississippi, and nestled within those mountains are dozens upon dozens of little towns that are so impoverished that they look like they have been through a war. Thanks to Barack Obama’s relentless assault on the coal industry and the ongoing collapse of our industrial infrastructure, Appalachia has lost millions of good paying jobs over the past several decades. Today, more than 40 percent of the population is living in poverty in some areas of eastern Kentucky, and addiction to “hillbilly heroin” (Oxycontin) is absolutely out of control throughout the region. Yes, poverty is on the rise all over America, but it has especially been cruel to those that make the mountains of Appalachia their home.
An article that was published in the Guardian on Thursday profiled the deeply impoverished town of Beattyville in eastern Kentucky. Life is very hard in Beattyville today, and it seems to be getting harder all the time…
The town’s poverty rate is 44% above the national average. Half of its families live below the poverty line. That includes three-quarters of those with children, with the attendant consequences. More than one-third of teenagers drop out of high school or leave without graduating. Just 5% of residents have college degrees.
I grew up in Appalachia and the sad part is most there choose to stay. There was a point in my life where I wanted more than the $10.00/hour factory job had to offer. Divorced with two children, I decided to move in with my parents and work my way through college. While doing that I bought a computer and spent many hours learning networking and programming. With the God’s help I graduated college and make a pretty good living. I had to move from where I grew up, but I make 4 times the money.
This is what I mean by they choose to stay there.
The above factory I worked in above, shut it’s doors(5 years after I graduated). At that time everyone there was entitled to 2 years worth of training. Be it college, a trade school or whatever. I only heard of 3 maybe 4 people taking advantage of the opportunity. I tried to talk all the people I worked with there to take advantage of it. Sadly, most did not do it.
My father he also grew up in Appalachia. In a poor (walking dead looking) West Virginia coal mining town. He would talk about family making fun of him trying to graduate high school. He was the first in a family of 12 to graduate high school and them college. Out of all my aunts and uncles, cousins and siblings. I can count on my hands the number of them that went past high school.
I can speak only for the IT field, but there are opportunities to better yourself out there. Most people do not want to spend the time to do it.
Tom, 30 or even 20 years ago I would have agreed wih you, but now the rural towns of Appalachia (and a fast-growing portion of the southeast) have become open-air penitentiaries. Those folks have been locked out of “normal” society by the will and intent of a progressive oligarchy; imprisioned in their dying communities for no better reason than that their values don’t align with the progressive dialogue.
The people of Appalachia and their communities are being destroyed -- murdered by a Nazi elite which hates them beyond any sane explanation.
And the footprint of satan’s wrath is growing by leaps and bounds throughout the South and midwest -- anywhere people don’t bend knee to the wiles of the evil one, destruction is being systematically inflicted by his enthralled minions. The existential battle is coming, and I believe we will see it in the flesh…
WE HAVE BEEN WARNED
I graduated college 10 years ago.
I was in the Appalachian mountains of NC on the day this was posted. I didn’t see the grinding poverty, just people more interested in family, community and living than making money. ‘Appalachia’ seems to mean Kentucky, W Virginia and maybe some areas farther North in these articles; places where the ‘company town’ was the,mainstay of the local economy.