This article comes from 2013 but I doubt anything’s changed in the 6 years since.
A truly dark review of a large part of America that the media and politicians do their best to ignore.
For TV viewers, you might’s got a taste of what it’s like from the series, “Justified.”
(I really enjoyed that series.)
Booneville, Kentucky is an example.
It’s not like he has a lot of appealing options, though. There used to be two movie theaters here — a regular cinema and a drive-in. Both are long gone. The nearest Walmart is nearly an hour away. There’s no bookstore, the nearest Barnes & Noble being 55 miles away and the main source of reading matter being the horrifying/hilarious crime blotter in the local weekly newspaper. Within living memory, this town had three grocery stores, a Western Auto and a Napa Auto Parts, a feed store, a lumber store, a clothing shop, a Chrysler dealership, a used-car dealership, a skating rink — even a discotheque, back in the 1970s. Today there is one grocery store, and the rest is as dead as disco. If you want a newsstand or a dinner at Applebee’s, gas up the car. Amazon may help, but delivery can be tricky — the nearest UPS drop-box is 17 miles away, the nearest FedEx office 34 miles away.
Lots of drugs – mostly oxy – and prostitution to get the drugs.
Check this out:
Chief Logsdon thinks I may be talking to the wrong people. “Maybe that’s all they see, because that’s all they know. Ask somebody else and they’ll tell you a different story.” He then gives me a half-joking — but only half — list of people not to talk to: Not the shiftless fellows milling about in the hallways on various government-related errands, not the guy circling the block on a moped. Instead, there’s the lifelong banker whose brother is the head of the school board. There’s the mayor, a sharp nonagenarian who has been in office since the Eisenhower administration.
What the hell can be done about it?
One can do a search to learn not a whole lot more has been done in the 6 years since this was written. We hear about millions of new jobs and I wonder how many, if any, have popped up around there.
The distressing article is @ Kevin Williamson & Appalachia -- The White Ghetto | National Review
