The working class white vote conundrum with focus on Upstate SC and Dekalb County Alabama

         Saturday afternoon was delighted to attend a book signing with my friend Ron Rash at the Judson Bookstore on Main, Greenville SC. I hadn't seen Rash since an interview in 2010 (check archives here at this blog for Sept 2010) and was good to see him. He read from his novella In the Valley, also title for latest collection of short stories.

     Ron mentioned Denis Johnson's Train Dreams and Faulkner's the Bear as among his favorites of the novella form, and stumped the audience with a question for readers of who the journalist was in the short story. Was Martha Gellhorn, of Hemingway and WWII fame he had ask Serena a question when she deplanes in Miami in 1931 on the Way to her lumber in WNC.

    He pointed out his title quote was from Bonhoeffer, which prompted my question with reference to his colleague Wahalla SC native, Mark Powell on what to do about our friends and loved ones in the region, the children of textile workers and sawmill communities and small town community stores and farms, natives of Appalachia from West Virginia zig zagging wide SE to Statesville NC, Newport Tn, Gaffney SC to Franklin and back over to Alcoa to Wahalla through Suches Ga to Ft Payne and Ider and Collinsville alabama through the heart of Marjorie Taylor Green country to Winder and back to Jasper Alabama.

    I brought up to Rash a version of the following from Powell interview you can google for the Porch, In the Darkness

       In Small Treasons, you show us a world of small towns in economic decline . . . failing Evangelical mega-churches . . .  kind-hearted, God-fearing conservatives . . . functioning drug addicts. Some readers might recognize these people as “deplorables” – the white working class and rural poor who’ve been endlessly analyzed since the election of Donald Trump. Care to comment?

MP: What’s happening to our country is scary, but it’s not surprising. I find the racism, the misogyny, the fear generated by Trump and so much of the far-right to be disgusting. It is America—which I love dearly, and still believe in—at our absolute worse. But you can’t denigrate people with impunity, mocking their culture, shipping their jobs overseas, and not expect an angry reaction.

    Rash referenced Faulkner who said Most people do better than their circumstances oughta allow them to do.

    So how do you get Trey Gowdy and Ralph Norman to quite dancing with the Devil, stop the politics of fear and resentment and allow these folks at least Rash and Powell and on better days myself dont want to throw under the tracks while they are being ripped by the left wing of the Democrat party and savaged more so by the likes of Breitbart, Yellowhammer News in Alabama and Trey Gowdy's Fox News Training Union hour now every Sunday night produced in Spartanburg SC.

    I had a note in today's July 26 hometown paper, Gaffney SC's Cherokee Chronicle. I made mention of proud to be in a little Facebook sewing circle of Gaffney products who do in fact know their hiney from a hole in the ground and arent buying Ralph Norman and Gowdy and the SC GOP delegation venal CRT backlash politics.

   Bonhoeffer talks about the politics of stupidity.  But when it gets to the trump vote you are trying to flip or ease to the light, they get angry as all they hear are you calling them stupid or deplorable when it's the venal Brietbarts of the world with Dale Jackson and Bama Policy Institute and Eagle Forum who hear the whispers of the Devil we are calling deplorable embracing what Bonhoeffer called the politics of stupidity that puts us all in danger.  It  makes us Beta Club members who grew up in Gaffney amongst em and every hamlet in Rash and Powell world dismissed as local elitists who got above their raising and open to be demonized by the soul molesters Rove and Breitbart and Steven Miller feast on . We  are trying to nudge our high school classmates toward the light.

    Rash said introduce them to literature, short stories in which they recognize themselves and people they know. As he was signing a book for my nephew, nephew told Rash about his friend Noah Clark who first year teacher last year Upstate SC had his troubled class read Rash's short story the Ascent. Read it. You know the bible says Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord. Maybe we need a thousand Noah Clarks in public schools across the region leading the way out of the morass reading Ron Rash and Mark Powell stories.

    At this point, what do we have to lose.

Wisdom from NY Times David Brooks unpacked by Gaffney Facebook community

  A Few days ago fellow Furman Alum James Hawkins of Gaffney posted some concerns about America's divide with reference to a July 1 column by David Brooks. Brooks wrote about shared knowledge, a common consensus refined over time without which there isnt much national cohesion. As George Wallace said to LBJ in the movie Selma, my people in Alabama have their customs and they "adhere".

    Brooks was groping for a better virtue of the sentiment than Wallace. Here is a couple paragraphs that get to the guts of his assertion

       Today many of us feel that America is suffering an epistemic crisis. We don’t see the same reality. People say that they often assume the problem is intellectual. Our system of producing propositional knowledge is breaking down. Why can’t those people fact-check themselves?

But Donald Trump doesn’t get away with lies because his followers flunked Epistemology 101. He gets away with his lies because he tells stories of dispossession that feel true to many of them. Some students at elite schools aren’t censorious and intolerant because they lack analytic skills. They feel entrapped by a moral order that feels unsafe and unjust.

The collapse of trust, the rise of animosity — these are emotional, not intellectual problems. The real problem is in our system of producing shared stories. If a country can’t tell narratives in which everybody finds an honorable place, then righteous rage will drive people toward tribal narratives that tear it apart.

Part of the blame goes to conservatives who try to whitewash history. Part goes to progressives who tell such a negative version of history that it destroys patriotism. But the core problem is our failure to understand what education is.

About the same time , last weekend to be exact, I found myself in an inflamed discussion among Baptist progressives when I took exception to a young woman who was not showing enough respect for good Baptists, mostly men, who in their time leaned in the right direction so she could be of influence today. She had a point that maybe I shoulda read what she said a second time before I expressed my concerns, but another person had joined the conversation and I took Madison to be a female name when in fact it was a male. I called that person "sweetie" and it was on. How dare anybody second a woman of color under thirty just because it appeared they didn't know the legacy of Stewart A Newman after three years of seminary education underwritten by Baptist progressives after the Fundamentalists walked away with most of the seminary property in the 80s.

So where do sensible people gain enough numbers to show Ralph Norman the door, without alienating the folks to whom he is making polarizing appeal with his foolishness about Critical Race Theory. And Nikki Haley with Project 1619 who ought to be embarassed for what her GOP friends in NC just did to the woman who just this morning told CBS UNC can have their school of Journalism, she is going to Howard.

Great job Nikki and Ralph. BTW did either of you see Neutral Ground last night, the POV Doc on PBS. I am hoping Northwestern and Rock Hill HS and Gaffney High, devote a week this coming academic year to watch that Doc and The Blinding of Isaac Woodard and then they will know what fools their Congressman and Former Gov have made of themselves. Also waiting to see if Clemson and Carolina Trustees can conduct themselves more honorably than UNC in regards their recent treatment of a Pulitzer Prize Winner.

Our little sewing Facebook circle in Gaffney is in the minority for sure, but I am proud of the Remnant I have come to know in the last couple years, Jeff Paschal the Limestone Proff son now a Presbyterian minister, Barty Sides who was the PCUSA ministers son and still remembers good BBQ loves Clemson and political virtue, Hawkins, Diane Masters whose mother was long time elementary principal in Blacksburg, My friend of Dogwood Drive Mike Hammett, Jerry Shinn former writer for the Charlotte Observer, John Grooms former editor of Creative Loafing in Charlotte.

We see the Light and a few others chime in on occasion.

Last week Hawkins and I counted 37 something Gaffney High Grads who went to Furman from 1960 to 1978. There were ten in the Beta Club 1969 picture alone that were at Furman for at least a year.

I have to feel like J Paul Beam a 1920s Furman grad and School supe for Cherokee county in the 60s is proud of us all.