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.