The wife and I are National Park aficionados and she had never been to Great Smoky Mountain, our nation's most visited park. We have spent the last two days staying in a cabin in Gatlinburg, TN, and this is the heart of Trump Country. Is there offensive anti-Biden merch everywhere? You bet there is! Is the average skin tone somewhere between alabaster and sunburned? Why, yes it is! Are there Confederate flag earrings for sale? Need you ask?
Look, these people are not demons. They are almost always incredibly nice to you as individuals. But hoooo boy, I'm not sure how any of them survived Covid, as they seem to be a walking inventory of co-morbidities.
In America, it certainly seems as if health is a strong predictor of class standing. The smoking, the gargantuan amounts of calories, these are going to have impacts on their lives. It's not really a surprise that the opioid epidemic hit these communities the hardest, as they certainly don't seem that healthy to begin with.
I doubt there is anything that can be done about this, as there's a belligerent, defiant streak here, but it really doesn't have to be this way.
These are good people poisoned by bad ideas.
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