rural-america

In addition, when they talked as if city people lived by different values, they were not emphasizing abortion, or gay marriage, or the things that are typically pointed to as the cultural issues that divide lower-income whites from the Democratic Party. Instead, the values they talked about were intertwined with economic concerns.

At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter__, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn__, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called __eal America,_ and I know it rankles some folks__ity folks, mostly__omething awful, and I wish I could tell them it__ only done out of politeness. That it__ only people saying nice things about the dying.