How did the State that once rejected Ronald Reagan turn into an open sewer . . . economically, environmentally and politically?
Earlier this year, our youngest son – who will soon be the third Eagle Scout amongst our boys – received an invitation to the 2017 International Boy Scout Jamboree in West Virginia. He did not even consider attending.
In truth, there were a variety of factors, but one issue was a disdain in our family for West Virginia itself, and its citizens’ backward and hateful ways. (That turned out to be a especially good decision in light of Donald Trump’s off-key political rant at the event which drew an apology from the National Boy Scout Leader.)
The title of this story is, of course, a takeoff on the insightful 2005 book from author Thomas Frank: What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, which examined as far back as a dozen years ago why white, rural voters favor conservative Republicans, even at the expense of their own economic well-being.
Today, it’s safe to say that West Virginia usurps even Kansas (and every other state), as a cesspool of economic failure and environmental crisis, combined with a profound rejection of the Democratic Party and progressive policies in general.
It wasn’t always this way in West Virginia. West Virginia was formed as a State by the Civil War, as it rejected the slavery of its eastern neighbor. The state was a bastion of progressive, pro-worker thought (much like Kansas was) in the early 20th century. As recently as in 1980, West Virginia was one of only 6 states to vote for Jimmie Carter against Ronald Reagan. Yet that proud legacy has completely vanished.
It didn’t have to be like this. West Virginia is a state that possesses mountains, rivers and immense natural beauty. It’s a place that could have become a prized tourist destination, located within easy driving distance of most of the major East Coast cities. With such proximity to urban centers, the state should be full of mountainside summer homes for the wealthy.
West Virginia could have incentivized small technology companies – and promoted education - to prosper in cities like Morgantown and Charleston. It could have simultaneously rid itself of the stigma of coal and ignorance. After all, Pittsburg – not very far away – has successfully remade itself from its lost legacy of steel and heavy industry.
The musician John Denver lauded West Virginia as “Almost Heaven” in his 1971 ballad Country Roads. That seems almost a sick joke today, a spoof reinforced by the fake last name of a singer who also extolled a “Rocky Mountain High in Colorado,” the State that today is everything West Virginia is not — prosperous, liberal, open-minded, educated and Democratic leaning.
Rather than become the “Colorado of the East”, West Virginians have chosen instead to slink into a world of despair and resentment. They “cling to their guns and religion,” as Barack Obama so eloquently (if controversially) put it in 2008 – at the expense of modernity and prosperity. No state has suffered more from the opioid crisis than the Mountaineer state, which has the highest death rate from overdoses in the country. Few states rank worse in unemployment and personal income.
In West Virginia, politicians and residents alike seem to believe the fallacy that coal will somehow rise again. They tolerate the wholesale destruction of their natural beauty with “mountaintop removal” and fouled streams. Can you imagine a well to do business person from the Washington DC area telling a circle of acquaintances that he/she was “summering in West Virginia?” Not going to happen.
So what is it that has led West Virginia down this disastrous path? Is it the same destructive pathology that J.D. Vance so eloquently describes about rural Kentucky in Hillbilly Elegy? Is it some incestuous form of grievance at successful city intellectuals, as posited by NPR in 2015? Is it the blame of both politicians and voters who stood idly by as the world changed, as suggested in a piercing self-criticism by Appalachian Magazine.
I wish I knew both the source, and the cure. Until the state finds the latter, something profoundly wrong will continue to plague West Virginia.