This book is about a guy who got out of the rust belt in Kentucky in the Appalachian Mountains and got educated and became a lawyer. His mother was not great and he never had a father and grew up with his grandma. The people he grew up around (hillbillies) had a very difficult time accepting their own flaws.
After WWII, industry tried very hard to get people to leave Appalachia and move north to the factories. The alternative was to stick around and work in a coal mine or other poor jobs. His grandparents left Kentucky and went to Ohio. These hillbillies were not quickly accepted as they were white like the others but had very different culture. All politicians are crooks and not all bad people are rich but all rich people are bad. His grandparents were democrats but did not want to hear the excuses for not being successful. Their children, his parents, should have had a head start because of this move by his grandparents as the family was close to caught us with the native Ohioans by then. Once they had kids his grandpa was a violent alcoholic and his grandma secluded herself from everyone else. However their financial situation was much better than it could have ever been in Hillbilly country. The family matters we family and nothing was shared with others outside of the family. Even if you were family and left the house, you still lost out on hearing about the activities in the house. Two their children were "successful" and two were "failures"; however once the grandparents figured their shit out and grandpa stopped drinking they separated but worked together to help their children and grandchildren. When the author was a child, the town they lived in gradually disintegrated from a proud town to something that resembled the Kentucky towns they came from. Bad neighborhoods have spread from the ghetto to every neighborhoods. This is due to decreasing home values and high expenses of moving. They also started loosing jobs in town due to the steel company ARMCO merging with the Japanese company Kawasaki. The reality is that poor working people work less than college educated people, however the thought is that they work more. People do not realize how lazy they are. Additionally most working class families did not help their children with school, however his grandparents did. Social class is not about money but the desire that your children do better than you did. His grandmother taught him to fight even though she never hit him, except once to show him how a punch to the face did not hurt too much. She told him the number one rule of fighting was to never start a fight, unless of course you had to to stand up for yourself or someone else, i.e. a kid being bullied. His parents moved away from his grandparents and started fighting. This resulted in dropping grades and getting chubby. This fighting was not new as everyone fought and yelled at each other, however the fighting in his own house was new to him. His mom started drinking and threatened to kill him so he ran away. His mom ended up getting arrested and he started to see the employees of the courts were different from his family but the people there were the same as them. He saw more difference when he visited his uncle in California. He had many half siblings but the one he grew up with, Lindsey, was one of the most adult people he had in his life even though she was not much older than him. His type of religion was not traditional as his grandmother despised organized religion; however it required him to work hard for himself (God helps those who help themselves), take care of your family, forgive, never despair as God has a plan. Him and his sister never learned anything about men besides they disappear due to the revolving door of father figures. His life with fathers eventually came full circle and got back together with her original husband and the author ended up living on a farm with him. Church going people got to church on a regular basis live a happier, longer, and richer life. His father became religious and he started attending church more and more and began to distrust people who did not believe. He also believed he was gay as a child as he preferred the accompany of men than women. His grandma brought him back into reality by asking him if he wanted to suck dick and told him he would still be accepted if he did. When his grandpa died, the funeral was held in both Ohio and in Kentucky. His grandpa protected him, usually with guns, taught his the difference between knowledge and intelligence, and how to treat women. (His grandparents were very concerned about perverts). After his grandpa died, his mom started abusing, instead of just using, prescription drugs and ended up in rehab. As a result his grandma ended up raising her two grandchildren but allowing them to take care of their selves as teenagers. As a result he learned about the underworld of addiction, and again saw people just like him. His mom treated her addiction as a disease, which does have some scientific basis, but this did not help her. All he wanted for his sister was someone who treated her well. At 14 his mom decided he had anger problems and explained his situation, without telling anything that would get his mom in trouble with the law. Having nowhere to turn, he decided to go to his biological dad's house as he saw it as the least bad option. However this did not last and he moved back to his mom's house, which was not a good situation. However she left her boyfriend to get married to a Korean guy. He started struggling in school largely due to his situation living with his mom and started smoking pot. He blames some of this on the fact that he was separated from his sister. When his mom demanded clean urine from him, his grandma decided he should move in with her and follow her 3 rules, get good grades, get a job, and get off your ass and help her. He wanted to escape to Jackson Kentucky but his grandma escaped from Jackson. His grandma loved the Sopranos and the only problem she had with Tony was that he slept around. His grandma bought him a $180 calculator and made him do well in school. He also made friends and got all of his grades up. While working in a grocery store, he learned the class divide of frozen food and baby food and tabs allowed for rich people only. He also saw the abuse of government aid programs. This was the first time he lost faith in the Democratic party and many other white working class people saw these abuses as well. Their neighbor got section 8 housing and looked a lot by them blurring the line between the working and non-working poor. His grandma was all over the place between radical conservative to European socialist. Why was their neighborhood so much different than his fathers? The Truly Disadvantaged by William Julius Wilson talked about what happened when the working poor moved to communities that could not could not sustain the growing population and those who stayed were the really poor. He was writing about black people but was very relative to his life. This book told of the government encouraging social decay with the welfare system. But he questions when people did not leave their abusive partner, why they did drugs, why couldn't they see their effect on their children. The hillbillies all live in a world of irrational behavior resulting in debt and need a bailout. We all yell at each other and hit each other in front of the entire family including the kids. This has a very negative effect on the kids. People cannot hold down a job and use lies as excuses for the behavior. The working class white life expectancy is going down due to diet and lack of exercise. The author was able to see this side of the world with his mom but was fortunate to see the old school hard work of his grandparents with an intact, loving, and stable home. For 7 years, he moved almost every year, had run ins with social services, fighting, new fathers every few months, etc. In 10th - 12th grades he lived alone with his grandma in the same house, got a job, had stability, and developed happiness. He got accepted into Ohio State but he felt he was not ready for the unstructured style of college. So he went and joined the Marines during the Iraq war even though he could not run a mile and did not get up early. His family was happy about it but his grandma never liked the decision but wrote him letters of encouragement every day. He learned a lot about himself when being cut off from his family for the first time in his life. When he graduated boot camp he went back home and learned how people looked at him differently and how he looked at food differently. Her healthcare premium increased so he helped support her, and for the first time he felt the the provider and a real grown up and felt the greatest joy he ever experienced. His grandma had a collapsed lung and they ended up pulling the plug when she showed signs of getting worse. When in Iraq he saw a boy smile like no one he had ever seen when he handed the boy a $0.02 eraser and learned how lucky he really was to grow up with hillbillies who loved him and is still striving to be like that boy with the eraser. The marines teach you how to be an adult and assume zero knowledge of anything and helped control his life throughout his entire day. It also changed the way he thought about himself; made him believe in himself, learn about leadership, allow him to fail but also allowed him to try again. In all, it really taught him that he what his grandma always told him, that he could do anything. He learned how much he undersold himself and how much everyone in the white working class was underselling themselves. After the marines he started classes at Ohio State.
When at Ohio State he was with many people from his home town and saw "brain drain" where all of them left and none planned to go back. He was acing classes and knew he wanted to go to law school. He started working for a man in the Ohio State house and saw politics from a different view. He got a second job as a consultant at a non profit helping abused and neglected children. His mom heard about his condition of over worked, tired, and with mono and a staff infection and took him to the emergency room and took him to her house while he recovered. When he recovered he got a third job but ended up dropping his job in the Ohio State house even though it was his favorite because it paid the least. When he left his senator was fighting for payday loans which helped the author through some difficult financial times. However those in charge did not understand his situation because they had never been there so they were trying to eliminate them as they took advantage of people with their high interest rates. An ignorant dip shit 19 year old bitching about the Iraq war encouraged him to graduate early so he did as quickly as possible and graduated with a double major summa cum laude. He went back home before he started law school. The great recession and the not so great recovery created a great sense of cynicism. There was not a lot to be happy about since most of his areas sense of pride is love of country. There were not many uniting factors for the country. This was like a religion to them. Obama seems like a foreigner as he cannot relate to anyone he grew up with, he is incredibly successful in school, as a speaker. Obama and his wife hit at all of their insecurities. The people do not trust the press because they are full of shit. Many of the white working class are super pessimistic and do not know what to believe as they cannot believe anything. We cannot trust the new, government, college is working against us, jobs are not working. Why should I try? Conservatives are blaming the government for peoples failures so why should they try? The working class whites are the most pessimistic and the only group that less than half believe their children will have a worse life them then. He felt like an alien because of his optimism.
He wanted to go to Yale but did not believe he would get in but applied on line because it was easy. The most expensive the school is, the cheaper it is the poorer you are. If your parents make $30,000 per year, UW schools are $10,000 while UW Madison is $6,000 and Harvard is $2,500. But no one knows this so most go to cheaper schools even though they really are more expensive. Yale made him truly wonder if he really belonged, this was the first time he felt out of place as a tall, straight, white man. Even though Yale is diverse, almost all come from intact well off families. When coming back home, he lied to a stranger about going to Yale to avoid feeling like a trader. The upper class needs to open their hearts and minds to newcomers. There is a very large difference culturally, food, fashion, domestic issues, etc between the working poor and the privileged. The first year at Yale he learned more about how the world works than about law. Going out to a fancy dinner, he realized how ignorant he was about expensive dinner. After his first year at Yale he learned how the white collar people use networking to get a job instead of flooding job sites with your resume. This is the effect of social power, which working class people to not have. Even after bombing an interview, Yale was able to get him a second interview even though he had no reason other than his network. Finding out info on different routes in law school was dependent on using your network so he just asked, everyone. He learned about social capitol when his professor told him to not take a position and instead to be himself and put his girlfriend above a path he did not really want. He ended up moving to Kentucky near where he grew up with his girlfriend. Being a hillbilly, he did not know how to get ahead and relied on others to teach him how to be successful.
His girlfriend called him a turtle as he withdrew at even the hint of a conflict as he did not know how to have relationships with others. She pushed back at him and he ended up yelling at her and started to realize he was becoming like his mother. When he got into a fight with his girlfriend, and he apologized, she did not know this was a surrender and that she should go in for the kill. She told him she accepted his apology because she did not learn to fight in the hillbilly culture. Her family had love and acceptance. Instead of a councilor, he figured out a lot of his issues in books and learned there are a lot of books about his issues. 40% of children in the working class had adverse childhood experiences where as only 30% in the white collar children. Being in constant fight or flight mode in childhood changes your brain to always be ready for this fight. Unstable homes create a vicious cycle. He worked through this by talking with his family members and learned that the successful ones in his family had to learn to not fight. He realized that everything was a fight in his family and that he needs to work hard to break this habit. However he had his girlfriend and she is able to help defuse him by learning to work with him and although he was getting better, two of him in one house would not be successful. All of his successful marriages he saw were with someone getting with someone from outside of their community and culture. He knew his life would require constant mental focus to have a calm and positive life. Looking at him mom's life with sympathy changed his perspective of her. Her parents drank and fought and it affected all of the kids differently. However some of her life choices are her fault, some of that requires her to buck up. He figured out his mom was addicted to heroin right before he graduated Yale law school he did not feel as happy as he should have been. He learned that being a hillbilly, you never knew the difference between love and war. He graduated, got married, moved to Cincinnati, and made it and achieved the american dream. However his old life drew him back in when his mom hit rock bottom again. He offered to help her and drove to a motel in the middle of the night on a Tuesday. His plan to give her money carefully and track it seemed similar to what his grandparents did for her previously.
The best way to look at his culture's problems is that you cannot fix them, but you can put your thumb on the scale a little bit. Although there were lots of issues with his family, his family is what allowed him to be successful. Although they were not constant good role models, they were what he needed when he needed it. All his successful family members had the support of at least one family member as well as mentors at work. Europe is better than America at allowing children to achieve the american dream. Also the south, rust belt, and Appalachia have the worst change at achieving the American dream. There is a lack of role models. Utah is one of the best places to achieve the american dream largely due to the Mormon religion. Social services do not look at families like a lot of minority and hillbilly families are and do not look at uncles, grandparents, etc as family and look at them like foster parents without certifications. We need to mix the rich and poor and not allow entire neighborhoods to be supported by section 8. Being successful in school is seen as feminine in the working class culture.
The upper class/rich/educates vs the working class/poor/uneducated have very different cultures. This is seem at Christmas where the rich spend less on Christmas presents and the price tag is not what makes it successful or not. Additionally they live longer, go to church more, are happier, etc. People lose contact with their parents not because they want to but because they have to to survive. Any chance those people have is with the people around them. We all need to wake up to this, especially the hillbillies. We need to help people find love and create engagement. Does our conduct help or hurt our children. How can the government help if we do nothing? We broke all of this. We need to fix it. Stop blaming and look at what we can do to make things better. Are we becoming the monster?
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