Christy Ratliff is sitting in a folding chair in a public school gym in Grundy, Virginia, waiting for her number to be called. She arrived at 4 a.m. on this October Saturday to secure her position in line to have eight teeth pulled. Genetic gum disease, she explains, has left most of them rotten or broken. She hooks a finger to pull down her lip and show me gruesome damage—the kind most dentists see only in textbooks.
Ratliff is 29 years old.
Grundy, the seat of Buchanan County, sits deep in the Appalachian Mountains of Southwest Virginia. This weekend, it’s hosting a free clinic courtesy of Remote Area Medical, a nonprofit like Doctors Without Borders, but for places in the United States where the health outcomes are as grim as those in many developing countries. RAM founder Stan Brock once suggested that because Grundy is so inaccessible, his volunteers should literally parachute into town, as he once did while working in rural Africa.
Despite all the faith these locals have put in Trump, his second term is threatening their precarious existence. Few places in America are as reliant on the federal government. According to a recent study, 45 percent of the personal income of Buchanan County residents comes from Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and government disability programs. Federal dollars also account for about 15 percent of the county budget, subsidizing nearly every aspect of local life—education, economic development, disaster recovery, housing, sewer infrastructure. And Trump has succeeded in jeopardizing or eliminating nearly all of it.
“We live in a remote part of the world,” the driver says, declining to give his name. He’s here for denture work because Bradshaw has no dentist. He grew up in a holler, and like generations of his people, worked in the coal industry, including once for a company owned by Sen. Jim Justice (R-W.Va.)—until his paychecks bounced, a chronic problem at Justice’s mines. Now he works in logging. He has no health insurance, he says. Like 80 percent of McDowell County’s voters, he cast his ballot for Trump: “He’s kicking ass and taking names. He’s cleaning up the gangs. He’s doing awesome with the immigrants, too.”
My fucking dude, you aren’t paying attention. Not just to me, but to current events and the world at large.
Let me reiterate so it sticks this time:
The cult opposed invading Venezuela… until Trump did it.
The cult opposed war with Iran… until Trump illegally bombed them.
The cult opposed Martial Law… until Trump started sending the military and ICE Gestapo to US cities.
The cult opposed lowering taxes on the rich while raising taxes on the poor… until Trump did that.
The cult demanded free and open markets with no regulations… until Trump illegally declared tarrifs
The cult passionately demanded the release of the Epstein Files… until Trump told them no.
The cult passionately opposed child rape… until it became undeniable that Trump did it
Your obnoxiously and unreasonably generous portrayal of these Nazi fucks is, not only not based in reality, but makes it clear you’d rather put more time and effort into playing defense for them, than all the people the hurt. You place them above the minorities and dissidents in concentration camps, and above all the children Trump and his cult rape.
Or pass on the message that the objective reality of the situation is that these people are Nazis who’s greatest motive is hate and desire to harm and kill those they hate.
You need to get it through your head that we have FAR surpassed the point where MAGA ignorance and malice have become one in the same. Their ignorance is both willful and intentional.
You’re also doing your best to make countless baseless presumptions about the information flow to these people that would require a Pyongyang level censorship campaign, that simply doesn’t exist to a scale even slightly close enough to encompass the MAGA cultists. Nor even on the lowest classes of their ranks.
Again, more irrational and unwarranted generosity to Nazis. But this time with the flair of a temper tantrum in the form of a cringe sentiment that I promise you didn’t hit anywhere as close to hard as it did in your head.
Why are you so desperate to defend (and fail at it) Nazis? Seems sus.
I’m not sure why you keep harping on this point so hard. Do you think dental health correlates to cognitive ability? I promise you it doesn’t.
But if your point is that they’re poor, then I got bad news for you, fella. One that I don’t think you’ll like to see with your argument. The poor generally vote Dem. Poverty isn’t an excuse to be a Nazi.
More of the same bullshit so no point in refuting a pile on to a point I’ve already demonstrated is bullshit.
No I think the support for Martial Law to crack down on dissidents, mass support for cutting food aid for people domestically and internationally, cutting essential services, sending minorities and dissidents to concentration camps, executing innocent people publicly in the streets, the total collapse of the rule of law, the collapse of the USD, and of course, the billionaire pedophile cabal certainly cuts at the worth of these people.
Not you defending Nazis then trying to insinuate that I might be making a eugenics argument. Smdh
You’re sarcaatically suggesting inaction to these issues, which is exactly the logical endpoint of your position. Doing nothing but letting the Nazis roll us over… because you’re too afraid you might hurt the magical unicorn that is the entirely non-malicious MAGA cultist Nazi. Baffling, really.
Tl;Dr You’re both wrong and noticeably putting a sus amount of effort into defending pedophile loving Nazis. You’re disgusting.