https://www.publicsource.org/j-d-vance-talks-with-a-pittsburgh-audience-about-the-hillbilly-struggle-and-a-divided-nation/ Stories for a better Pittsburgh. Mon, 01 May 2017 13:12:57 +0000 hourly 1 https://www.publicsource.org/j-d-vance-talks-with-a-pittsburgh-audience-about-the-hillbilly-struggle-and-a-divided-nation/#comment-39 Sat, 01 Apr 2017 00:13:00 +0000 http://www.publicsource.org/?p=26468#comment-39 I read the book. I attended the lecture. J.D. strides boldly right up to the the point where he must confront so many issues . . . and then rather than do that, he moves on to a different subject. Just as one example, in his book J.D. describes what he thinks is one of the fundamental problems leading to the perpetuation of poverty in small and mid-size rural and middle America towns and cities. Boys, he says, think learning in school is sissified, a thing “faggots” do, so they balk at being educated. That’s it, not a word about the familial and cultural pressures, or the religious institutions that may engender those feelings in them. If I was supposed to come away with the understanding that there are millions of very poor illiterate or semi-literate white Americans in rural and crumbling cities with very dysfunctional families more and more of whom are or are becoming addicted to drugs, I didn’t need to read J. D.’s book to know that. I also didn’t need to read the book to know that life for very poor people is far more desperate in places like Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Mississippi and yes, even rural southern Ohio, than it is in San Francisco or Boston or in any Blue state. Go figure.

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