Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 37: Cattehouse or We’re Broke and Our Hearts are, Too. (w/ special guest Elizabeth Catte)

Episode Date: February 14, 2018

Tarence and Tom are super professional, with the absolute best internet connection speed in the podcasting game. Elizabeth Catte (@elizabethcatte) stops by to tell them about her new book, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. Happy Valentines.

Hey, hey, hey Here I go now Here I go into this place The Ace of Spades You know that song that's Metallica From that movie Mission Impossible 2 they did like the soundtrack

oh that's right the video Tom Cruise like Kurt Hammett's playing on top of like a desert yeah oh yeah I wanted to show you something and I kind of wanted to wait for Tanya to be here

to talk about it but fuck it. Because I just, me and Matt have been really diving deep into this genre of YouTube video. What is it? Oh, Upchurch. Yeah, he's a rapper, right? Yes, you know who Upchurch is. Isn't he from Pike County? Is he?

I thought Matt told me that one time. Upchurch,. Is he? I thought Matt told me that one time. Upchurch. The Redneck Tour. No, I think Upchurch is like, he's signed to Bubba Sparks' label. Fascinating. Is he really? Bubba Sparks was, I'll defend this to the death. I think Bubba Sparks is a really, really good rapper. But he kind of dropped off.

He was signed to Dungeon Family, like Big Boi and Outkastin' on them. He kinda dropped off and just started doing this really bad country rap stuff with Colt Ford and all these guys that kinda just make like kinda jokey country rap. Well they call it hick hop. Yeah.

It's a weird amalgamation of like Confederate imagery yeah and stuff but with like hip-hop yeah imagery as well yeah and there's a bunch of these videos on YouTube it's really crazy it's like they um no he's Nashville It looks like There is like a A rap A country rap guy From Pikeville I sent it to you Yeah you sent that to me

I can't remember What his name is But dude They are Bad I will say this though It As weird as this sounds

It can be tastefully done Came from the bottom Like well water bitch Six string Quick pickin' What's good, motherfucker. Rebel flag bandana chromed out Harley Davidson. Damn, motherfucker.

See, that's no good. On MTV with a torchlight smoking up a blunt. While I'm playing with some Tannerite, bitch. What's Tannerite? Is it like a dynamite? Is it dynamite? Is it kind of explosive? Yeah, it's like, maybe it's like surface, maybe it's like strip mining rap.

Oh, Tanner, that's what we used to blow the mountains off, tops off. You hear my name, you know I don't play. What the fuck I'm about, where I came from. I know a lot of rednecks, know a lot of real thugs, know a lot of hillbillies taught and scraped off guns. Know a lot of motherfuckers and the hardest where i'm from with a huge pig farm no fingers no thumbs all right i'm sure dude um ain't no shit son of a bitch come to get some sipping on these sucking vibe like a milk jug

middle finger kind of guy packing me a big ass 1911 truck so loud. Motherfucking loud. God could probably hear that shit way up in heaven. Bars, baby. That's all he's got. Bitch, I'm sick like the Zika virus. I'm the king now, son of a bitch. Close the curtains.

If you just like, if you just read this dramatic reading of this It just reads like Like a bot wrote this Right Look at the cover Bad motherfucker Up church

And he's sitting on a white White Harley A white Harley Fat boy Hell yeah dude Hell yeah You know it's I was reading something about

When the whole discussion about You know taking I was reading something about when the whole discussion about taking the Confederate monuments down and all this was sort of popping off. You know the rapper Yellow Wolf? Yeah. He was defending his use of, because he likes to tie the Confederate bandana around his mouth like a burglar mask

when he does his shows. Right. He was defending his use of that as an Alabamian. Well. And, yeah. So this is a weird, I think they're of the heritage, not hate band. We are at a weird,

I think you're right. I'm sorry, I got sort of sidetracked because I was trying to find that video that I sent you of the guy from Pike County. I just don't remember his name now. It is weird, though. It's like a... It's got 10 million views. This thing has 10 million views.

Look at that. It's very popular. Like, this kind of genre is very popular you know blowing up your mountains dump it in your strings bitch come at me you see what i mean hope you don't get that cancer from that tetrahedra math thing uh dude um today's valentine's day

you gotta as you as you call it the super bowl of the love game you stand by that no are you disowning that? No, no, I stand by it, but this year I've taken it easy. I took my foot off the gas a little bit. Usually I kind of go all out for Valentine's Day. Why? Have you had it? Two years in, you know, I'm just getting complacent.

I understand, man. When you're in a relationship, like a long-term relationship, it's like Valentine's, I feel like, kind of moves down on the- It's kind of like Arbor Day after a certain point. You know what I mean? It's Arbor Day for relationships. Well, actually, I take it back.

It's more like President's Day. It's like, yeah, it's cool that we get that off, but it doesn't really mean a whole lot. Yeah. Right, right. Not that we get Valentine's Day off, so perhaps that's a bad analogy, but regardless. Should we get Valentine's Day off?

Like, if we get President's Day off, we should get Valentine's Day off. I know you're trying to smash tomorrow, Terrance. You can have the day off. Wait, Monday is President's Day, isn't it? I think. This coming Monday? Yeah.

I don't know, man, but what a week, right? If you can have Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Valentine's Day, and President's Day. And an off Monday, President's Day. It's like, yeah, fuck. That might be the best holiday week of the year. Yeah, hell yeah. Rivaled only by Christmas Eve, Christmas, Yeah that Fuck That might be the best Holiday week of the year Yeah Hell yeah

Rivaled only by Christmas Eve Christmas And maybe New Years But Depending upon your perspective Maybe not Yeah

I think a lot of people Really kill themselves On Christmas You think that's True or That's just something I've always heard And

I don't know I saw this Um Fuck what was it I saw a T tweet the other day about oh shit what were some recent holidays super bowl that's national i saw a tweet the other day that was like um domestic violence is out of control on Super Bowl. It was basically like,

it provided a phone number for the domestic violence hotline and said this is the highest number. Because sociologists noticed a trend that in Super Bowl, a lot of domestic violence happens. Right, but it's widely, that has been widely dispelled.

It's actually a huge myth. It's not true. It's not true. I wonder how that started. I mean, it's not that far of a reach. Yeah. Oh yeah, I mean, it's never a bad idea Like

Raise awareness of Yeah There's no wrong reason Right Right but I don't know But it seems like Maybe Christmas is

One of those days I don't know though man Holidays are hard you know Especially if you lose somebody Around the holidays Yeah One of the weirdest Phenomenons Seeing Yeah. One of the weirdest phenomenons

is seeing academics on Facebook referencing us. It's like, I'm going to tell you right now, it's a very slippery slope. We'll try to live our life

and do our commentary in a way that won't make you look like a fool, but we make no guarantees about that. I was thinking the other day, dude, a funny thing that I keep seeing in, like, lefty non-profit... Dude, I've got a whole... A funny thing I keep seeing in, like, lefty non-profit speak world,

which is funny because it's the exact same thing we talked about last time we were interviewing Elizabeth, is the hot thing right now is people saying mutual aid is just something I'm really into right now. Mutual aid? Have you seen that? No. I keep saying it all the time.

I'm just really into mutual aid right now. It's something I'm really into. What's the... Just like helping people. What's the... That's just... That's what it is. That's the church stuff way to say just... I guess.

Give them five bucks to UNICEF. Yeah. Do you have any good Valentine's Day stories? Do you have any good breakup stories? Buddy, how much time do you have? About ten minutes. Ten minutes. How much time do you have?

About 10 minutes. 10 minutes. Well, I feel like maybe I should get Elizabeth in on this because you've heard all my stories. That's true. There can just be no spontaneous response to it. The stupidest breakup I ever had was that one time me and you were on the radio and I was talking shit about the Dalai Lama stupidest breakup I ever had was that one time me and you were on the radio and

I was talking shit about the Dalai Lama and I got in trouble for it with the person I was dating. Do you remember this? Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And I was like, fuck this, man. If I can't make fun of the Dalai Lama, it's not worth it.

Man, if you can't make fun of his holiness in front of your partner your partner's probably wrapped way too tight for living just the just the just the concept of like an American like white relatively affluent well-off you know American like chiding me for making fun of the fucking Dalai Lama. It's like people have died for the cause of like Jesus and Muhammad and even like the Dalai Lama. And like if that's your thing, it's fine, whatever. But like.

Whatever your trip is, baby. I just don't fuck with the holy one. Well, but just the idea. Like, okay. So, yeah. Like if I was sitting across the table from like a jihadi. Someone in ISIS. A real jihadi, someone in ISIS, they were like, Allah Akbar, I want to die for this.

I'd be like, that's your thing, man. Right on, baby. As long as you're taking down the American empire, I'm all good with it. Right on, baby. But the idea of an American fucking scolding me for making fun of that fucking piece of shit the dolly llama well it's dolly llama piece of shit i don't know he's a shilfor empire i don't know i don't know anything i say i don't know anything about i don't really either i'm ignorant and that was her that was her whole point she was like you're just being ignorant and like and i was like yeah well fuck like i want to be ignorant with my friends from time to

time but also but also it's just like it's just it's comedy you know what i mean yeah yeah fun shit dude no uh the weirdest breakup you know I was thinking about, you know this phenomenon in relationships when you don't want to be in it anymore, but you don't want to actually have an uncomfortable conversation, so you try to find something to break up with the person over? Oh, yeah.

When I was a sophomore in high school, I broke up with a girl for making a joke about Aaliyah's death. I was grasping at straws. I was desperate. about Aaliyah's death. Grasping at straws. I was desperate. It's funny, like, I remember exactly when it happened. You know, like, everybody's got, like, a story about 9-11,

like, where were you when those towers fell? Yeah. Well, I do remember that, but I also remember where I was when Aaliyah died. I remember being in, I was when Aaliyah was died I remember being I was in 8th grade and I was in like 2nd period history or some shit and I just remember that those two things happened in really close proximity

like Aaliyah died only like a month before or maybe after I don't know it was right around the same time but I just remember in my mind I was like damn planes planes are not safe folks It was right around the same time. But I just remember in my mind, I was like, damn, planes. Planes are not safe for us. They're not safe. That was my takeaway.

What I'm taking away from all this tragedy is don't fly. I was looking back through some of our files of old episodes we recorded, and I guess we recorded one episode. I don't think we ever used it. But the title of the episode was 9-11 but with trains. Have they thought of that one yet? No. Don't give them any idea.

Well, yeah, okay, that's not. We didn't go with it because we were afraid we were going to get in trouble or something. Yeah. We're self-censored, goddammit. We've gone soft. We're shields for empire. Yeah, exactly. Okay, well, let's get our bearings straight

so we can have an actual serious interview with Dr. Elizabeth Kapp. How's that sound? Whoop, whoop! get our bearings straight so we can have an actual serious interview with uh dr elizabeth kapp how's that sound i'm your puppet i know what that song is is that what it is yeah i love the song what's that guy's name james and bobby purify i'm your puppet. But there's another version of it. Man, is that how...

There was... What's interesting about this era of R&B music is they were talking about fucking in such a coded way that it came full circle and now it just sounds pervier than if they had just been more explicit about that.

Yeah. You're 100% correct about that. I don't know. I think it was better back then when you had to be a little more euphemistic about your... A little more clever. Yeah. I'll tell you somebody that wasn't good at that subtlety

was R. Kelly. Remember that song about fucking in the kitchen? Yeah. Well, he is anything but subtle. I mean, he pees on people. There's nothing subtle about peeing on people. Alright, let's try to call. Oh, I don't wanna deal with it.

Ow. What the fuck what the fuck got into that man that was a jam run that back what's up homie hey what's up oh there you guys are there she is um do you have like updated version of skype i didn't know like the song is like techno now um yeah possibly possibly it's weird it just sounds like the do do do do on my end though is it like is it dropping bass yeah ours had a driving beat ours was a little less inspector gadget a little more Bassnext or something. Yeah, quite Amigos. I'm the dubstep version of Skype.

Oh, geez, geez, geez. Well, Dr. Cat, welcome on the show. Welcome back for an unprecedented third time. Oh, thank you guys so much. I'm happy to be here. We're talking to our lawyers about making you a generous offer to come on board full time. So I was like, I thought I was like looking for interviews. I was looking for reviews of the book.

God damn it, Mike. Elizabeth Cat, you're getting wrong about Appalachia. Mike on Amazon writes, socialist propaganda one star. It's nothing but a short anti-capitalist pro-socialist price of propaganda.

That's actually what it says. I think you mean peace, Mike. It's a piece of propaganda. Do you the what it says says price. Thank you mean peace Mike It's a piece of propaganda you agree with Mike's assessment Yeah, I do I do I Try I mean I see no lie In that statement sorry Mike didn't like the book he gave you um Dinesh D'Souza's book five stars though People emailed me about that. Which one?

The one about how the Democrats are in the Klan. Really? Really the racist ones? I love it. Dinesh D'Souza is like, he's got an imagination. I'll put it that way. All right. like he's got an imagination i'll put it that way um all right so our guest today is dr elizabeth cat uh who we've yeah had on twice before three times if you consider the halloween episode um yeah and we're talking about collaborator frequent collaborator um and we're talking

talking about the book she just released, What You Are Getting Wrong About Appalachia. So let's just dive right into it, shall we? I had a list here of a few things that you... Oh, hi. There's a list of questions coming out. Yeah. Well, it's really a list of controversial takes you make in the book. Number one, Gary Stewart is way better than Dwight Yoakam and never got his due. That's crazy. Number two,

people in East Kentucky listen to rap and drink Crown Royal, not old time music and bourbon. Who the fuck? Number three, there's no actual... It doesn't actually matter how you pronounce Appalachia. Wow. Wow. Okay, i'm done yeah what'd you guys think about my claim that um kentucky does not in fact have the

lowest cigarette prices allowed by law it's close but you're right you're fucking up our tourism prospects yeah um okay all right so um let's talk about the book a little bit um the book opens up with uh the story of the sago mine disaster in 2006 um could you like maybe tell us a little bit about what that was and any sort of lessons we can draw from the media's response to it? Yeah. So in 2006, there was an explosion at the Sago Mine, which is in West Virginia. 13 people were killed. I believe 13 people.

One of them survived. So fact check me on that and yes the thing about the Sago mine is not only was it kind of this disaster of mine safety but for a couple days people believed that most of the miners were alive that they were trapped and that rescue crews could get to them and their families believed that. So they set up, national and international news media set up this sort of like kind of grim, almost like death watch with families who were kind of right across the street from

where the mine was. And in fact, the families got incorrect news that most of the miners had survived and that they were sending people down there to rescue them and of course that information was incorrect so we have this like horrific plot twist that happened where breaking news you know on every major network was like all these men are alive hooray their faith you know, resulted in this tremendous outcome, unexpected outcome. And of course, they were all, all dead. So when news media covered this event, they really wanted to focus on sort of faith and resilience and hardship. And, you know,

in my opinion, what they should have been doing is looking at the, you know, the international mind groups, horrendous record of mine safety violations and why those hadn't been given the weight that they should and the things that were going on behind the scenes that are pretty common in the mining industry, how those conspired to make the explosion a full-blown disaster. But of course, that's not the story they wanted to tell. They wanted to tell about, you know, hardscrabble people hoping in vain for a miracle.

Right. Yeah, like what you write, you said, their anger was framed as a melodramatic response triggered by grief, not as a series of reactions compelled by the often abusive tension between mine operators and the communities that served as their workforce. of tension between mine operators and the communities that served as their workforce. And it's interesting, like, because I think you sort of go on to explain that, like, a lot of, like, reporting in the sort of, like, Trump country format does that same sort of media sleight of hand, where the actual, like, I don't know, as you get into it, you say the people are responding, you know, through grief and all these other things, like you say, making a sort of, like, melodramatic scene where, like, the company largely escapes a lot of the accountability for what's happening.

Like, why, so, like, why is this story important to the larger story you're telling um so i mean like what you just said terrence there's like these um these frameworks appear in the way that people have been reporting on politics in appalachia recently, but also historically. People in Appalachia tend to be framed as people who are overly emotional, that they're kind of, the rational part of them has been clouded by negative emotions like despair and hopelessness, and that they're trapped in sort of situations where they can only respond in the worst possible way, which is deeply emotional, people voting against their own interest, things like that. Poor people in general are rarely given any sort of rationality. You know, you see this in the way that people talk about also like for-profit education too, that people are always deluded or, you know, not making wise decisions about their circumstances.

Now, I think like the Trump phenomenon is way different, but it was easy for the press to mimic this framework based on the way that people have written about Appalachia and poor people in general in the past. Yeah. Hold on just one second, Elizabeth, because I want to connect to a little bit stronger internet connection because we lost you for a second. Okay. Okay.

All right. Sorry about that. Okay, can you hear us? Sorry about that. Okay, can you hear us? I love that. Yeah, you like that. Okay. Can you say what you were just saying at the end there about essentially how this is a common framing

in a lot of these stories, how poor people are not seen as rational, and you were talking about how you see that in for-profit schools as well. I love that, I love that. Did we get frozen? I think we're frozen again. Mother fucker.

We have a poor connection. That'll be the last time that happens, I swear. We're making a strong case for expansion of rural broadband. Can't even do our goddamn comedy podcast because it's bullshit. Okay, all right, all right. Could you, in so many words, you don't have to say everything you just said? Because I got most of it. But I just kind of wanted to go back and retread a little bit about what you were talking about, how the media frames like poor people as non-rational agents and all this. So I think historically the way that people have written about Appalachia and poor people in general, they're always sort of responding to emotions.

They're not doing things that are rational. They're making the worst possible choices, and they're making these choices because they are deluded or that they possess sort of a negative understanding, a deficient understanding of the way that the world works. And so I think I said that I don't, you know, I kind of consider the Trump phenomenon to be a different kettle of fish and I don't see, you know, rational ways to justify a vote for Donald Trump. But the narrative that was in place and has been in place about Appalachia and poor people made it easy for the media to adopt that framework and to deploy it in kind of the first wave of these trump country pieces that came out about appalachia in the 2016 election yeah um and sort of just like as an aside to our listeners um you know

you mentioned this in the in your book but um wilbur ross who owned the sago mine during the explosion went on to become trump's commerce secretary, I think, secretary of commerce. And then ICG, because it was an ICG mine, right? It was. Well, the former CEO of ICG is actually the current, he's the head of the Energy and Environment Cabinet here in Kentucky. So it's like you have this situation where- Snavely.

Snavely, yeah. He ran ICG when they got caught defrauding Kentucky with all these clean water reports. They were basically just copying and pasting clean water reports from month to month and saying

that they didn't have any pollutions at their mines. So it's like these individuals just keep, you know, they fail upwards. They just keep getting put back into positions of power. Okay, so going on from there, you go on to talk a little bit about McDowell County. And we, you know, which is in the, it's the southernmost county in West Virginia.

It's sort of, there was a high concentration of, like, Trump country pieces from McDowell County. I wanted to talk a little bit about, like, the sort of concerted effort of, like, capital interests and the two political parties at, like, basically shutting out progressive politics, and I wanted to use the anecdote of, was it Charlotte Pritt? Yeah, Charlotte. Yeah. You write, you know, I thought this is just the best way to put it.

You said, political candidates committed to labor and environmental issues don't often fare well in West Virginia, not because they're unpopular with the electorate, but because pro-business moderates from both parties invest in their failure. And you use Charlotte as the best example of that. Could you tell us a little bit about her and why that fits that mold? Yeah, so about a decade ago, Charlotte Pritt challenged Joe Manchin, who is a current senator in West Virginia, and she won her primary. So she defeated Joe Manchin in the primary. And instead of, you know, the Democratic Party supporting her, sort of the rightful candidate, prominent establishment Democrats like Manchin formed a coalition to support the Republican challenger, and Pritt lost the election. So they really saw

her pro-environment, pro-labor platform as a threat, and seriously invested in her failure. And I think that's a pretty common story in West Virginia and Appalachia at large. It's not that candidates like Pritt are naturally unpopular with the electorate. It's that they are either unsupported through neglect by the establishment or the establishment actually invests in their losses in the case of exactly what happened with Charlotte Pritt. Yeah, and it goes back to what we said last week. We had Nick Offerman on, and we were talking about just sort of the degree of autonomy that you have over your own circumstances here.

just sort of the degree of autonomy that you have over your own circumstances here. And it really just is a great example of how most people really don't have much autonomy over their circumstances. And, you know, when you talk about like the sort of phenomenon of Trump country or a lot of people voting for Trump, you know, a lot of politics around here are just straight up rigged, you know? Yeah, exactly. That's a really great example of that. I want a city council seat on the flip of a sack of Julia Dollar just to illustrate that point. Yeah, did you guys hear about what happened to

Lisa Lucas? Lisa Lucas in the, like the West Virginia House of, I think the West Virginia House like last week where she was sort of shoved off the speaker's podium for listing campaign contributions from oil and gas companies. Right. What's Lisa running?

Is she in Roan County? Was she running for like... I forget what she was. She is running for office. Yeah. She's running for office. Yeah. I think it's the House of Delegates that she's running for.

Okay. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I think that's what she's running for. But she was there as a speaker and a landowner who has mineral interests. And so she was speaking against the co-tenancy plotting that's going on among politicians. And so that got a lot of press. And in the follow-up to that, I mean, you can just like sense the anger of these, you know, rank and file West Virginians that were interviewed by outlets like, you know, Rolling Stone and Politico and things like that. And they're tired of, you

know, getting candidates like Joe Manchin and being told, well, this is the best Democrat you can get. Like, you should just be happy to have a Democrat at all. If you want to be progressive, this is what we have to offer. Either take it or don't vote. And most people don't vote. Right, right, right. Yeah, I think it ended up working out for Lisa, though, right? Didn't she raise like $45,000, which is like in the FMF.

Yeah, and so right now, actually, Joe Manchin, is he running again? Is he? Yeah. So one of his challengers, though, is a sort of progressive Bernie type Democrat, Paula Jean Swearengin. And it'd be really interesting to see what comes out of that. I think she's run a pretty good campaign, and she's just very consistent and just has stayed on her message for a really long time. Yeah, and it's funny. I mean, the height of irony is that Manchin at the moment is going around to Democrats at all levels, state and national, and has this pledge that nobody will,

none of the elected Democrats will speak out against a sitting representative. So he's basically asking them not to do what he did in the case of Charlotte Pritt, which is go against whoever happens to be the winner of the primary. Right, right. Yeah, it's pretty bleak because it really just shows you that not only are the reactionaries in the right wing our enemies,

but these Joe Manchin-type Democrats are also absolutely our enemies. They want to make sure that the people are shut out of any kind of policy discussions or anything that has anything to do with bettering their lives. Oh, yeah, and that's not even to mention, like, Jim Justice, who switched parties and was allowed to move forward as a Democratic candidate, even though people knew that he was highly unstable politically. So, yeah, people have a right to be angry at that, and I think they have a right not to trust the Democratic establishment

because this is the kind of thing that's leaking out and is affecting their lives in a very real way right right exactly um so yeah so one of the things i liked about your book um is that it spends a lot of time um talking about history i mean and not just like the literal facts of history, but, you know, what we would call in the academy, like historiography, like how, like, you know, how history is treated and who gets to write it and who, what, you know, to what ends it's deployed. One of the best examples of that was this guy, Bruce Crawford, in West Virginia, who in the 1930s was essentially, I guess he was commissioned by the Roosevelt administration to be the sort of point person who was assembling West Virginia's history at that time. Yeah, correct. I can't remember what it was. For one of their New Deal programs, it was like the farm. It was a federal writer's project. Right, okay.

And he was commissioned to write the West Virginia State Guide. So every state was going to have one of these publications, and he happened to be the person that was nominated to compile West Virginia's history. Right. And he was pretty much dyed-in-the-wool leftist, right? He was trying to write a history that was radical and was basically, you know, at every turn was essentially, you know, the powers that be were trying to shut him up. Yeah, Bruce Crawford had a hell of a time. I mean, he was a World War I veteran, and when he left service,

he kind of cut his teeth publishing left-wing newspapers in southwest Virginia, where my people are from. And when he wasn't publishing newspapers, he was going, like, across the border into Kentucky to help striking miners there. And so he brought, I mean, he obviously brought that spirit to him when he wanted to compile West Virginia history and include things like Blair Mountain, the Hawksnest Tunnel disaster, Mother Jones, Paint Creek, Cabin Creek,

all those important labor stories and stories of labor organizing. And the establishment, which, again, was Democratic, like, through a ship fit because they really galled them that, you know, we were going to have like talk about heroes of the, you know, heroes of war and all that kind of stuff right up there with people who had led, you know, labor strike in Blair Mountain. And that was unconscionable to them because they wanted the state history to be basically public relations for the coal industry and talk about how the coal industry had really

rescued West Virginia from degeneracy and turned it into sort of a paradise for industry. Right. And let that stand. Yeah. Yeah. So that's actually a great point to sort of pivot to, like, the second section of the book, which is essentially about Hillbilly Elgy and J.D. Vance. But, you know, it's not just about J.D. Vance. It's, you know, you talk about a lot of other stuff in there as well, like Harry Cottle. So, you know, we talk about history and to what ends it's deployed and who gets to sort of write it.

I wanted to talk a little bit about, like, the, you know, the efforts early on to sort of portray Appalachia as like a distinct ethnic identity, and, you know, like how that has to do with what J.D. Vance and other writers like him are doing. Yeah, so the easiest thing is, when I think of the long arc of Appalachian history, I think it is the story of people trying to sever poor people from the richness of the land around them. And that tracks through forced indigenous migration to what's going on with co-tenancy in West Virginia today. So I only, you know, the period that I'm discussing is like right after the Civil War.

So that's where I pick up because this is the time when the coal industry is really, you know, developing its kind of enormous power in the region. But people have deployed myths and stereotypes. Lots of them have to do with defective culture and genes, basically to get the land that people are living on. And this is, you know, you can make arguments that people are degenerate because they are living on sub-marginal land and we need to move them somewhere else for, you know, their own benefit when it's really they want to develop the land into something.

You know, the eugenic movement has a huge presence in Appalachia in times past. So it's a, you know, a laboratory of experimentation for them as well, and kind of deploying myths and stereotypes, especially about shared, you know, genes to make that happen. It's really kind of a very pronounced thread that runs through Appalachian history. And I don't think you have to be a historian or somebody from Appalachia to recognize that. And one of the things that was, I mean, and you guys have talked about this a lot, too, that's been so galling about Hillbilly Algae is, like, this undercurrent of racial determinism in the book that goes completely, had been completely unnoticed by most people, and most

left-leaning people, or liberal people, you know, writing in praise of it, because it's very pronounced if you know anything about just the history of the united states right um yeah that's absolutely right i think it's like i can't remember how you word it but essentially what you're saying is that like um what well i'm not going to be able to thread that. So I'm going to back up. Our brains not in that place right now. But yeah, so like you talk about like the 1920s and the 1930s as the sort of like you said you write that it was like a critical decade in the construction of the mountain white. Um, and I think that like maybe the best example of that is like I wanted to talk about like where the media plays into that construction. And specifically, it's sort of hints at what you just said. A lot of the times it had to do with like literally portraying these people as degenerate, backwards, etc.

You know, without agency and all these other things so that their literal resources could be taken away from them. I think the best example was the people who lived near the Shenandoah Valley. I can't remember, was it Arthur Rothstein? It was somebody who worked... Yeah, Arthur Rothstein, who is a New Deal photographer. Right. So, like, a lot of the images that were being taken out of Appalachia around that time of, you know, Appalachians living in squalid conditions and all this, they were pretty much done in communities where there were material interests at work. There was larger, like, corporate interests trying to get the resources of those communities. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, so could you talk a little bit about that,

about the sort of perpetuation of these images, the perpetuation of that narrative, and maybe how it sort of got taken up by eugenicists a few decades later. Yeah, I mean, it wasn't even a few decades. It was like, you know, kind of like months later. So what happens in the Shenandoah Valley is, you know, the strongest example. But, like, you know, my relatives were the subject of these photographs, too, in Tennessee, because it was so widespread. But the Shenandoah Valley is a good example because the resources were just, you know,

unadulterated land. They wanted to build a national park in the Shenandoah Valley, and they were successful at doing that. And because it was a site of natural beauty, it had already been significantly developed before this process went into place. So there were, like, gas stations and restaurants and hotels already in the area. But when they decided to expand the park, there were about 500 families living in the area. And the government, in conjunction with like local business people

and local politicians, wanted to evict them as quickly as possible. So what they did is they used, they brought in some sociologists from like the University of Chicago to write the study about the, you know, sort of like defective hillbillies that were living in this area. And then the next wave is sort of, you know, government photographers who are doing social documentation of the region. And they use the studies that were produced by sociologists to kind of frame their work because they're not really like expert photographers at the time. If they can read a book that says, like, you know, I came across a kid in a bush, you know, chewing a plug of tobacco, they're going to say, they're going to find a kid and say, like, oh, here's some tobacco, can you go hide in that bush for me?

Right. So they're doing, like, things like that to manipulate these photographs. And all of this is, like like making the government and local politicians and local business people incredibly happy, because then what they do is they go to sort of these burgeoning eugenics institutions that are like proliferating through Virginia, such as like Western State Hospital and the Lynchburg Colony, and saying like, you need to send professionals up to this area

and take these people away and sterilize them, otherwise they're just going to breed down to idiocy here in the mountains. And so that's the cycle that occurs when we start talking about, you know, deficient genes and Appalachia. And the point that I make in the book is that when you start talking about, like, deficient culture, you're never far behind these arguments about genetic deficiency, especially when you're talking about shared heritage.

Like, you know, it's been Anglo-Taxan at some point in time, it's been Scotch-Irish, it kind of like, you know, ebbs and flows. But these conversations are never happening, like, separated from each other. They're all part of the same conversation. And the people having these conversations know this, but they don't want us to know that, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, you know, you refer to it, I think you quote a, I think her name is Wilma Dunaway, and she, you know, she referred to it as this sort of, like, ethnic homogeneity thesis,

and I also thought it was interesting that there was this Celtic thesis and one of the proponents of that was this guy named Grady McWhiney. Yeah, the white supremacist. Right. That's a perfect name for a white supremacist. Yeah, a white supremacist. I think it's interesting how

that line of thinking can exist with everybody thinking that Pocahontas is their great-great-great-grandmother. Yeah. It's like the idea of white degeneracy. Well, I think it has to do with the history of colonization of Appalachia and how we don't talk about it hardly at all. I mean, it's this... like, yeah, I don't know. It's interesting that, like, when we talk about Appalachia,

me and Tom were talking about this before we called you, actually. We were talking about, like, the history of Appalachia. And we talk about it. Usually we're only referencing, like, the war on poverty up until now, a very short time, like the last 50 years or so. Like Ron Ehler onward. Yeah. And when we talk about talk about like the history of it like there is kind of like a big blank space from like frontier when it was the actual frontier up until like the mind wars of the early 20th

century um you know a lot of people do talk about it but i'm just meaning like in the sort of like larger narrative uh that the media plugs into. Even us as activists that we plug into, it's very rarely are we sort of referencing a history that goes back farther than 100 years or so. Anyway, it's just sort of an observation. But there's another thing I wanted to talk about too, though, Elizabeth, which is that, like, so, you know, you have these photos and images that are coming out of people living in these sort of, like, desperate conditions and stuff. I wanted to ask what your thoughts were.

Like, what do you have to say to some, like, photographers and writers? I'm not going to name any names or I'm going to get, like, 80,000 emails tomorrow. writers, I'm not going to name any names or I'm going to get like 80,000 emails tomorrow who say that it's necessary to document poverty it's necessary to not sugarcoat it

or sweep it under the rug or neglect it or anything I'm like what do you have to say to that? Because I know for our part we're not saying that it's bad to shoot people living in desperate conditions or anything like that. It has more to do with the way that it's done and if they're being manipulated or not into it. I'm not going to speak for you, but I just wanted to know what you had to say about that.

Yeah, I think this exists within all genres of photography, but I think in particular with Appalachian photography, there's, you know, an intentional blurring between social documentary photography and fine art photography, which is more like, you know, photographs that have been produced for explicit consumption and sort of viewing detached from social purpose that just exists as more like a reflection of the artist's skill and talent. And so people blur that line in Appalachia a lot. And I'll name names, and people can email me, but, you know, people like Shelby Lee Adams, for example, kind of when he wants to be a social documentary photographer is when, you know, he's kind of selling his portrait

of people who are trapped in poverty as, you know, things that are necessary to catalyze social change. But when he wants to exhibit pictures of poor people in, you know, very exclusive environments, then he's a fine art photographer. And it's very, very hard, I think, to be both. And, of course, like we know,

like some of the arrangements that go on behind the scenes when photographers, particularly photographers outside the region or who have left the region and then come back, kind of make with their subjects. Like they're saying, and this has always been true of Appalachia, you know, pose for a photograph and I'll give you some food. I'll give you money. Do this and do that. And those are not the stories that get told when we're exhibiting these photographs and looking at these photographs and consuming them.

There's a lot of, you know, I personally think an ethical arrangement that take place behind the scenes to capture what's going on. And I think, like, the best example that I can give about how, like, divergent these representations are, if you search for Appalachian photography on Google, you get a lot of these images that we're talking about, these negative ones, just poor people, trailers, black and white, that kind of thing. But if you search Appalachian photography on Instagram, you get something completely different. You get color, you get landscapes, you get people. of these images are people um experiencing poverty and or they speak to the experience of

poverty but because they're self-created because there's more agency involved um in the you know the subjects are often the photographers as well um you get you know a vastly different output in a vastly different archive yeah i think that's a really good way to put it, better than I could have put it. So, you know, as we talk about sort of more modern representations of what's going on in here, what's going on in the region, what's going on politically and all this other stuff, I wanted to get to the sort of like third section of the book where you, you know, you go sort of

down the line of radicals in this region who have resisted. You know, when we had R.L. Stevens on a few months ago, we were talking about like how the media often talked about Trayvon Martin, like he was this, you know, just passive little kid who just was the victim of a racist. it is to reclaim the narrative that actually Trayvon was not passive and he was actively resisting. And just how crucial it is to make that point. And I think that you're trying to basically make a similar point in the third portion of the book where you're talking about people at the Highlander, where you're talking about Eula Hall, and we're talking about mountaintop removal activists. Could you talk a little bit about why you focused on some of these individuals in this part of the book?

Oh, you mean like the Letcher County Governance Project, too? I wasn't going to mention that. People are going to accuse me of having a bias. Yeah. that people are going to accuse me of having a bias yeah um so yeah this is so i'm a historian but it's so hard to know like how much history that people know and carry with them um because there's textbook history there's personal history there's community history and people have an awareness um in different ways of you know the past and past. And I don't want to, like, be like, this is your history, because people know this and I don't want to be condescending, but I want to also locate these people that I talked about that you just mentioned

in, like, a struggle that we have shared and have often shared in the region, which is resisting capitalism and how that is, like, you know, the hub in the middle of this book that just sort of connects a lot of what we do and a lot of what we've done and a lot of what we will probably do in the future. So it's important to me, for people who might read this book who don't know much about Appalachia, to understand that there is a strong tradition of resistance and subversion

and even sedition and insurrection in Appalachia because the main, you know, the dominant narrative of Appalachia is that we're all complacent, that we just, you know, have let ourselves be degraded, that we vote against our own interests, that we don't exercise, you know, the right amount of agency. But my, you know, I use the example of Kevin Baker, who's like, you know, the right amount of agency. But my, you know, I use the example of Kevin Baker, who's like, you know, getting kind of like his jimmies rustled over people who, you know, carried guns and went to war in Blair Mountain. But, you know, knows nothing about anti-poverty workers building like community libraries in eastern Kentucky during the war on poverty.

And those, you know, aren't radically different to me because people are using the tools that are available to them, and they're going by the mantra of any means necessary. Right. And so I think people need to understand that those are connected, that those come out of the same traditions, and it's traditions that, you know, there's lots of examples in the past, also in the present as well. that, you know, there's lots of examples in the past, also in the present as well. Yeah, Elizabeth, to tack on to that, you wrote about how rebellious activists didn't transplant from elsewhere,

that they originated here, and when you were writing about that, I was thinking about, well, here in Letcher County, Gay Nail and Joe Begley, you know, who Joe was blowing up end loaders on strip sites, And maybe I shouldn't say, maybe I shouldn't incriminate an imposter. At Hogan Court with like Bobby Seale and the Black Panthers and some of this other stuff. Who, in your research, who are some of the other radicals from the region that we as leftists should be acquainted with? Well, I think all of them are kind of unsung, but, you know, that are a little bit more unsung than even the Eula Halls and so forth. Yeah, I think, so I talked about them a little bit in the book, but they definitely deserve a stronger biography. And there are biographies that just need to be read.

But the Appalachian group to save the land and people, which is an activist group that came out of this like war on poverty moment. And so the conventional narrative of that is that, and you know, but for the listeners at home, Appalachia was kind of inundated by like young white people in the 1960s who were either like Appalachian volunteers or Vistas, basically poverty warriors, young people that wanted to get involved in social causes and kind of a lot of them came to the mountains during the world poverty to do anti-poverty work. And so the conventional narrative is

that young people came into the mountains and like radicalized all these mountain people and everything kind of went to shit after that because, you know, it caused risks in the community. But the Vistas will say, like, oh, no, no, these people who are, like, operating, like, gun clubs and stuff like that and are, like, carrying guns everywhere to shoot at, like, strip miners and things like that and are going to jail for sedition and kind of blowing things up and whatnot, they're the people that radicalized us because we experienced what they had been experiencing.

And so this is how radical action happened. It wasn't sort of like young people came and, you know, made everybody like really feisty and fired up and gave them politics. It was very much, you know, from the bottom up that this happened. And the Appalachian group to save the land and people is like a tremendous example of that, and especially the way that sort of Appalachian elders at the time, like, you know, a lot of people are familiar with Ollie Combs and her protest against the coal companies. But their children were away. They'd been, you know, either depopulating the region or they were, you know, got sent to Vietnam.

And so this was like their last ditch effort to save their land from strip mining. And these people who are, you know, 60, 70 years old were doing sort of armed resistance against coal companies. And that's, you know, a tremendous story that's in that history. Yeah. Yeah, it definitely doesn't get talked about a lot. But yeah, there was absolutely harmed resistance. You'd have, like you said, the Mountain Gun Club, or the Mountaintop Gun Club. I can't remember which one it is. Yeah, I think it's Mountaintop Gun Club.

Which was almost the name of this podcast. Yeah, I wanted to call it the Mountaintop Gun Club at one point. They would take weapons up on the strip mines and basically shoot at strip miners by sort of pretending to be doing target practice. Yeah. basically shoot at strip miners by sort of pretending to be doing target practice. But yeah, no, it's an incredible anecdote and just goes to show you how deeply interwoven the land was with people's lives and with the political economy in general. in general. Um, but anyways, so, you know, what, what else do I want to get into as we, as we move along? There was one more other thing. Um,

Tom, what do you got? Oh, another thing I wanted to talk about just as a as a sort of aside um was Eula Hall uh there's this very great anecdote of uh Eula Hall you know at her Mud Creek Clinic like there were Maoist doctors who would like come to Appalachia in the seventies. And there used to be a huge portrait of Mao actually at the mud Creek clinic. Yeah. Yeah.

She had a huge portrait. Like they put it up, but she didn't do anything. She thought it was awesome. Um, but so I guess like the last thing I wanted to talk about um is you know sort of the last one of the last things that you touch on which is the framework of the internal colony like of of how you know this idea was sort of introduced in the 60s and 70s and it was very useful for a lot of

people um but you talk a little bit about its limitations as well. Could you talk a little bit about where this idea came from, what it is, and the limitations that you are referencing? Yeah, so I guess the mother of the internal colony model is Helen Lewis. And she's a tremendous thinker and activist who adopted a position after the war on poverty failed that really the only people who are in a position to address these problems are the people who live with them. And so Appalachians set to the task of trying to create a model and a theory of how power works in their world that would not only help them in these piecemeal ways

like building roads and schools, but also kind of create a momentum for a new activism. And it was modeled pretty closely, I think, on the New Left in the 1970s, and they were very anti-colonial at the time. So, you know, it meshed with the politics of the time, too. And it sort of posits that Appalachia has been an internal resource colony for the United States and that a lot of oppression that flows in the region is because Appalachia has served this purpose and that we've been colonized.

And so it's tremendously helpful, I think, for understanding where people in the 1970s were in their thinking. And it also helps us to understand, like, how people thought about Appalachia outside the region, because, you know, I'll talk about some criticisms of the internal colony model, but to be fair, you know, coal companies were talking about Appalachia as a colony, and politicians were talking about Appalachia as a colony.

And when journalists came to the region, they were saying, like, wow, you know, if the United States is going to help countries in Africa liberate themselves, we should help Appalachia as a colony and when journalists came to the region they were saying like wow you know if the United States is going to help countries in Africa liberate themselves we should help Appalachia too so there was this like narrative that Appalachia was indeed a colony at the time and they were responding to that as well but the limitations are that it doesn't you know speak to sort of forced migration of indigenous people and the way that that has shaped the way we think about land ownership and land rights. It doesn't acknowledge that people within Appalachia and especially white people in Appalachia can be oppressors as well.

And so, of course, like the big example is the way that like our local elite have always facilitated coal industry malice in their region. But there's much more, you know, we could talk about in terms of racism, homophobia, bigotry, religious fundamentalism. There's the idea that, you know, all of the woes of the region are imported by outside actors and that it's insignificant, the amount of oppression that originates within Appalachia. So, you know, I think very much we need to talk about that, too, and that's a big limit. There's also the idea that people who are in, you know, countries that have been colonized

don't really use this model anymore to think about themselves. And this is why I would just recommend that people read, you know, there's like a journal of Appalachian studies, special edition about this that talks a lot about how, you know, we can adopt different frameworks from people who have experienced a longer history of colonialism to kind of alter their thinking. But it was, you know, it's an important theory to understand the legacy of and what it did at the time and how we've moved on from using that as a framework for understanding power in Appalachia. Yeah. Well, I just want to ask one more question, and then we'll let you go. Just a final question.

How do we make the information that you're presenting in this book something we can take into the streets and act on? What is its application to you? Yeah, that's a great question it's something that i think about um a lot so you know my purpose for writing this book was just like a pure act of dissent in solidarity um i do not you know of course like you've read the book and we've had lots of conversations. I really hate J.D. Vance, but I also hate this sort of legacy that he's part of, where one person in the region gets to be, you know, our generation's spokesperson, and all knowledge and understanding of the region flows through those opinions and those perspectives.

It was important to me to, like, object to that and create, you know, like an artifact of dissent, I guess, is how I think about this book that, you know, at this moment in time, I'm tired of that happening. And I'm going to marshal all the resources at my disposal to interrupt that power. And so what I think about applications, I still think in terms of interrupting power and being disruptive to power. terms of interrupting power and being disruptive to power. I would like, you know, I'd like to see, like, I'm a historian, so what I do, and, you know, the other side of my personal life is I do community history, and so I go to people who have underrepresented history, and we try to give them tools and resources, often, you know, working as on the volunteer basis to tell stories that are underrepresented in the area. And mostly the work that we do is either related to labor or African-American history.

So we're trying to give people tools to alter power and alter the narrative. And I would like to do much more work in terms of that and see many more people doing that work in terms of that to change the narrative and to tell different stories about the region and to kind of interrupt that power as well. I also, you know, on the other side of my personal life, I'm an organizer for the Democratic Socialists of America. America. And so actually trying, you know, I tried to give people, and this is not so much covered in the book, but different ways of understanding like the possibilities of the future. I think one of the failures when we talk about Appalachian, this is sort of anything from like the Democratic Party to the ARC, like let's make things better for the next generation. And so I think, I kind of think like, fuck that. I would like to make things better for people now, like for myself and for my friends.

And so I want to give people like an understanding of a different way that politics can work for us in terms of marshalling resources for the public, the greater good. Yeah. Well, that's a great answer. that's a great answer. So, all right. Well, Elizabeth, thank you so much. The book is called What You Were Getting Wrong About Appalachia.

It's a very short book. You can read it in a weekend, but it packs a punch. It's good. Thank you, guys. Thanks for spending the time to talk to us today. Yeah, thanks again, Kat.

And if you and Josh ever need a third for King of the Hill trivia. Tom's your man. I'm not going to do that because Josh wanted me to tell you that he's beating you in fantasy basketball. My team's

all to hell. I made a couple of GMing missteps. He says the Harlan Globetrotters are going to go all the way. Well, I'll be back on that ass next year.

Well, thanks for joining us again, Elizabeth, and happy Valentine's Day. It's Valentine's. Yeah, happy Valentine's Day to you guys, too. I hope it's tremendous, and I'll probably see you in person soon. Oh, hell yeah.

Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. Stop by. We would love to hang out. Yeah, we'll do. You in person soon. Oh, hell yeah. Sounds good. Stop by. We would love to hang out. We'll do. You guys take care. You too.