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The Urban vs. Rural Divide: Why Rural Voters Feel Ignored by National Politics · the ACT OUT podcast

0:00
SPEAKER_00: Welcome to the Act Out Podcast.
0:01
SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Adam Tomlin.
0:03
SPEAKER_00: Today's guest is the host of the Rural Root Podcast, John Peace.
0:08
SPEAKER_00: Let's roll the tape.
0:10
SPEAKER_00: Hey, John, how's it going, man?
0:13
SPEAKER_01: Nice good good for a Monday morning.
0:15
SPEAKER_01: Trust me.
0:17
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh, my I had told you earlier I have a uh two-year-old son, and uh he woke me up at I think like 3 30 this morning.
0:25
SPEAKER_00: So uh I mean it's basically the middle of the afternoon for me.
0:28
SPEAKER_00: Like this is this is about as primed as I'm gonna get.
0:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, okay, I have a two-year-old grandson.
0:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh and then of course I got a um um about uh eight, nine-month-old grandson, but the two-year-old and and trust me, it's a lot easier being grandpa than it is dad because you know I get to keep them and then give them back, and you gotta deal with that early in the morning.
0:47
SPEAKER_00: You load them up with sugar and like, all right, back to mom and dad.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:50
SPEAKER_00: Uh I I am familiar with your work.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
0:52
SPEAKER_00: That's uh that must be just a uh a granddad thing.
0:56
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
0:57
SPEAKER_00: So I'd say your your family kind of lives uh in your area?
1:01
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
1:01
SPEAKER_01: We we pretty much all live on uh our old family dairy farm, and we quit milking cows in 1998, but we grew up dairy farming, um small dairy farm.
1:10
SPEAKER_01: By today's standards, back in the day, it was considered big.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: We milked about a hundred to a hundred and fifteen cows.
1:16
SPEAKER_03: Oh, dang.
1:17
SPEAKER_01: So we so we uh and uh in a little area in uh deep southwest Virginia, uh Wise County.
1:23
SPEAKER_01: Now we're up in the coal fields.
1:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: And my home county has just a little bit of agriculture in one little um tip of it called Pow Valley.
1:32
SPEAKER_01: So, and that's where some dairy farms were and all that, but now we're real um close to what used to be the burley tobacco belt in Southwest Virginia, just a little bit further uh west and south of us.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: And we raised some burley tobacco also um back in the day.
1:47
SPEAKER_00: What is uh burly tobacco?
1:48
SPEAKER_00: Is that like a like a specific brand?
1:50
SPEAKER_01: It's uh one to Burley.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: It's a type uh you had different types of uh tobacco, like towards South Side, all towards um you get into your Tidewater area, it was flu-cured tobacco.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: It was a different um breed of tobacco.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh okay.
2:02
SPEAKER_01: Flu cured, they actually heated it and all that.
2:04
SPEAKER_01: Burley tobacco was what was pretty much in the mountain Appalachian range, and that we hung it in in uh tobacco barns to cure.
2:12
SPEAKER_01: You didn't have to feed it.
2:13
SPEAKER_01: And there were different tobacco.
2:15
SPEAKER_01: And and back in the day, well, they still do tobacco today, but not the way it used to be.
2:20
SPEAKER_01: Um there was different different types of tobacco for different uses, like for uh dipping tobacco or chewing tobacco, there was a different brand uh kind of tobacco used for that.
2:28
SPEAKER_01: Cigars, a lot of the burley, the big leaf was used on the outside.
2:32
SPEAKER_01: So anyway, uh that's the history of tobacco.
2:35
SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, it's kind of funny, man.
2:37
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I grew up in uh Cartersville, Georgia, which is uh is a r I feels a little disingenuous to call it a rural town now because it's it's practically a suburb of Atlanta.
2:49
SPEAKER_00: Whenever I was growing up, though, it was definitely like not that big.
2:53
SPEAKER_00: I think we kind of hovered maybe around like 10,000 people at the like, you know, at its like at a at its height.
3:00
SPEAKER_00: And uh one of the big things with growing up was playing baseball.
3:03
SPEAKER_00: And um my one of my favorite movies growing up, I I don't know if you have seen it's The Sand Lot.
3:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh, I think, yeah.
3:10
SPEAKER_01: And trust me, if you're a granddad, you you watch it again.
3:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and for your kids and all that, so yeah.
3:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh, but there was that there was that one scene in it where uh all the kids put in chewing tobacco and then uh rode the roller coaster.
3:24
SPEAKER_00: And that was like my very first like introduction to tobacco, and I was like, nope, I will never touch that again.
3:30
SPEAKER_00: Or I'll I'll never touch that at all.
3:31
SPEAKER_00: That's just gonna make me sick like that, like it did all the uh like Benny the Jet Rodriguez.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: Oh, I know.
3:36
SPEAKER_02: That's that's a wonderful scene, though.
3:38
SPEAKER_01: But if if you want your kids not to use tobacco, let them get sick on it the first time.
3:42
SPEAKER_01: My son will talk about he he doesn't use tobacco and stuff, and one of his uncles did that exact same thing.
3:47
SPEAKER_02: He was young, wanted some go ahead, big boy, give it a try, and he got sick.
3:53
SPEAKER_00: That's exactly what they would do.
3:55
SPEAKER_00: So my godparents lived in Calhoun, Georgia, which is about 30 minutes north of uh Cartersville, which was even more rural than Cartersville was.
4:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think the first time I went up there to spend the night, I was like six weeks old.
4:08
SPEAKER_00: So I would basically spend about every weekend in Calhoun up there.
4:13
SPEAKER_00: And I uh I remember one of my cousins uh got caught with uh with some tobacco and they made him uh put like the like dip the whole can or something like that.
4:21
SPEAKER_00: And I don't think he ever touched it again after that.
4:23
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I didn't.
4:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's that's a good way and stuff.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
4:27
SPEAKER_01: And just fond memories, um, and and I'm getting ready to actually write some new articles talking about how bad the tobacco buyout hurt you know, rural America and stuff economically and stuff, because it was such a profitable per acre crop.
4:42
SPEAKER_01: And it was specifically the the old quota system, the old uh CCC government program limited quotas, and the quotas were issued out to poor rural counties.
4:53
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, small little farms could could make a living off tobacco.
4:59
SPEAKER_01: Um and and then of course the tobacco buyout of the early 2000s um you know took all that away.
5:04
SPEAKER_00: So your your area uh like what what's kind of the um the main moneymakers there?
5:11
SPEAKER_00: Is it uh is it mainly farming?
5:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, actually, I mean historically, if you go back um 20 years ago and the and the previous hundred years before that, it was coal mining.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Coal mining and timber.
5:23
SPEAKER_01: Timber was the first industry that came into the mountains, and then it um once the railroads got in here, then it was coal mining.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: And we're right on um when you a little bit of geography lesson, Wise County, we're right on the Kentucky border.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: That's what next to us.
5:37
SPEAKER_01: So we're down, you know, that um all that Appalachian coal um coal fields region, and Wise County was one of the largest coal mining producing counties in the whole Appalachian region at one time.
5:47
SPEAKER_01: And you know, a little bit of our history, um, you know, when that started to fade, right now the primary industry is probably government related, and whether that be um we have a couple state prisons, we have a federal prison, um, you know, education, healthcare, those are the primary industries now.
6:03
SPEAKER_01: Uh so we went from blue-collar to these other service type industries that are primary now that we see now.
6:10
SPEAKER_00: What's the uh like population around that area?
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
6:13
SPEAKER_01: Now uh Wise County, you know, we're we're not really that real rural area where you, you know, some surrounding counties are like at 15 to 25,000 population in county.
6:24
SPEAKER_01: We're sitting probably between somewhere between 40 and 42,000.
6:27
SPEAKER_03: Okay.
6:28
SPEAKER_01: But now back in the 50s, we were probably pushing 60,000 at the peak of coal production when you just need all that labor.
6:36
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, um the coal business needed less labor.
6:39
SPEAKER_01: A lot of it was technology, um, mechanization, um, just needed less workers.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: So that happened throughout my lifetime.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: And then, of course, um now just uh the price of um coal has just gotten so cheap for the expense of mining coal here.
6:54
SPEAKER_01: And then natural gas has been another competitor.
6:57
SPEAKER_01: Um it's replaced a lot of um um coal in power plants.
7:02
SPEAKER_01: Now they use natural gas.
7:04
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
7:05
SPEAKER_01: So some of it's been natural, some of it's been regulatory.
7:08
SPEAKER_01: Um, of course, politically, liberal Democrats get blamed for it, but it's not the true story.
7:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's it's kind of uh interesting that you said that the Democrats kind of get the blame.
7:19
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that is?
7:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, I just wrote an article talking about when anger found its audience in rural America, and I'll I'll send you the link to it and stuff.
7:28
SPEAKER_01: Back in the early 2000s, it was actually a marketing um program done by the Coal Association called Friends of Co.
7:36
SPEAKER_01: Came out about 2004, 2005, and there's these little stickers called Friends of Co.
7:41
SPEAKER_01: And they were very good at marketing that they took this from us.
7:46
SPEAKER_01: They, they being the Liberal Democrats, they being the regulatory, they being environmentalists.
7:52
SPEAKER_01: And not only did it ring in the coal industry, they also took dairy from us.
7:56
SPEAKER_01: They also took tobacco from us, they took our way of living from us.
8:02
SPEAKER_01: And see, that's when you started to see the switch, you know, traditionally up until the early 2000s, all through the Appalachian Range was Union Blue Democratic voting.
8:11
SPEAKER_01: And it it flipped because of that that marketing.
8:15
SPEAKER_01: And also, it was uh something was a little bit true in that statement was they did take it from us with the dairy buyout of the 80s and the tobacco buyout.
8:24
SPEAKER_01: And you know, these were either programs that the Democratic Party either were part of or they endorsed or they were part, you know, uh submitted it.
8:32
SPEAKER_01: And okay, they all had good intentions, but the problem was there was nothing on the back end to replace it for rural marriage.
8:39
SPEAKER_01: Right.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
8:40
SPEAKER_01: See.
8:41
unknown: Yep.
8:42
SPEAKER_01: That that's the kicker.
8:43
SPEAKER_01: And so you went from the party of the working person in in the Appalachian region to you were the party that took it from, took our way of living from us and didn't give nothing back.
8:53
SPEAKER_00: And that's very interesting.
8:57
SPEAKER_00: I'd I hadn't thought of it that way before, but you're absolutely right.
9:01
SPEAKER_00: Where there are uh regulations like things like, hey, yeah, look, we need to do this and this.
9:06
SPEAKER_00: The problem is, though, that kind of leaves an entire host of people that now are out of a a livelihood.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
9:15
SPEAKER_01: You know, let's let's take tobacco for a sample.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:18
SPEAKER_01: You know, I don't you don't want your kids smoking.
9:20
SPEAKER_01: I I didn't want my kids smoking or chewing and stuff like that.
9:23
SPEAKER_01: That but but here's the thing.
9:25
SPEAKER_01: So you did a tobacco buyout on secondhand smoke and because tobacco causes um health um terrible health effects, you know, terrible cancers.
9:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:34
SPEAKER_01: True.
9:35
SPEAKER_01: We know that too.
9:36
SPEAKER_01: But now you're living in the air, so you took tobacco from us and you're trying to legalize smoking marijuana and you turn around and legalize vaping, which also has all that has health effects.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
9:49
SPEAKER_01: So can you imagine uh, you know, if you're sitting here as a former tobacco farmer, the hypocrisy of that.
9:56
SPEAKER_01: So you took our product uh away that we made a living off of, and you turned around letting corporate America do marijuana and do vaping.
10:05
SPEAKER_01: That has health effects too.
10:08
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, and that oh, it just seems so hi hypocritical for us enrollment.
10:14
SPEAKER_00: You know, and what what you're speaking to, I think, is like one of the uh one of the reasons why, you know, like uh everyday folks are saying that uh Democrats are elitists and they're like only wanting to go to the the intellectual side.
10:28
SPEAKER_00: I it's um you know it does have uh have a degree of truth to there, you know.
10:35
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and let me tell you, another thing was Democrats, I'll talk about Southwest Virginians just because they quit coming to rural areas.
10:43
SPEAKER_01: They quit visiting and and also you know they'll make a statement, oh, they vote against their self-interest.
10:49
SPEAKER_01: Anybody who says that, give me a phone call or email me.
10:52
SPEAKER_01: I'll tell you why they're voting the way they're voting.
10:55
SPEAKER_01: And it's not about their self-interest, okay?
10:57
SPEAKER_01: You just don't know their self-interest.
11:00
SPEAKER_01: You've never asked them what their self-interest is.
11:04
SPEAKER_01: You know, give, for example, you'll you'll see some of the the big Democrat leadership talking about, well, you know, the Biden administration was going to do this form, the by, you know, some legislation that Democrats pass is gonna help them on this.
11:17
SPEAKER_01: Well, they're voting against their self-interest.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: But if you ask that person who's voting against voting Republican, voting Mega, they're voting for totally different reasons that you're not giving them.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: So just ask them.
11:31
SPEAKER_01: That's what I that's a whole, you know, it's not brain surgery.
11:34
SPEAKER_01: It's not rocket science.
11:36
SPEAKER_00: You know, um, I'm I was trying to think back, and like my very first uh like time that I can think about, like kind of being a part of the political uh process, it was uh the 1994 uh gubernatorial election uh in Georgia.
11:52
SPEAKER_00: And uh our class did a mock election.
11:54
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
11:55
SPEAKER_00: And uh it w there was uh Zell Miller versus Guy Milner.
11:59
SPEAKER_00: That was those were the two names.
12:01
SPEAKER_00: And uh I remember I got to pick uh which candidate I wanted to be, and my friend got to, you know, hit my friend was going to be the other one.
12:08
SPEAKER_00: And so of course, naturally, I was like, well, the coolest name there is Zell, so I'm gonna be Zell Miller.
12:15
SPEAKER_00: You know, that's I wish I could say that was the last time I picked a candidate based on how cool their name was.
12:20
SPEAKER_00: But I mean Barack Obama's a really cool name in my defense.
12:23
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know.
12:24
SPEAKER_02: You remember it, you remember it, good or bad.
12:28
SPEAKER_00: But uh, but anyway, so I you know, I remember going home and I was so excited, and I uh you know, I told all my parents, I was like, I'm gonna be I'm gonna get to be uh Zell Miller for the election.
12:38
SPEAKER_00: He's a Democrat.
12:40
SPEAKER_00: And I was like, oh I it I I thought that like I basically dishonored my family and brought shame on them.
12:48
SPEAKER_00: That was like the one of the first times I I was like, nope, we are a Republican family and it we are Republican because we love America and we love freedom.
12:58
SPEAKER_00: And that was like America, freedom, Republic.
13:00
SPEAKER_00: That was that was all there was to it.
13:03
SPEAKER_00: And so even to like have like any kind of a of a democratic sentiment was like very taboo growing up.
13:12
SPEAKER_00: And I I uh you know, uh that was just what I had grown up in, you know.
13:18
SPEAKER_00: Um I don't know though where that where that started.
13:23
SPEAKER_00: Um I to a certain extent, you know, I uh so you know, growing up conservative, studied uh Reagan a lot.
13:32
SPEAKER_02: Uh you know, and I was one of the Reagan kids.
13:34
SPEAKER_00: Oh my god.
13:35
SPEAKER_00: I I loved his speeches.
13:36
SPEAKER_00: Uh I mean I he was uh he was a great communicator.
13:40
SPEAKER_00: Almost like that'd be a good nickname or something.
13:41
SPEAKER_01: Because his uh speech writer used to be a fifth grade English teacher.
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Really?
13:46
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
13:48
SPEAKER_00: That I did not know that.
13:49
SPEAKER_01: And and think about it, uh and this doesn't make whoever loves his speeches, that that's not talking down to him.
13:55
SPEAKER_01: But see, the great communicator was he could get in the cliches.
13:59
SPEAKER_01: He was so good at them.
14:00
SPEAKER_01: And and of course he'd spent his whole career as an actor doing that, speaking on TV, you know, he had his little gonzo TV show back in the fifties or sixties.
14:09
SPEAKER_01: And uh and then his speech writing was pretty much like what a football coach or a baseball coach.
14:15
SPEAKER_01: Part of the great communication.
14:17
SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
14:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you know, and uh his big thing, like really how he got kind of well, out outside being the SAG president, he was the spokesman for uh General Electric and would go around and tour factory to factory and giving speech after speech.
14:31
SPEAKER_00: And I think that's really where he developed like a lot of his conservative uh views and stuff.
14:36
SPEAKER_00: But I could talk about Reagan all day, I kind of got uh lost there.
14:40
SPEAKER_00: Um but I I remember uh one thing that uh that he said in um like in one of his speeches were the nine scariest words in the English language.
14:50
SPEAKER_00: I'm from the government and I'm here to help.
14:52
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
14:53
SPEAKER_00: Um and then there's the government isn't the solution to our problem, government is the problem.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
14:59
SPEAKER_01: See, you just brought up three or four things that I mean we were already talking about.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: The tobacco buyout.
15:05
SPEAKER_01: That's big government came in.
15:07
SPEAKER_01: It did not leave us better off in rural America.
15:09
SPEAKER_01: The dairy buyout that came in rural America, that did not leave rural America better.
15:14
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it's big government.
15:16
SPEAKER_01: I did one article, this goes way back to the early 90s when they established a national forest.
15:21
SPEAKER_01: That was not good.
15:22
SPEAKER_01: They took uneducated rural people's property, just took it because they couldn't read or write.
15:29
SPEAKER_01: And I did an article on that.
15:31
SPEAKER_01: And so even my great grandma was talking about um big government showing up, G men, and they she used to call them G-men, government men.
15:38
SPEAKER_01: Uh when G men showed up, that was usually not very good for rural Americans.
15:42
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, TBA.
15:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, they just took people's properties, loaded them up on trucks, shipped them off to the cities, said, hey, get a job.
15:50
SPEAKER_01: Now, you know, from an urban perspective, national forest and all that, wonderful, wonderful.
15:54
SPEAKER_01: Who don't enjoy, you know, the national forests and stuff.
15:57
SPEAKER_01: But in rural America, especially old family histories, there there's a different history there that people don't don't know.
16:04
SPEAKER_01: Urban people especially don't know.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Oh yeah.
16:06
SPEAKER_00: Very much so.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh um kind of like thinking back, but uh even after even after Reagan, when when Clinton got elected, he ran well, the era of big government is over.
16:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh I'm just I'm I'm thinking now that like Democrats have just completely ceded the like idea that like big government is good, essentially.
16:28
SPEAKER_00: You know, they're like, eh, no, it's it's just gonna be bad.
16:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me give you a little bit about my background.
16:32
SPEAKER_01: I come from very plural.
16:33
SPEAKER_01: Uh my mom's side of the family were union blue Democrats.
16:37
SPEAKER_01: My dad's side of the family was just like your family, uh hardcore Republican but conservative Republicans, okay?
16:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, didn't want government, you know, balanced budget, fiscal responsibility, and stuff.
16:48
SPEAKER_01: So I you know, I grew up with um and I consider myself a moderate Democrat uh campaign.
16:54
SPEAKER_01: I was elected as a moderate Democrat uh years ago.
16:57
SPEAKER_01: The reason why I can relate to both sides is I live in that world, personally, family, my church, and everything else, where you know, now I'm the minority.
17:07
SPEAKER_01: I mean, you take my church life and and um I live in a county.
17:10
SPEAKER_01: I live in a county that voted 83% for Donald Trump this last election.
17:16
SPEAKER_01: Um, excuse me, the county voted 80, my hometown voted 83.
17:20
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's a massive amount.
17:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
17:23
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: What is it like to be kind of that blueberry in a tomato soup?
17:32
SPEAKER_01: Well, now for outsiders, they'll look at, you know, and you hear it all the time, well, they're uneducated.
17:40
SPEAKER_01: They don't, you know, no you know, they don't understand why people vote the way they vote.
17:44
SPEAKER_01: And they don't really understand rural America very much.
17:47
SPEAKER_01: Now, for me, after doing a lot of research, a lot of soul searching and stuff like that, I realize probably whatever news you watch is what you regurgitate, whether that's Fox News or if you watch CNN or you watch something else or one of the Fox surrogates.
18:02
SPEAKER_01: So a lot of times I when I hear it, I could just hear the newscast when they're just saying exactly what they heard.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
18:09
SPEAKER_01: And um in rural America, and I I've written several articles about it.
18:12
SPEAKER_01: If you know the BarnRazor online magazine and stuff they've written about, so much of rural America is a is a news desert.
18:19
SPEAKER_01: And and I'm gonna give you what I'm working on right now for Barnraiser.
18:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay, I'm gonna give you a local example, but this local example plays in Kansas, plays in Idaho, plays in rural Alabama.
18:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay, we've had some budget problems, overspending locally at the county level and stuff, and they're looking at about an$8 million budget um shortfall for various reasons, and that's not the point.
18:41
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, they were looking at historical tax increases.
18:46
SPEAKER_01: Okay, you know, you do the release, they um they do the um um public hearing release on the new tax rates and stuff.
18:53
SPEAKER_01: Um they knew this was gonna be such a controversial issue.
18:56
SPEAKER_01: They the Board of Supervisors, our local government body, moved the meeting from the courthouse to the local high school auditorium at sits 900.
19:06
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
19:08
SPEAKER_01: So they have it this past Thursday.
19:10
SPEAKER_01: Um from what I've been told, you know, 200 to 250 people showed up.
19:17
SPEAKER_01: And they're all against raising taxes.
19:20
SPEAKER_01: Me too.
19:21
SPEAKER_01: Forty-five people spoke.
19:23
SPEAKER_01: Forty-five.
19:25
SPEAKER_01: The meeting lasted somewhat like close to four hours, and they ended up tabling it because it it was going four hours.
19:32
SPEAKER_01: But now here here is uh the scary part.
19:34
SPEAKER_01: Do you realize that meeting there was not one single reporter from a newspaper or TV journalist at that meeting to to record and document for the press?
19:46
SPEAKER_01: Nothing.
19:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
19:48
SPEAKER_01: And what happens is then when you've got all these people speaking at public um public expression, they're making accusations.
19:56
SPEAKER_01: Some probably found it, but some probably not found it.
19:59
SPEAKER_01: But see, there's nothing to flush that out.
20:01
SPEAKER_01: So it gets on social media.
20:03
SPEAKER_01: So many people are just getting their local news from social media or from people's posts.
20:09
SPEAKER_01: I can remember when I was on the board of supervisors, sometimes this this shows you the difference in 20 years.
20:15
SPEAKER_01: I can remember about probably three different newspapers would be at our meetings, one probably a little bit more conservative than the other, one a little bit more liberal, and then we had a local newspaper.
20:25
SPEAKER_01: So you'd have three different points of view reporting on our meeting.
20:29
SPEAKER_01: And I can remember sitting and reading about the meeting I just attended, going, man, was this person even in the same room I was in?
20:37
SPEAKER_01: What they were but that's not the point.
20:39
SPEAKER_01: But but they recorded it and they summarized it for people.
20:42
SPEAKER_01: And then, like I say, the the other newspaper might have had a different slant on things, but I can't tell you how important it is to have that.
20:50
SPEAKER_01: And now so much of rural America has no news coverage.
20:54
SPEAKER_01: So at the local, I call them Romeo Clubs.
20:56
SPEAKER_01: Y'all have them there.
20:58
SPEAKER_01: I know you had them in Georgia.
20:59
SPEAKER_01: Do you know what Romeo Club is?
21:00
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't think so.
21:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
21:02
SPEAKER_01: Uh retired old men eating out.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Every small town has a Romeo Club.
21:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:08
SPEAKER_01: Now in Big Stone Gap, it's at Hardy's, downtown Big Stone Gap.
21:12
SPEAKER_01: You can go there in the morning, it's that collection of retired old men eating out.
21:15
SPEAKER_01: And I tell people all the time, the first half of my life, if you went down there and sat with the Romeo Club, of course, politics is a big issue.
21:24
SPEAKER_01: But the first half of my life, they would be talking about local politics.
21:28
SPEAKER_01: Okay, local town council, they're gonna raise their taxes, uh, local county politics, or they're gonna raise their property taxes, or they're spending too much money here, they're doing this, they shouldn't have hired that county minister.
21:40
SPEAKER_01: That was the the topic of conversation, okay?
21:43
SPEAKER_01: Now you go down there, it's whatever was on Fox News.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
21:47
SPEAKER_01: They're talking about California or New York City.
21:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
21:51
SPEAKER_01: So that shows you about the news desert, how much that's changed the dynamic in the in the social conversation.
21:58
SPEAKER_00: What extent do you think the The uh nationalization of politics has to do with for the people only kind of talking about the the Fox News issues and stuff.
22:08
SPEAKER_00: Like it seems like uh the Romeo clubs, it's they're still very much involved in that local on the local level and their their property taxes that affects them more than say most uh pieces of legislation out of the federal government.
22:20
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think that it's no longer the case where they talk all local?
22:23
SPEAKER_01: Well, it's like at this past meeting.
22:25
SPEAKER_01: There's no newspaper coverage of that meeting on a tax.
22:28
SPEAKER_01: So the Romeo club's not reading that.
22:30
SPEAKER_01: Well, guess what I read in a paper this morning?
22:32
SPEAKER_01: And jokers up at the county courthouse are gonna raise our properties.
22:35
SPEAKER_01: No, they're talking about something in San Francisco or New York City.
22:39
SPEAKER_01: Because there's no newspaper reporting on it.
22:41
SPEAKER_01: When I say newspaper, I'm talking about local media too.
22:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
22:44
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm using this kind of a broad local media, local news coverage.
22:49
SPEAKER_01: It it's really affected rural America.
22:51
SPEAKER_01: When you get all your information just from one source, you just believe that one source.
22:55
SPEAKER_01: There's no balance in the force.
22:57
SPEAKER_01: There's nobody at that table going, wait a second.
22:59
SPEAKER_01: I've read in a paper that ain't exactly true, Brother John.
23:02
SPEAKER_01: And there's no debate on that.
23:04
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: Um what what do you think is kind of the i is there an answer for Democrats?
23:12
SPEAKER_01: Like how how can they even get like a foot in the door to uh to kind of like counteract some of that uh someone Well first of all, it'd be it'd be nice to have a little bit of of leadership at the state and local level that that talked like me and sounded like me.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
23:30
SPEAKER_01: And I'll be honest with you, probably you know, w we we talk about Democrats being a party of diversity and all that, and they are if you just look at at skin color or but when it talks about cultures, there's no rural culture at the level of leadership and stuff.
23:46
SPEAKER_01: They really don't understand us because there's none of us that are at the table.
23:50
SPEAKER_00: So I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off there.
23:54
SPEAKER_00: Well, no, it just it made me kind of wonder because you said that you were uh that you were a moderate Democrat earlier.
23:59
SPEAKER_00: So uh how do you think uh how does being a rural democrat affect your your governing philosophy?
24:08
SPEAKER_01: Well I'm gonna have to think about that for a second.
24:13
SPEAKER_01: Now, when you talk about r uh rural governing philosophy, um explain that just a little bit more to me.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: Oh well, what I mean is uh how do you think uh the culture that you are in and that you grew up in, how does that affect uh like the your political belief system?
24:30
SPEAKER_00: I guess that is that a little easier?
24:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I mean, like I say, when I'm a moderate Democrat, the way I grew up, the way my family was on this side of the family, it was Democrat, um, you know, we were probably fiscally conservative because of farming.
24:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you're a farmer, I come from a farm family, you were always fiscally conservative because of the ups and downs.
24:50
SPEAKER_01: And and then we were just socially liberal.
24:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
24:55
SPEAKER_01: And so we always believed in that kind of union mentality that if you fall on hard times, you know, the government should be there to to help you out and everything.
25:05
SPEAKER_01: And you know, right now, the Medicaid cuts that are coming our way from the big beautiful bill, I mean, they are gonna be devastating for rural America as far as health care.
25:15
SPEAKER_01: And the thing about it was, you know, the the Medicaid cuts don't happen till after the midterm elections, but it's already been voted and approved on.
25:24
SPEAKER_01: And the tax cuts for the ultra-rich rich have already happened.
25:28
SPEAKER_01: So now you're seeing the big deficits and stuff.
25:30
SPEAKER_01: And um it's it's gonna be tough.
25:33
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be tough on rural America because uh that is probably the one social program from the federal level that helps rural America more than anything is Medicaid.
25:44
SPEAKER_03: Healthcare.
25:45
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
25:46
SPEAKER_01: You couldn't cut a a worse program.
25:49
SPEAKER_01: Well, I wouldn't say you couldn't cut a program that would hurt rural America worse than you did with Medicaid Medicaid.
25:55
SPEAKER_01: And and I'm I'm gonna quote a buddy of mine who's been elected nine times as a Democrat.
26:00
SPEAKER_01: It's not an issue to bec it until it becomes an issue.
26:04
SPEAKER_01: So see, right now, us talking about it, it just hyperbole.
26:08
SPEAKER_01: It's oh that's just campaign talk.
26:11
SPEAKER_01: Until the rural hospital closes, until the Medicaid cuts happen and and your uncle and your aunts and all that lose their coverage, then it becomes an issue.
26:21
SPEAKER_00: So what you were speaking to right now, I feel like very much uh in 2024 we were basically having this exact same thing, like, hey, this is gonna this is gonna happen.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think it wh why do you think people have to feel something before they see it?
26:38
SPEAKER_01: Um I think because like I say, it's it's campaign fodder.
26:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh, they're just saying that.
26:45
SPEAKER_01: You know what I'm talking about?
26:47
SPEAKER_01: It's you know, um, you know, what um oh was it Missouri, the show me state, or is it Kansas?
26:52
SPEAKER_01: I can't remember.
26:52
SPEAKER_01: One of the states is the show me state.
26:54
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I think it's Missouri.
26:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: Um and a lot of that is is so much political banter that goes around that doesn't come true until it happens.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: And also people ask me, uh okay, and I when we do a little bit of campaign training um on how to speak and stuff, the top sh there's top shelf issues and then there's kind of middle shelf issues.
27:18
SPEAKER_01: Um and and let me tell you, Megan and Republicans know top shelf issues very well.
27:23
SPEAKER_01: One is safety, law and order.
27:25
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, doesn't matter how poor you are, if you're on Medicaid and stuff, if you believe the other side is gonna hurt your children or make your children less safe, you don't care about something that's gonna happen to your pocketbook.
27:39
SPEAKER_01: You vote your children first.
27:40
SPEAKER_01: You got a two-year-old, okay?
27:42
SPEAKER_01: So if you believe immigration is you know, they they harp on that, talking about these dangerous people, that's a top shelf issue.
27:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
27:51
SPEAKER_01: Economic ones are kind of right in the middle.
27:54
SPEAKER_00: So uh Well is it Are those to me, to me, those things as it sounded like mid-level issues.
28:00
SPEAKER_00: Are Republicans are they able to create top-tier issues out of mid-level issues?
28:07
SPEAKER_01: Well now, safety's always gonna be a top-tier issue.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: Safety your children.
28:11
SPEAKER_00: Well, uh I'm sorry, with the like immigrants and stuff.
28:13
SPEAKER_00: Like I I guess how they're uh how there's kind of a it's easy to concoct a boogeyman, so to speak.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
28:18
SPEAKER_01: And that's exactly and given like with Fox News, if you think about all the information what they're getting bombarded with is safety issues, crime reports.
28:27
SPEAKER_01: You know, our local newspapers that we still have in the region and stuff, they boil down to if you buy a newspaper today, half of it's gonna be sports and half of it is crime reporting.
28:39
SPEAKER_01: That's all you see is how terrible crime is.
28:43
SPEAKER_01: And also with 24-hour news and on your phone, there could be some I'm gonna tell you this story from my my grandfather who raised me.
28:49
SPEAKER_01: You know, he was a B-17 bomber pilot, World War II, dairy farmer his whole life.
28:53
SPEAKER_01: He said, son, he said, Kingsport, Tennessee is about a 45-minute drive from our house.
28:58
SPEAKER_01: That's in that's probably the closest mid-small city next to near to us within an hour's drive.
29:05
SPEAKER_01: And he said, son, I grew up in the 20s.
29:07
SPEAKER_01: He said, there could have been a mass murder in Kingsport, Tennessee, and we'd never know about it unless a traveling salesman came through and told us about it.
29:16
SPEAKER_01: We were too poor to have a newspaper, too poor to have radio.
29:20
SPEAKER_01: And if a traveling salesman said, Oh gosh, there was a mass murder in Kingsport, that would be the only way we'd even know about it.
29:26
SPEAKER_01: And now there could be something happen that's terrible in Seattle, Washington, and it's on our phones immediately here in rural Virginia.
29:36
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, okay.
29:38
SPEAKER_01: So the world seems more dangerous than what it probably actually is because of your phone.
29:43
SPEAKER_01: It's right there in front of you.
29:45
SPEAKER_01: And and, you know, previous generations never had that in their face on their phone.
29:49
SPEAKER_01: Um, we call it power of the ping.
29:51
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if something bad happens, your phone's pinging to let you know about it.
29:55
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that is very true.
29:57
SPEAKER_00: You're just you're getting inundated with so much stuff, you're like, yes, obviously it's very dangerous out there.
30:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
30:03
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
30:04
SPEAKER_00: That's it's interesting because you know, I've um I've spent, you know, um growing up all the time in a rural area, but as soon as uh as soon as I got to college, I I went to college in Atlanta and I've been in urban areas for, you know, like 20 years now.
30:18
SPEAKER_00: So it's uh you know kind of like uh it it feels like just yesterday in some respects that you know I was in Carswell, and then it sometimes it feels like a a lifetime ago.
30:27
SPEAKER_00: And so it's like it's it's good to be able to like remember kind of like the mindset and and uh and how folks do it because I think that the the biggest the biggest thing.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: So you know, I I was a Republican and like all the way up in high school, my very first vote was uh George W.
30:46
SPEAKER_00: Bush.
30:47
SPEAKER_00: George uh it was Bush versus Kerry in 04.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I know.
30:51
SPEAKER_00: I voted Bush and then McCain in 2008, even.
30:55
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
30:56
SPEAKER_00: Obama was the uh first uh Democrat that I voted for in uh 2012.
31:00
SPEAKER_00: Well what attracted you to him?
31:03
SPEAKER_00: So uh all right, at what what what had happened was I graduated college in 2009, and it was pretty much the heart of the Great Recession.
31:14
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
31:15
SPEAKER_00: Um and the the the first thing that felt I was and I was like still very much in I had the mindset where America was great because we were free, and because we were free, if you worked hard enough, you could achieve the American dream.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: Like that was kind of what I had assumed, and I had kept that assumption with me all throughout, like even graduating college.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: But during the Great Recession, I saw like all of my friends that you know I'd gone to high school with, they graduated college and were right back in their parents' basement.
31:47
SPEAKER_00: Um and it was it was folks that they weren't lazy.
31:52
SPEAKER_00: They they were not like down in their bases.
31:54
SPEAKER_01: They did what they were supposed to do.
31:55
SPEAKER_01: They did what they were supposed to do.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: They worked hard.
31:57
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
31:58
SPEAKER_00: And so I was like, this makes absolutely no sense to me whatsoever.
32:02
SPEAKER_00: I mean, like, we're free, we can do whatever we want to, and they work hard.
32:08
SPEAKER_00: Why is no one able to get ahead?
32:11
SPEAKER_00: And I think that was the first time where Fisco was like, okay, maybe it's not just like government bad.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: You know, that was kind of that mind shift uh switch.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: As well as, and then there was also like cultural issues.
32:22
SPEAKER_00: My sister came out of the uh closet, and uh I was like, well, okay, I've known her my, you know, her whole life.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: She has been who she is her entire life.
32:34
SPEAKER_00: Like, okay.
32:35
SPEAKER_00: I was wrong about that.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: My bad.
32:37
SPEAKER_00: And so that was kind of uh it was the it was very much the fiscally the shift uh from seeing like that folks actually did did need some help from time to time, especially in time, you know, in economic distress and then also the cultural issues.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
32:51
SPEAKER_01: Glad you brought that up talking about um our current chair of our Democrat Party, our county, came from probably one of the most prominent Republican families throughout our county history.
33:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, going back generations.
33:04
SPEAKER_01: And she had a daughter that came out, and you know, it kind of triggered going, wait a second, my daughter's a good person.
33:11
SPEAKER_01: My daughter should get treated just like everybody else, you know, and all that.
33:15
SPEAKER_01: And that that kind of triggered her going, whoa, a lot of things I believe, you know, and it just made her start questioning it.
33:21
SPEAKER_01: And that doesn't make the other side evil or bad.
33:25
SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, I tell and it's also easy for me, I'm Presbyterian in the USA, so you know, we we allow gay marriage and we were a lot more open to equality for everybody, bar none.
33:36
SPEAKER_01: And so it's it was very easy for me to always view it that way, religiously and um you know, government-wise and stuff.
33:43
SPEAKER_01: And then also where where I was raised by my great-grandmother and my my grandfather and stuff, I heard so many stories before there was government help, how things were.
33:53
SPEAKER_01: Uh give, for example, I wrote in my first book, our local pre- this was back in the 80s, or uh the preacher made a bad choice of asking my grandmother what she thought of his sermon about the good old days.
34:05
SPEAKER_01: And this was after church because she would never embarrass them in front of people, but he said, What'd you what'd you think of the sermon?
34:11
SPEAKER_01: thinking, well, she's you know, would like to hear about the good old days.
34:14
SPEAKER_01: And she looked at him, she said, Sonny, you're just young and ignorant.
34:18
SPEAKER_01: She said, When were these good old days you're talking about?
34:22
SPEAKER_01: She goes, I have a good memory.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: And he said, and he kind of stumbled around.
34:26
SPEAKER_01: I remember I was a teenager at the time.
34:27
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, back in Mayberry days, when you didn't have to lock your doors to um at night.
34:35
SPEAKER_01: And she just looked at him and said, Sonny, I'll tell you, you know why we didn't have to lock our doors back in the good old days?
34:42
SPEAKER_01: We were too poor to own anything, and there wasn't nothing in our house too still.
34:47
SPEAKER_01: You didn't have to lock your doors.
34:50
SPEAKER_01: And and so anyway, that you know, so when you grew up with that, you know, I kind of realized, hey, um, before there was government intervention on on um labor laws for um allowing um labor unions and stuff, and I got my union shirt on today.
35:06
SPEAKER_01: And I'm I'm a member of the National Writers Union.
35:09
SPEAKER_01: And um yeah, I believe in in unions, labor because that's the balance in a capitalistic society for corporations and labor.
35:17
SPEAKER_01: That's the balance I like to see.
35:19
SPEAKER_01: Um sometimes I don't think we need as much government as we do more unions.
35:24
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that's that's that's interesting.
35:25
SPEAKER_01: That's where I'm a moderate, you know.
35:27
SPEAKER_01: That's where I probably diverge a little bit from Bernie Sanders.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
35:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm not against Bernie Sanders, but I just think if we uh had more labor laws that were beneficial for unions, I mean you wouldn't have the billionaire class getting the tax cuts and the middle class shrinking.
35:42
SPEAKER_00: So another thing that I grew up on was capitalism is the greatest thing ever.
35:49
SPEAKER_00: No take backs and no like nothing negative on it whatsoever.
35:53
SPEAKER_00: And I think that like that was something that it was just it was told to us, and we're like, yep, absolutely.
35:59
SPEAKER_00: And we but we also equated unions as completely anti-capitalistic.
36:05
SPEAKER_00: You know, there it was uh unions were anathema to a to a free market economy.
36:12
SPEAKER_00: Um and uh that was like especially in Georgia uh growing up.
36:16
SPEAKER_00: I like I was I think uh one of the first uh like popular things that the uh governor did was make us a right to work state and like the early state or whatever.
36:25
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
36:25
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
36:26
SPEAKER_01: Um and and we're still and and right to work is you know it's a misnomer.
36:30
SPEAKER_01: It's it's oh wonderful marketing.
36:32
SPEAKER_01: Uh right to work, which means it's right your right to work for low wages.
36:37
SPEAKER_01: Okay, and that's what it really means, but uh great marketing.
36:40
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, prior and and see my family owe so much for UMWA.
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, my my great-grandfather was was you know a coal miner.
36:51
SPEAKER_01: Um and I'm gonna tell you that this is this is a true story, and I'm gonna show you how how it used to be before the union.
36:56
SPEAKER_01: This happened probably in the 20s.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: He was the manager of a of a coal temple, which loaded coal into trains and stuff.
37:03
SPEAKER_01: The the mines would be behind the coal temple, and there was a mine explosion, okay?
37:08
SPEAKER_01: Killed like three or four men and killed a half dozen ponies or mules that they used to pull the coal out.
37:14
SPEAKER_01: This is 1920s now.
37:16
SPEAKER_01: Well, my great-grandfather, they're they're coordinating rescue efforts, trying to dig out the men, but in that time, probably a couple hours after explosion, the superintendent drove down from his mansion in his fancy car up to the co temple, opened the doors to my great grandfather's office, and the first words he said to him was, What the hell happened to those ponies?
37:39
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
37:40
SPEAKER_01: And my great-granddad said, What do you mean?
37:42
SPEAKER_01: We've we've lost at least three to six men we know of right now.
37:46
SPEAKER_01: And he said to him, he said, It's not gonna cost me a dime to replace those men.
37:51
SPEAKER_01: There's already men lined up for those jobs down at the at the office, but it's gonna cost me three dollars a head to replace those ponies.
38:00
SPEAKER_01: Now that's the world we lived in before.
38:03
SPEAKER_01: And that's a a family story, and then you know, after that, my my great-granddaddy was a union Democrat, and you know, he he preached that way too.
38:11
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:12
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
38:13
SPEAKER_01: Because he lived in a world that you were worth less as a worker than them ponies.
38:18
SPEAKER_01: Three dollar ponies.
38:21
SPEAKER_00: You know, yeah, you had said something earlier, it kind of got me the uh the the right to work, it was good marketing.
38:27
SPEAKER_00: Oh it's not I think the government needs a better marketing job.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Oh, I usually in a lot of ways.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
38:38
SPEAKER_01: I can remember this was late 90s.
38:40
SPEAKER_01: We were milking cows.
38:41
SPEAKER_01: Al Gore just lost to George W.
38:44
SPEAKER_01: Cause of you.
38:44
SPEAKER_00: No, I'm just I remember thanking God after the Supreme Court uh you know came down.
38:53
SPEAKER_01: But anyway, my my granddad said, son, if the Democratic Party would just hire a few used car salesmen to market, we'd never lose an election.
39:02
SPEAKER_01: And and there's so much truth in that statement.
39:04
SPEAKER_01: I say it today, and people laugh, and then they start thinking about it, going, man, that ain't you know um they're they're when you talk about being elitists or being very smart, some of the most educated, but they are terrible salespeople.
39:16
SPEAKER_01: And most of them have never been in sales.
39:18
SPEAKER_01: Um I spent a whole career in sales and uh tell people what on this, well, we hire these marketing firms, we do, you know, these marketing consultants.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: No, there's a difference in salesmanship and marketing.
39:29
SPEAKER_01: There's a totally different salesmanship is about personal feelings, personal emotions.
39:34
SPEAKER_01: Marketing, just marketing a product.
39:36
SPEAKER_01: Salesmanship is personal.
39:39
SPEAKER_01: How do I get people to do something?
39:41
SPEAKER_01: And and in in our case, we need them to vote democratic.
39:44
SPEAKER_01: Terrible salesmanship.
39:45
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh we we do classes on it and stuff like that, but try to help people.
39:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
39:51
SPEAKER_00: As you were saying that, it kind of uh made me think back.
39:54
SPEAKER_00: It seems like uh Democrats are really good at talking to people's heads, and Republicans are pretty good at talking to people's uh I wouldn't say hearts, but they're fierce.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: Emotions.
40:04
SPEAKER_01: Yes, emotions.
40:05
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
40:06
SPEAKER_01: And that so they pick their issues that way with safety.
40:09
SPEAKER_01: Dangerous, you know, if you don't vote for me, these dangerous illegal immigrants are going, illegal aliens are going just, you know, hurt your children.
40:16
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that they're very good.
40:17
SPEAKER_01: They know emotions.
40:18
SPEAKER_01: So apparently what oh I'm sorry.
40:20
SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: Apparently, what Trump will do whenever he's at a uh rally, he's he's just basically spaghettiing, you know, like throwing stuff on the wall, and he is waiting to hear the reactions.
40:30
SPEAKER_00: Oh he's like, he did he he uh earlier was like, I didn't even know transgender was gonna be an issue until people started like like about it.
40:39
SPEAKER_00: And so then he's like, okay, we need to like hammer this on.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: But yeah, he couldn't care less about it.
40:44
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know.
40:45
SPEAKER_01: Or it's the dangerous Muslims, or it's dangerous, you know, uh and all that.
40:50
SPEAKER_01: And if you think about it, they they play on fear.
40:52
SPEAKER_01: It's fear-mongering, and uh but it works when it comes to elections, and especially in rural America.
40:58
SPEAKER_01: Rural America, you know, we've never had good experiences with outside people.
41:03
SPEAKER_01: Rural America probably experiences or exhibits a little bit more stranger danger um than than other areas.
41:09
SPEAKER_01: Urban I I give, for example, um I we visited back in 2019, my family.
41:14
SPEAKER_01: I took my daughter after she graduated high school, New York City.
41:17
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
41:18
SPEAKER_01: And I never expected to love New York City the way I did.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
41:22
SPEAKER_01: I it wasn't like I was dreading a trip, but I haven't had any urge to go to New York City.
41:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, we're going on this tour of Central Park, and um there was a Ukrainian um immigrant that was actually um giving a tour and stuff, and I said, buddy, I gotta ask you a question.
41:37
SPEAKER_01: I said, I've not traveled the world, but I traveled a little bit.
41:40
SPEAKER_01: And I said, This is the first trip that nobody has asked me about my accent and said, Where are you from?
41:47
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: He looked at me, he said, There's over 400 languages spoken in New York City.
41:52
SPEAKER_01: He said, You're just one of many accents.
41:55
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
41:56
SPEAKER_01: They're so diversed that that that my accent didn't even stick out.
42:01
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
42:02
SPEAKER_01: Um and but see, that we're the exact opposite in rural America.
42:05
SPEAKER_01: You know, anything sticks out, and then that stranger danger kicks in.
42:10
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times it gets misinterpreted, stranger danger for whether they're racist or or you hear the name, they're fascist.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: No, it's stranger danger.
42:18
SPEAKER_01: It really is.
42:19
SPEAKER_01: You're just misinterpreting their fear and why they're against something as maybe being racist when it's actually stranger danger.
42:27
SPEAKER_01: If they know you, you know what they'll like you.
42:29
unknown: Yeah.
42:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
42:30
SPEAKER_00: I think that's actually what what you just uh spoke to is very important.
42:34
SPEAKER_00: I kind of unconsciously had that attitude, the the stranger danger thing.
42:39
SPEAKER_00: And whenever uh it was like going to a uh small private liberal arts school and uh basically just immersion, you know, like just basically just like dove into the deep end with you know, just folks from all over the world.
42:55
SPEAKER_00: And it was like it was seeing that it was meeting people that were completely, you know, from a compl the other side of the world for me, like different language, everything.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: But like we hung out for about, you know, 15 minutes.
43:10
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, this is one of the coolest people I've ever, you know, it was like we're we're the exact same.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: Um, and then like it kind of it was just as I like started meeting more people, new it's not necessarily stranger danger, actually.
43:22
SPEAKER_00: It's it's really cool to meet new people.
43:24
SPEAKER_01: Oh yeah.
43:25
SPEAKER_01: And so you went from stranger danger to finding out no, there's not a danger.
43:29
SPEAKER_01: And I give, for example, you have like the the far right will talk about this liberal indoctrination by colleges.
43:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not.
43:37
SPEAKER_01: You just actually meet a Muslim for the first time.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
43:40
SPEAKER_01: You just actually I had a my freshman year at Virginia Tech, I had a black roommate.
43:44
SPEAKER_01: Now we had some black, but I didn't have that close relationship as having a roommate for a whole year.
43:51
SPEAKER_01: And I can remember he looked at me one time, he's he said, Well, I thought all you hillbillers were racist.
43:57
SPEAKER_01: And I said I told him, I said, Now, buddy, then let me tell you.
44:00
SPEAKER_01: I dislike a lot more white people than I do black people.
44:04
SPEAKER_01: And I told them that it wasn't as bad as what you think.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: And statistically, we're not.
44:08
SPEAKER_01: I mean, if you look at some research and stuff, but it is that stranger danger that that plays into our politics, plays into our perception of outside people looking at at rural America.
44:20
SPEAKER_00: What do you think it is that like there is that kind of stranger danger mentality?
44:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, a little bit of it goes back, you know, my family's history when I write about a lot of government programs.
44:32
SPEAKER_01: It's never been a good case.
44:33
SPEAKER_01: You had the outside coal companies come in and exploit us.
44:36
SPEAKER_01: You had outside government come in and exploit us.
44:39
SPEAKER_01: You hadn't, you know, it just strangers were never ever bringing good news or tidings or gifts.
44:46
SPEAKER_01: Now they they might have presented it that way, but they were really taking something from us.
44:50
SPEAKER_01: They were going to exploit us for our labor and exploit us for our resources.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
44:54
SPEAKER_01: And think about that.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: That's too bad.
44:56
SPEAKER_01: It don't matter whether you're rural Kansas or rural wherever.
45:00
SPEAKER_01: And uh Yeah.
45:01
SPEAKER_01: So yeah.
45:02
SPEAKER_00: Well, if that's your experience, it's really easy to associate change is bad.
45:07
SPEAKER_00: Oh like any yeah.
45:08
SPEAKER_00: So uh it it makes it makes sense to the kind of the the feeling like we need to keep things where they are.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: It's not necessarily saying things are so great now, it's saying that the like what I'm feeling right now is better than the uncertainty that I may feel whenever we do something else.
45:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
45:30
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you talk about um you know rural America's lost so many blue-collar jobs.
45:34
SPEAKER_01: Um give you, for example, like NAFTA was devastating for rural America.
45:39
SPEAKER_01: Now, hey, there was urban areas that NAFTA was great for, but none of that translated to rural America.
45:45
SPEAKER_01: We lost our little sewing factory jobs, we lost our small manufacturing jobs and stuff, and um there was nothing that replaced it.
45:52
SPEAKER_01: And then, you know, for a candidate to come in and go, oh, well, we're gonna um help get call center jobs for you.
45:58
SPEAKER_01: Now you know yourself, you go from a blue-collar, proud of your work type mentality, and you're going you want to stick a coal miner in a cubicle.
46:07
unknown: Yeah.
46:08
SPEAKER_01: And I'm not knocking call center jobs.
46:09
SPEAKER_01: There's people that love that, people that make good livings from that.
46:13
SPEAKER_01: But it don't match our culture very well.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: So where do we go from here, Matt?
46:20
SPEAKER_01: Well, I I tell you, um, hopefully, and this is one reason we started doing our podcast.
46:24
SPEAKER_01: I have a feeling um, I'm gonna ask you here in a little bit, turn this around, ask you about why you do yours.
46:28
SPEAKER_01: Um we need better news coverage, we need more diversity, we need more balance in the force and what gets in front of people's eyeballs on social media.
46:37
SPEAKER_01: Um we kind of do the real route review podcast um just to offer some balance.
46:43
SPEAKER_01: You don't have to agree with us, but like um, and plus we hope it's entertaining.
46:47
SPEAKER_01: I hope we educate some of the Democratic elite.
46:49
SPEAKER_01: But hey, ask us, we'll tell you.
46:51
SPEAKER_01: But you know, you gotta come down here and look at us and and ask us and and and care enough to hear our answer.
46:57
SPEAKER_01: So I I think that's the first step, get more balance.
47:00
SPEAKER_01: Second, I really think that politics it needs to get more back to local.
47:05
SPEAKER_01: I'm a firm believer, uh, low saying uh all politics is local, and we need to get back to that, you know, quit worrying about what they're doing in San Francisco.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: That's their business.
47:14
SPEAKER_01: And I grew up in that you know farming community where they ain't none of your business.
47:18
SPEAKER_01: I I heard that.
47:19
SPEAKER_01: And you know, I don't really care what they do in New York City.
47:22
SPEAKER_01: I care about what they do in my hometown.
47:24
SPEAKER_01: And it's not that we don't care about America.
47:26
SPEAKER_01: We we love America, we're very patriotic, but um, you know, we're not New York City, and if they want to do such and such and pass such and such more power to them, don't affect me now.
47:36
SPEAKER_00: So that's it's interesting.
47:39
SPEAKER_00: It kind of uh almost it's kind of a little bit of uh contradictory to what we're talking about, though, with like the Fox News thing and people talking about like, oh, you hear what's going on in New York City and stuff.
47:50
SPEAKER_00: So it's so oh man, it's just so fascinating to me.
47:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, and here and this is just observation.
47:55
SPEAKER_01: I'm not going to use it.
47:57
SPEAKER_01: But this past election, the transgender people in high school sports was such a hot button issue here locally.
48:05
SPEAKER_01: And I can remember asking them, has that even happened in our region?
48:09
SPEAKER_01: Right.
48:10
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
48:11
SPEAKER_01: And they go, well, no, but it happened in California.
48:13
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, you know, and I'm not even judging, I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but I mean, my goodness, you're you're t you're making your primary issue of why you're voting a certain way on something that happened across the country.
48:29
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
48:31
SPEAKER_00: But it was important to them, trust me.
48:32
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
48:34
SPEAKER_00: That's it's very true.
48:36
SPEAKER_00: And what's kind of fascinating that though is whenever you ask somebody, well, we're just protecting women's sports, but just like one follow-up is like, okay, well, how what what was your opinion on Title IX?
48:48
SPEAKER_00: No, uh, Title IX awful.
48:50
SPEAKER_00: It seems like you only care about protecting women's sports whenever it was like the wh whenever transgender issue came up.
48:57
SPEAKER_01: Oh, I know.
48:58
SPEAKER_01: And and then it was isolated cases and and you know, what nowhere in my rural America and and my my congressional district's the size of New Jersey, and nobody could tell me it happened local.
49:08
SPEAKER_01: Right.
49:09
SPEAKER_01: And and and that's your primary reason for both, but it was.
49:12
SPEAKER_00: It was a big reason.
49:14
SPEAKER_00: The percentage of the population that is transgender is so unbelievably small that you're you were literally making a mountain out of an ant, not even a molehill.
49:27
SPEAKER_00: It's just uh you're making a mountain out of an ant.
49:29
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: But now in elections, uh national elections, you you got to have an enemy.
49:35
SPEAKER_01: You gotta have the verses, and that's what they focused on.
49:39
SPEAKER_01: In the early 1900s, it was my ancestor, Scott, the Scotch Irish.
49:43
SPEAKER_01: You know, there was a lot of legislation.
49:45
SPEAKER_01: Scott Irish is going to take over his country.
49:47
SPEAKER_01: Then it was the Chinese.
49:48
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's always been on national politics one side or the other, having to pick us versus them.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: These people are are dangerous.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: And it's it's always been that way.
49:58
SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm I'm thinking immediately back to Nina, or no Irish need apply.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
50:03
SPEAKER_00: I mean, it's it it's been as far back as the country's founded.
50:07
SPEAKER_01: It's nothing new.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: It's nothing new.
50:09
SPEAKER_01: It just uh regurgitate.
50:10
SPEAKER_01: And you know, make America Great.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: It's not a new slogan.
50:13
SPEAKER_01: It was regurgitated from the early 1900s.
50:16
SPEAKER_01: Um Yeah.
50:17
SPEAKER_01: Really?
50:18
SPEAKER_01: So who was uh like kind of the the starter of that?
50:21
SPEAKER_01: Do you know?
50:22
SPEAKER_01: We might need to do a whole nother show on that one.
50:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
50:26
SPEAKER_00: There was one uh so I found a uh Thomas Dewey campaign poster.
50:32
SPEAKER_02: Okay.
50:32
SPEAKER_00: And uh I just immediately I was like, oh my God, I have got to have this thing.
50:37
SPEAKER_00: And so I went down a little like rabbit hole on like that whole uh Truman versus Dewey election.
50:43
SPEAKER_00: And I have no idea why I just started on this, John.
50:45
SPEAKER_00: I'm sorry.
50:46
SPEAKER_01: Oh, you go right ahead.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: Your show, buddy.
50:50
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so uh apparently like one of the big reasons why everyone thought Truman was going to lose was because everyone assumed that candidate or that uh voters made their mind up for who they were gonna vote for by the time the convention happened.
51:06
SPEAKER_00: So any polling after the convention was absurd.
51:09
SPEAKER_00: And that was like one of uh FDR's like big advisors.
51:14
SPEAKER_00: He was like the guru.
51:15
SPEAKER_00: He had that that rule.
51:16
SPEAKER_00: So they just like nobody really uh polled.
51:19
SPEAKER_00: But um Thomas Dewey, since he knew he was going to win, he basically like I think he said, like, the streams have fish.
51:29
SPEAKER_00: You can't have liberty without freedom, and the future lies ahead of you.
51:34
SPEAKER_00: That was like the three things he said, and that was like how he you know planned up planned on winning.
51:39
SPEAKER_00: Wow.
51:40
SPEAKER_01: And and a lot, you know, we're talking about not a lot has changed and stuff, but now you go back to FDR, his fireside chats radio program.
51:49
SPEAKER_01: That is social media back in the day.
51:52
SPEAKER_01: And and if you think about, and this is where you just had a senator, state senator, on your show.
51:57
SPEAKER_01: I just watched the show and stuff.
51:59
SPEAKER_01: I tell you what, Democrats were late in the ball game getting into those what what I call raw interviews, not pre-packaged, not overproduced, and and actually there's a lot of good research and look into it.
52:13
SPEAKER_01: As far as being influential, these raw type, just having a conversation unscripted is a lot more believable.
52:20
SPEAKER_01: Hey, we're gonna misspeak, we're we're gonna misquote um and stuff not on purpose, but it's real.
52:26
SPEAKER_01: And um, I hate to say it the other side on when I say the other side, the um the Republican side was just early 10 years ahead of the Democrats on understanding the power of of these raw interviews on social media with inf and and the small influencers, and it's not just the big ones.
52:41
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
52:42
SPEAKER_00: Very, very true.
52:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, there is a whole like media infrastructure on the right that uh I I was just seeing something today where like uh a lot of uh women just one search for like fitness tips or like health tips.
52:59
SPEAKER_00: It's just it was something so just like benign could like lead you down the like Maha uh rabbit hole.
53:06
SPEAKER_01: Well, and I I'll give you for example, and I'm gonna brag on on our little uh Rural Route Review podcast.
53:11
SPEAKER_01: We had one video we we um invited our local commissioner revenue on, who's been elected nine times and stuff, knows politics, local politics.
53:20
SPEAKER_01: And he just we just went through and had a podcast on how your property taxes are assessed and that whole process.
53:28
SPEAKER_01: We got so many more views than we expected.
53:30
SPEAKER_01: And he was like, Why are people watching this?
53:32
SPEAKER_01: Because if you're an adult and you own any property, you pay property tax.
53:36
SPEAKER_01: It's something that they didn't teach in high school.
53:39
SPEAKER_01: And people kind of watch it's not that we're that entertaining or and we're definitely not good looking or nothing, but it was just information that was just um it filled that void of, you know, when I get that tax bill, where do they get these numbers from?
53:52
SPEAKER_01: And you know, we had like 30,000 views on on one of those, and and and yeah, and he was like, why?
53:58
SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, well, because it was something that was interesting to him.
54:01
SPEAKER_01: You know, it's not entertainment, it's not viral, you know, but uh, but it does, you know, everybody gets a tax ticket, pays taxes on their cars, pays taxes on their house, and just explained that a little bit.
54:11
SPEAKER_01: And that's all it was.
54:12
SPEAKER_01: It wasn't even a political or campaign.
54:15
SPEAKER_01: It may just explain how it gets assessed.
54:18
SPEAKER_00: So what I just heard is we need to talk about property taxes for the rest of the time, right?
54:22
SPEAKER_01: Well, and what uh T Walk though, it does highlight how we need to talk about how local government and how things work.
54:28
SPEAKER_01: Because people don't understand, like schools in Virginia, it's a very complicated funding process.
54:34
SPEAKER_01: Some of it's local, some of it's state, and they get a little bit from the federal level.
54:38
SPEAKER_01: And uh until people and then I get this all the time in rural America.
54:42
SPEAKER_01: Well, why can't we tax Walmart and Lowe's more than uh Joe Smoe's little small hardware store downtown?
54:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, we'd like to do that.
54:52
SPEAKER_01: I was on a board.
54:53
SPEAKER_01: I mean, Lowe's in Walmart definitely could pay more local property taxes, right?
54:57
SPEAKER_01: But there's laws that you have to treat everybody the same.
55:00
SPEAKER_01: You know, uh people don't understand that.
55:03
SPEAKER_01: Well I'm sorry.
55:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've uh a lot of times uh though where I've seen, especially in Georgia, where uh they'll be like, hey, if you bring this business down, you won't have to pay property taxes for the first you know, five length years.
55:16
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
55:18
SPEAKER_00: I've seen that before where you're kind of like theoretically, what you're like bringing them in for is like to increase the uh the tax base, and you're like shooting yourself in the foot there.
55:27
SPEAKER_01: Well, and we might do another show on data centers.
55:29
SPEAKER_01: That's another big thing across Virginia.
55:32
SPEAKER_01: Um we're we're facing that here even locally in rural America.
55:35
SPEAKER_01: That's that's one of the things.
55:36
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, I I wrote an article, you know, data centers aren't evil or good, but the deal you make with them can be bad or good.
55:45
SPEAKER_01: And and the devil's in the details of that contract on what you give up and what they pay.
55:51
SPEAKER_01: Um so you know, they're not necessarily bad, but they're not necessarily good either.
55:56
SPEAKER_01: And um how taxes and you know, so I give for example, when um when um Abigail Spanberger came down here to address our local committee, she was talking about uh raises for school teachers.
56:08
SPEAKER_01: And we were like, don't say it that way.
56:11
SPEAKER_01: And she was like, What do you mean?
56:13
SPEAKER_01: And I said, Okay, you have to understand how education is funded at a local level.
56:19
SPEAKER_01: When when Richmond passes a pay increase for teachers, that sounds wonderful, but here in Wise County, 30% of that pay increase is funded locally.
56:31
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
56:32
SPEAKER_01: Or you take like Scott County next to us, that's probably well, it's probably about 30% is local.
56:37
SPEAKER_01: So when you talk about teacher raise, you're talking about if a county has a balanced budget, doesn't have reserves, a teacher raise means increased property taxes.
56:48
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
56:49
SPEAKER_01: And see, Democrats don't understand, well, who's who's against teacher raises?
56:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, we are for it, but what rural America hears, you're gonna raise my property taxes on my farm or on my house to pay for that.
57:02
SPEAKER_01: And it does.
57:03
SPEAKER_01: Um but see, rich counties, um, the state funds very little of their education and stuff.
57:08
SPEAKER_01: So um most of that doesn't affect them, but out of coming out of Richmond, it affects rural counties.
57:15
SPEAKER_00: That is okay, so I did not realize I assumed that it would be pretty much the same like independent world.
57:21
SPEAKER_01: For example, Wise County, and I'm I'm I'm averaging, I'm I'm I'm gonna be exactly right.
57:26
SPEAKER_01: But uh Richmond pays 70% of our teachers' salaries, and the county pays 30.
57:30
SPEAKER_01: Where you take Fairfax, Loudoun County, they probably pay 95% of their teachers' salaries.
57:37
SPEAKER_01: The state pays very little because they're a rich county.
57:40
SPEAKER_01: They can afford it.
57:41
SPEAKER_01: It's called a composite index, and we can do a whole show on that.
57:44
SPEAKER_01: And um, but see, that's where um probably the Democratic Party don't understand how rural America is different from urban centers and and um wealthy counties.
57:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, uh what like what you keep bringing up, and I'm like, oh my, it it's blowing my mind, but the thing is it shouldn't be blowing my mind.
58:03
SPEAKER_00: I should have been, you know, they're listening a lot, you know, a lot sooner than a lot sooner than I have, you know.
58:10
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's not a a popular thing.
58:12
SPEAKER_01: It's also kind of complicated.
58:13
SPEAKER_01: It's not something you can kind of campaign on in a soundbite.
58:17
SPEAKER_01: I don't say it is complicated to the funding, how things get funded in in local government.
58:22
SPEAKER_01: Same way with sheriff's departments, um, you know, how they get funded.
58:25
SPEAKER_01: And uh right now, you know, we got a big budget deficit.
58:27
SPEAKER_01: And this is another thing.
58:29
SPEAKER_01: Richmond will come out with this grant to fund so many positions to do this.
58:34
SPEAKER_01: But the funding only lasts three three years or five years.
58:37
SPEAKER_01: And once that funding runs out, then it becomes the locality's responsibility to fund it.
58:42
SPEAKER_01: And if you're a very poor county, that's hard to do, or sometimes that's how the budgets get out of whack.
58:47
SPEAKER_01: They never get rid of the position, but the but the funding c has to come local and has to come from local taxpayers.
58:54
SPEAKER_01: And if your local taxpayers are poor, that's a big burden.
58:59
SPEAKER_00: It's it is interesting.
59:00
SPEAKER_00: It seems like there's a lot of like well-meaning things that you know the state is trying to do, but it just not quite enough see-through to make sure that it's uh, you know, like as Or understanding.
59:13
SPEAKER_01: Understanding, understand how it works.
59:14
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, the old saying, my great grandmother used to say, you know, the road to hell is paid with good attention, son.
59:23
SPEAKER_00: It's it feels like sometimes, and I mean, I it very much is.
59:28
SPEAKER_00: Uh, you're saying that your uh county went uh 80% uh for Trump.
59:33
SPEAKER_00: It seems like it's a at times it feels like an impossible thing, but I think it's really it's just about making inroads, right?
59:42
SPEAKER_00: Just trying to do just kind of like one one step at a time.
59:45
SPEAKER_01: And it's a combination of things.
59:46
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, newspaper deserts or or lack of local media.
59:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh the only information I get is from a conservative mega type of organization.
59:55
SPEAKER_01: Also, this goes back to Obama uh administration.
59:59
SPEAKER_01: This wasn't his fault, but under during his tenure, the Democratic Party pulled away from the 50-state initiative.
1:00:05
SPEAKER_01: In other words, they pulled resources out of rural America.
1:00:08
SPEAKER_01: They closed up shop in rural America and said, we're gonna go to an urban-centric campaign strategy to where we're just gonna concentrate on urban areas and basically left rural America.
1:00:20
SPEAKER_01: The infrastructure pulled everything out.
1:00:22
SPEAKER_01: There's no money that comes in rural districts for campaigning.
1:00:25
SPEAKER_01: There's nothing.
1:00:26
SPEAKER_01: Nothing comes from the state or the federal level.
1:00:29
SPEAKER_01: So if you want to run as a Democrat in rural Southwest Virginia, you're on your own.
1:00:34
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:00:35
SPEAKER_00: And with uh the senator that I was talking to earlier, I of course I knew politics was expensive, but I didn't even realize like for these delegate and uh Senate races, you're looking at like hundreds of thousands of dollars uh to to be able to run a race.
1:00:51
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, well let me let me I'm gonna break it down even more local.
1:00:54
SPEAKER_01: Okay, at the local level, let's take to let's take a town council.
1:00:59
SPEAKER_01: Um we we were just talking about fundraising with our local committee.
1:01:02
SPEAKER_01: You really need five or ten thousand dollars to to run even in a town council, a board of supervisor races, you better have fifteen to twenty-five, thirty thousand.
1:01:12
SPEAKER_01: This is rural America.
1:01:13
SPEAKER_01: I'm not talking about urban.
1:01:14
SPEAKER_01: You can get into six figures.
1:01:16
SPEAKER_01: And and for a countywide office that's contested, you're gonna get into six figures for the sheriff or the county clerk.
1:01:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
1:01:26
SPEAKER_01: But the difference is the Republican, the state party, and uh and the national party will help fund that.
1:01:33
SPEAKER_01: We don't have no resources coming from the state or federal.
1:01:39
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think they think that is?
1:01:40
SPEAKER_00: Like it doesn't uh is there not enough money to go around, or they just going all in on the urban.
1:01:46
SPEAKER_01: They got the money, but no, they they it's urban areas.
1:01:48
SPEAKER_01: They're only going to spend money on what they deemed as competitive races.
1:01:53
SPEAKER_01: Well, I got news for you, you're never gonna be competitive unless you start competing in these rural races.
1:01:58
SPEAKER_01: See, that's that's the chicken or the egg.
1:02:00
SPEAKER_00: I was about to say it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy at some point.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:02:03
SPEAKER_01: So when they pulled out, um, you know, we went to 80-20, and we're never gonna be competitive unless you help us.
1:02:12
SPEAKER_01: So, and then but their argument is, well, you're not competitive, we're not gonna spend no money there.
1:02:17
SPEAKER_01: And also there's a thing, it's not always about winning the race, it's about promoting your message and what you are.
1:02:23
SPEAKER_01: And see, that's where you get back newspaper desert, the the 80% is going, well, they're just you know, they're bad.
1:02:30
SPEAKER_01: I I hate to use the word evil, but you know what I'm talking about uh, you know, Democrats are bad and and you know, Republicans are good.
1:02:36
SPEAKER_01: But if you never hear well, I give for example, uh my son belongs to a hunt club, and and one of his friends I was talking to, and I I kind of let him know I was a Democrat, and he looked at me.
1:02:46
SPEAKER_01: This was a 28-year-old young man that lived in a very rural section of Lee County.
1:02:51
SPEAKER_01: He said, Well, you're probably the first Democrat I've ever met in my life.
1:02:55
SPEAKER_01: Now, we know he's met other Democrats, but I was probably the first one that he knew.
1:03:00
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:02
SPEAKER_00: I uh I I I definitely remember the very first time I realized that not everybody was a Republican.
1:03:10
SPEAKER_00: I was shocked.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: Yep.
1:03:11
SPEAKER_01: You were you of our ex and and actually were you more shocked that he was a pretty decent person?
1:03:17
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
1:03:18
SPEAKER_00: It made me rethink things.
1:03:19
SPEAKER_00: I was like, I I must have missed something.
1:03:21
SPEAKER_00: Hey, he probably sacrificed a baby right after we got finished talking.
1:03:26
SPEAKER_01: But that's what they hear.
1:03:28
SPEAKER_01: I've had people find out I'm a Democrat and go, oh, you're too nice a person to be a Democrat.
1:03:32
SPEAKER_01: I couldn't believe you were a Democrat.
1:03:36
SPEAKER_00: It is so amazing.
1:03:37
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:03:38
SPEAKER_01: And so that's why we got to get our candidates on your shows.
1:03:41
SPEAKER_01: We got to let them know they're a person.
1:03:43
SPEAKER_01: And see, on the other side, Republican does a great job on promoting the candidate versus issues.
1:03:49
SPEAKER_01: Democrats were too in love with our issues.
1:03:51
SPEAKER_01: We promote issues way too much instead of the candidate.
1:03:55
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:03:56
SPEAKER_01: That's a very good thing where the family values come in.
1:03:58
SPEAKER_01: You know, Republican and rural Virginia, all they show is their family values.
1:04:03
SPEAKER_01: We love Virginia, we love them, all this feel-good stuff, right?
1:04:06
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
1:04:07
SPEAKER_01: And they promote the candidate, where our candidate's going, well, I'm for this issue, this issue, and this issue, and you should be too.
1:04:14
SPEAKER_00: That is very interesting.
1:04:15
SPEAKER_00: I hadn't really thought about that before, but you're you're right.
1:04:18
SPEAKER_00: And I think it kind of goes back to what we said earlier where uh Republicans go for the fear and Democrats are going for the head.
1:04:25
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:04:26
SPEAKER_01: So I know we gotta quit one side is playing to their emotion, the other side's trying to educate them.
1:04:32
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:04:33
unknown: Yeah.
1:04:34
SPEAKER_00: I heard before that uh said that uh voters uh treat uh treat Republicans like an absent dad that they just want like a little bit of validation from, and they treat Democrats like like their mom that's always there and just gonna abuse them anyway.
1:04:50
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I I I'm gonna give it's kind of a related story.
1:04:52
SPEAKER_01: This happened in 2016.
1:04:54
SPEAKER_01: My son's uncle, coal miner in the coal industry.
1:04:57
SPEAKER_01: This was after Trump came down touring all the co you know, saying, I'm gonna bring coal back.
1:05:02
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:05:03
SPEAKER_01: This is after Hillary said what she did about the um we're gonna put a lot of coal miners out of uh work and laughed about.
1:05:09
SPEAKER_01: Now the laugh is what gets her.
1:05:10
SPEAKER_01: It ain't the statement, it's the laugh about, okay.
1:05:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, anyway, I was talking to my son's uncle, we're friends, smart fella, smart coal miner.
1:05:19
SPEAKER_01: I said, Terry, I said, you do know Trump can't bring back these coal jobs the way he says.
1:05:27
SPEAKER_01: He goes, Yeah, I know, but at least he was nice enough to us to lie to us.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:05:33
SPEAKER_01: Now I want you to think about that statement.
1:05:36
SPEAKER_01: He was nice enough to lie to us.
1:05:38
SPEAKER_01: And if you get into psychology that causes lies of affection, you'll do this to your son when he goes get his shots.
1:05:45
SPEAKER_01: Oh, this ain't gonna hurt very much.
1:05:47
SPEAKER_01: Or you're gonna lie to him because you're a good dad.
1:05:50
SPEAKER_01: You're gonna lie to him and and all of a sudden he gets a shot and it does hurt.
1:05:53
SPEAKER_01: But he don't view you as a liar.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: Uh huh.
1:05:56
SPEAKER_01: You were actually a concerned loving parent that you lied to.
1:06:00
SPEAKER_01: And and that gets into the like at least Trump was nice enough to lie to us.
1:06:06
SPEAKER_01: And the other side made fun of us losing jobs.
1:06:09
SPEAKER_01: Now think about okay, that's all that matters.
1:06:12
SPEAKER_01: Doesn't matter if it's true or not.
1:06:15
SPEAKER_00: I was I was just thinking whenever you had said that, like why she would have uh left.
1:06:20
SPEAKER_00: And uh I, you know, even whenever I grew up in uh rural, it was so far away removed from coal that like, you know, the only thing that I think of of coal is like coal mining and and like uh the black soot or whatever like all over you and black lung.
1:06:38
SPEAKER_00: And so for that, I'm like, oh okay, yeah, I could see how you would like laugh and be like, oh yeah, we're getting rid of that to go to clean energy.
1:06:45
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:06:46
SPEAKER_00: Whenever you have been in that your entire life, it is a you know, you're you're not you're not laughing at like getting rid of the black lung, you're laughing at getting rid of a job.
1:06:57
SPEAKER_01: And also it was a slap in the face for middle class people who worked every day, pro-union a lot of them, going, I don't care about your job, you know.
1:07:08
SPEAKER_01: I don't care about your family losing jobs.
1:07:10
SPEAKER_01: See, it it went far beyond coal miners.
1:07:13
SPEAKER_01: It it reverber whether you're an auto worker, you're a farmer, that you know, you had a candidate that really didn't care about blue collar.
1:07:21
SPEAKER_01: And you know, it it did spread.
1:07:24
SPEAKER_01: And it was yeah.
1:07:25
SPEAKER_01: And I mean it it'll haunt the Democratic Party for a long time.
1:07:30
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:07:31
unknown: Yeah.
1:07:31
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh absolutely.
1:07:33
SPEAKER_01: And it wasn't just the statement.
1:07:34
SPEAKER_01: The statement was true, but it was the laugh and kind of making fun of it.
1:07:39
SPEAKER_01: Now that's that's that was the sin, if you want to call it that, or yeah with the negative was the laugh about just the kind of nonchalant there's gonna be a lot of unemployed co-miners when we get done.
1:07:50
SPEAKER_01: And I might be misquoted, I don't, but still that that's what I remember.
1:07:54
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:07:55
SPEAKER_00: I was about to say it it to a certain extent it really doesn't matter what she said whenever like that segment takes off.
1:08:02
unknown: Yeah.
1:08:03
SPEAKER_01: And whether it's true or not doesn't matter.
1:08:04
SPEAKER_01: It was that feeling of Yeah.
1:08:07
SPEAKER_01: And there was the the party of FDR, the party that fought for workers' rights, that cared about blue-collar, cared about middle class, kind of making fun of people losing their jobs.
1:08:19
SPEAKER_01: Anyway.
1:08:40
SPEAKER_00: And uh she is a um like she's a bar manager, uh, you know, at a restaurant.
1:08:46
SPEAKER_00: So she, you know, uh deals with a uh a lot of folks.
1:08:49
SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, I kind of asked her um about like uh you know, like what why she thought you know people were uh you know were so like uh reflexively uh were so reflexively Trump.
1:09:03
SPEAKER_00: And uh she was like she she made the point that uh it was tied to religion.
1:09:11
SPEAKER_00: Um I mean we know it is.
1:09:13
SPEAKER_01: But I'm gonna I'm gonna give her hope.
1:09:14
SPEAKER_01: I want you to relay this story to her.
1:09:16
SPEAKER_01: Okay, my hometown, I said, voted for um 83% for Donald Trump.
1:09:21
SPEAKER_01: But that same day.
1:09:23
SPEAKER_01: Okay, now granted, town councils we don't label as and and in Big Stone Gap you know, Republican or Democrat, everybody's independent.
1:09:32
SPEAKER_01: But everybody knows in real Big Stone Gap what party.
1:09:36
SPEAKER_01: I mean, okay, yeah, so when you run, they know.
1:09:38
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:09:39
SPEAKER_01: That same election day that they voted 83% for Donald Trump, that same day they walked in and re-elected the openly gay Democrat to the town council and re-elected uh my business partner for the ninth time as a Democrat.
1:09:55
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
1:09:56
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:09:57
SPEAKER_01: And the reason being was they were voting, they knew that person, they knew that candidate, and the two candidates, um uh Doug and Tyler both, they've done a good job over the years letting people know who they are, not the issues.
1:10:12
SPEAKER_01: Who they they're voting for Dougie as a Democrat.
1:10:15
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, we hate all the other Democrats, but that one's okay.
1:10:18
SPEAKER_01: He's all no, he's an okay guy.
1:10:20
SPEAKER_01: Same way with our town council member.
1:10:22
SPEAKER_01: They they love him as a person.
1:10:24
SPEAKER_01: All the other stuff didn't matter.
1:10:26
SPEAKER_00: How are they able to ingratiate themselves uh and with uh with folks who were gonna go to Trump every time?
1:10:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:10:34
SPEAKER_01: A great job of promoting themselves and just letting people know.
1:10:37
SPEAKER_01: Um coming on shows like this or coming on just being active in the community, um, being very open to the uh public so they know them personally, not as a Democrat.
1:10:47
SPEAKER_01: They'll they'll vote for you, but they really gotta know you.
1:10:50
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:10:51
SPEAKER_00: I think people have people have to real or people have to see you actually care.
1:10:55
SPEAKER_00: People are gonna be extremely cynical, especially around like anybody running for office.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:00
SPEAKER_00: And so yeah, it's something that you've got to show up for multiple times, and it can't just be it can't just be lip service either.
1:11:08
SPEAKER_01: Oh no.
1:11:09
SPEAKER_01: Um I'll give you this just this past election, um also, you know, the same 83% voted for Donald Trump, they elected newly uh two um young black men to the town council.
1:11:22
SPEAKER_01: And this is the same people that voted 83 percent for Trump.
1:11:26
SPEAKER_01: And a lot of times these these progressive groups will go, well, they won't vote for Democrat because they're racist.
1:11:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm I'll show you Big Stone Gap.
1:11:33
SPEAKER_01: They just voted in too.
1:11:35
SPEAKER_01: But let me tell you, they're outstanding young men.
1:11:37
SPEAKER_01: They're outstanding candidates.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:11:40
SPEAKER_01: The black part don't matter.
1:11:43
SPEAKER_01: Does that make sense?
1:11:44
SPEAKER_01: You know?
1:11:45
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:11:46
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, but it's it's okay, so even to a Trump voter.
1:11:50
SPEAKER_01: That didn't matter because they're great people.
1:11:53
SPEAKER_01: And people knew it and they voted for them.
1:11:56
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:11:57
SPEAKER_00: That's uh and going right back to what you said before with the stranger danger thing.
1:12:01
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it's why like you've you've got to uh you can't be you you can't remain part of the out group.
1:12:07
SPEAKER_00: You've gotta you you've gotta make yourself the exception of the outgroup if whenever you're gonna be campaigning in that area.
1:12:14
SPEAKER_00: Now, do you think that like democratic policies uh would uh would are they popular in your neck of the woods?
1:12:22
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:12:22
SPEAKER_01: You know, and and I tell you, Andy Bashir, the the Democrat governor of Kentucky says it best.
1:12:28
SPEAKER_01: He said, first of all, he visits eastern Kentucky a lot.
1:12:32
SPEAKER_01: FaceTime is very important for rural America.
1:12:34
SPEAKER_01: They they got to see you.
1:12:36
SPEAKER_01: It's not just the the campaign ads or sending out flyers and stuff.
1:12:40
SPEAKER_01: And you know, Andy Bashir, he'll he'll draw, I think his last re-election, he got into the 40s in eastern Kentucky.
1:12:47
SPEAKER_01: Now think about that.
1:12:49
SPEAKER_01: In the 40s, when Trump was pulling 80, okay?
1:12:52
SPEAKER_01: So um another thing he he talks about, he said, when when I go to eastern Kentucky, I don't talk about Democratic issues, I talk about eastern Kentucky issues.
1:13:02
SPEAKER_01: And so that's where our Democrats, our leadership will come down to rural America, and they're talking about democratic issues versus rural America issues.
1:13:12
SPEAKER_01: And our issues, we want good jobs with benefits.
1:13:15
SPEAKER_01: We don't want expanded Medicare.
1:13:18
SPEAKER_01: We don't want whatever.
1:13:19
SPEAKER_01: We don't want another government program.
1:13:21
SPEAKER_01: We really just want a good job with benefits and good health insurance.
1:13:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:13:26
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, come down there and talk about good jobs for us.
1:13:29
SPEAKER_01: Don't come down, oh, I'm gonna, you know, expand this government program for you.
1:13:34
SPEAKER_01: Same way with farming.
1:13:35
SPEAKER_01: Don't come down and talk to my beef, beef farmers and stuff, talk about, well, we're gonna do a government program to help you out.
1:13:42
SPEAKER_01: No, help me get better prices or lower my cost.
1:13:45
SPEAKER_01: Let me make a catalytic profit.
1:13:49
SPEAKER_00: That's what I really want.
1:13:51
SPEAKER_00: Whenever uh so my my wife, her um she has a lot of family in northeast Ohio, uh Trumbull County, which actually used to be like the bellwether of the bellwether uh counties there.
1:14:04
SPEAKER_00: Uh but we uh we went there uh to to Warren and I think it was twice Camden had uh just been born is in 2023.
1:14:12
SPEAKER_00: And uh I was talking to um uh you know some of the the people that still live there.
1:14:17
SPEAKER_00: They were uh very, very heavily like uh automotive uh manufacturing town.
1:14:23
SPEAKER_00: Um and I think uh NAFTA had uh you know had really done a number on that area.
1:14:28
SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
1:14:29
SPEAKER_00: Uh but there was I was talking to uh to to one of the uh to one of the guys, and he had he was talking about how as soon as his son graduated uh graduated college, he was like, well, yeah, he had to go uh he had to go move away in order to get a job.
1:14:46
SPEAKER_00: And there was just this like resignation in his voice, like there was absolutely nothing here that was gonna come his way.
1:14:55
SPEAKER_00: And so the only hope he had of making a living was to move like, you know, several states away from me.
1:15:02
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:15:03
SPEAKER_01: And you know, rural America, we've always had, you know, certain industries we've never had a lot of, especially the white collar job.
1:15:10
SPEAKER_01: And I'm a prime example of that right now.
1:15:12
SPEAKER_01: My son went to college, but he owns a business and he's a lineman that works in the coal industry, you know, does the electrical work, the lineman stuff.
1:15:20
SPEAKER_01: But my daughter, her degrees in psychology and and um counseling and stuff like that, you know, she lives about three hours away because there's just so many better jobs for her, better paid jobs.
1:15:30
SPEAKER_01: And I knew that when she did that in college, that she'd probably be living away from me.
1:15:34
SPEAKER_01: You know, that that I mean, you know, and I wish there was jobs here that you know, especially when if she if she has babies, I want them close to me.
1:15:42
SPEAKER_01: That's just human nature.
1:15:43
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:15:44
SPEAKER_01: You can understand that you know uh and you know, Democrat Party's not done a lot to offer rural America, you know, some choices to help alleviate that situation.
1:15:56
SPEAKER_01: Just balance all we you know needs to be some balance in the force.
1:16:00
SPEAKER_01: I I know we've talked about that between rural and urban.
1:16:03
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:16:04
SPEAKER_01: Mm-hmm.
1:16:05
SPEAKER_01: And most Democrat policies are very urban-centric.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:16:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh so what what are some uh rural policies that Democrats can kind of push forward?
1:16:14
SPEAKER_01: Oh gosh.
1:16:15
SPEAKER_01: Well, first of all, on economic okay.
1:16:18
SPEAKER_01: Now, this is where Trump just rang so true was, you know, when he first ran in 2016, I think he's kind of a ban on.
1:16:26
SPEAKER_01: You know, why why is USDA in DC and not in ag, you know, some big ag center and stuff.
1:16:32
SPEAKER_01: A lot of those jobs, decentralizing government and stuff, getting those out.
1:16:36
SPEAKER_01: Um definitely also it seems like rural America, we get the leftovers on economic development projects.
1:16:43
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, they won't put you know something that's that's very polluting in rural America, you know, whether that be a uh, you know, some kind of energy plant, pipelines, uh dumps, that's another thing we've had to hear local, you know, outside corporations want to buy up land and and make it a dump for urban-centric areas.
1:17:02
SPEAKER_01: Um you know, another thing, education's not equal.
1:17:06
SPEAKER_01: Virginia, our funding system, um, you know, we don't have the same quality education.
1:17:11
SPEAKER_01: Now we do great in test scores, don't get me wrong, and stuff, but the opportunity's not so definitely and also understand how funding works at the local level to help us and not put us in a in a bind.
1:17:23
SPEAKER_01: Sometimes they'll offer money, but if there's a match, if you ain't got the match, it don't help you.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_00: Right.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:17:29
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
1:17:30
SPEAKER_00: That that makes sense.
1:17:31
SPEAKER_00: So it there are things that uh that Democrats can do.
1:17:35
SPEAKER_00: It's not a completely lost cause, you don't think.
1:17:37
SPEAKER_00: Oh no.
1:17:38
SPEAKER_00: No, no.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:17:39
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:17:40
SPEAKER_00: That's you know, and I actually I think uh another thing that Democrats can do, you need to speak, you need to speak the language.
1:17:48
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
1:17:49
SPEAKER_00: Uh and I whenever I I think back uh in my uh, you know, like reddest of Republican days, the things that like meant a whole lot to me were freedom and uh and and being able to have access to the American dream.
1:18:04
SPEAKER_00: You know, that was like just that's that's all I need.
1:18:07
SPEAKER_01: Quick question for your family was guns.
1:18:09
SPEAKER_01: How how important was 2A for you and your family and stuff?
1:18:13
SPEAKER_00: Okay, so uh I I am the uh like the the black sheep of the family.
1:18:19
SPEAKER_00: Uh I've I I've I shot a gun one time.
1:18:22
SPEAKER_00: It was a uh it was a 12 gauge.
1:18:24
SPEAKER_00: Uh uh and I was so young that like my arm could barely reach the nerve.
1:18:30
SPEAKER_00: And whenever I shot it, it just flipped and like landed on the ground and I like ran away.
1:18:37
SPEAKER_00: So that was that was all I needed.
1:18:39
SPEAKER_00: I was like, no, I'm I'm good with guns.
1:18:41
SPEAKER_02: Trying tobacco, getting tobacco, uh getting sick off tobacco the first time.
1:18:44
SPEAKER_02: Exactly.
1:18:47
SPEAKER_00: But now my sister, though, loves guns.
1:18:49
SPEAKER_00: She and I, you know, I I I think she has like two or three.
1:18:53
SPEAKER_00: And my my dad was a police officer.
1:18:55
SPEAKER_00: You know, like did grow up, but did grow up around guns.
1:18:59
SPEAKER_00: And I do remember that the Second Amendment, like for you can get it from my cold dead hands.
1:19:05
SPEAKER_00: That was that was definitely a strong sentiment.
1:19:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I've got guns.
1:19:08
SPEAKER_01: My son's got guns.
1:19:09
SPEAKER_01: I mean, uh put this way, in rural America, and truly, and this is where the the Democrat board doesn't work, we viewed guns more as a tool.
1:19:17
SPEAKER_01: I mean, really you did.
1:19:18
SPEAKER_01: On the farm, you had them for varmic control.
1:19:21
SPEAKER_01: And here's another thing.
1:19:22
SPEAKER_01: I I just was talking to another fellow Democrat who who was a lot like me, as far as we just want responsible.
1:19:27
SPEAKER_01: I don't want guns into mentally ill people's hands or criminals.
1:19:32
SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants a heck, even most mega person don't want that.
1:19:35
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:19:36
SPEAKER_01: But um, you know, if you live in Blackwater, Virginia, which is in Lee County, you might be an hour, hour 15 minutes from a cop being at your house if you called 911.
1:19:47
SPEAKER_01: So see, we we don't live in the same world as suburban, urban areas.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:19:52
SPEAKER_01: It might be an hour and a half away.
1:19:54
SPEAKER_01: So if you think about being a single mom, strange car pulls up in your driveway, two drunk men get out.
1:20:02
SPEAKER_01: Let me tell you, the the only law you have is actually having a gun or something to protect yourself.
1:20:08
SPEAKER_01: Because that cop an hour and a half away is not going to help you.
1:20:12
SPEAKER_01: So see, that whole mentality is so different.
1:20:15
SPEAKER_01: Uh living in rural America versus urban, where you think about I call a cop, he'll be here in 15 minutes.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:21
SPEAKER_01: Um, so it's it we do view them more as self-defense.
1:20:25
SPEAKER_01: We do view them more as a a utility tool.
1:20:28
SPEAKER_01: And and, you know, do I have assault weapons?
1:20:31
SPEAKER_01: No.
1:20:31
SPEAKER_01: Do I have family members that have them?
1:20:32
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:33
SPEAKER_01: I don't have any problem with them them having them.
1:20:36
SPEAKER_00: Yeah, uh assault weapons are one of those.
1:20:38
SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
1:20:40
SPEAKER_01: I don't have them.
1:20:41
SPEAKER_01: But like I say, I got family that does, and you know, they're responsible gun owners.
1:20:45
SPEAKER_01: They have gun safes, and and you know, I that don't bother me.
1:20:48
SPEAKER_03: Yeah.
1:20:49
SPEAKER_01: But I don't want somebody that's mentally ill um, you know, having that too.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:20:53
SPEAKER_01: Oh, yeah.
1:20:54
SPEAKER_01: And that's where we're going to have a discussion of how do we keep it out of hands that we don't want, and just have an honest discussion.
1:21:01
SPEAKER_01: That's where everybody gets entrenched in their position and it and and it gets stuck.
1:21:06
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:21:07
SPEAKER_00: Why do you think uh the Second Amendment has such a stronghold in the rural area?
1:21:13
SPEAKER_01: Aaron Ross Powell Well, but because and and I get on to the Democrat Party, okay, I want my I want your son, I want my grandson to go to a safe, safe school.
1:21:24
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
1:21:25
SPEAKER_01: And I don't care how we do it.
1:21:28
SPEAKER_01: I want our schools to be safe.
1:21:30
SPEAKER_01: And just the there's so so so many times the Democrat Party, well, we need gun control.
1:21:35
SPEAKER_01: They just, it's an automatic, it's like, well, that might be part of the solution, but that's not the total solution.
1:21:43
SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
1:21:44
SPEAKER_01: Just have just have a little bit, it's it's a complex issue and address it as a complex issue.
1:21:49
SPEAKER_01: Gun control is not necessarily gonna make your school safer.
1:21:52
SPEAKER_01: It's gonna be a combination of things that's gonna make your school safe for your child.
1:21:56
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, we rural America hears, you know, every time there's something bad happening, well, we need gun control.
1:22:01
SPEAKER_01: We need to start banning this and banning that.
1:22:03
SPEAKER_01: And so everybody gets entrenched in their positions.
1:22:07
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:22:08
SPEAKER_00: Uh I get that.
1:22:09
SPEAKER_00: And like with the banning, I I hear a lot, well, if you ban guns, the only uh people will have guns are bad guys.
1:22:18
SPEAKER_01: Oh I know.
1:22:18
SPEAKER_01: Essentially, it's it's gonna And you know, and I I tell people all the time, um, you know, as far as you know, that being something, I mean, that horse has already left the barn.
1:22:29
SPEAKER_01: I mean, there's so many out there.
1:22:30
SPEAKER_01: I mean Right.
1:22:31
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:22:32
SPEAKER_01: Um, you know, and my but I'm also why don't Democrats promote gun safety?
1:22:36
SPEAKER_01: Why don't they promote gun safety hunting classes in high schools?
1:22:40
SPEAKER_01: I mean, why you know, because everybody's for gun safety.
1:22:43
SPEAKER_01: I don't care how mad you are.
1:22:44
SPEAKER_01: You want your child to be safe around guns.
1:22:47
SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, there's a lot, it's a complex issue.
1:22:50
SPEAKER_01: And and I wish the Democratic Party would treat it more like a complex issue instead of a one-size-fit-all.
1:22:56
SPEAKER_01: Um, well, if we do this, we're gonna solve this problem.
1:22:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, no.
1:22:59
SPEAKER_01: Let's be honest.
1:23:01
SPEAKER_00: No.
1:23:01
SPEAKER_00: Uh you think any type of When you're talking about like especially like uh gun or gun violence in schools and things like that, until you get uh any kind of handle on mental health care.
1:23:12
unknown: Trevor Burrus, Jr.
1:23:12
SPEAKER_01: Well, see I think you gotta start with mental health, and that's probably the issue you need to start with.
1:23:17
SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
1:23:18
SPEAKER_00: Uh no, I I 100% agree.
1:23:20
SPEAKER_00: I these uh all these um all these shootings, it's not a person the person who is doing it is someone who has been bullied or neglected or abused to the point to where they, you know, they feel like they have no yeah, exactly.
1:23:37
SPEAKER_00: They feel like they have no other choice.
1:23:38
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:23:39
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, and Lord, I we're not no experts on that and stuff, but everything we've casually read about and stuff with the mass shooters and stuff, most most of them I've ever read about had a very well documented history of mental illness.
1:23:52
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I know there might be exception out there, but everything I've read and until you know, and that's another thing in rural America.
1:23:58
SPEAKER_01: We we have absolutely no resources for mental health.
1:24:02
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah.
1:24:04
SPEAKER_00: You were whenever you were saying that your uh that your daughter, uh you were like, yeah, I knew that she was gonna have to go a few hours away.
1:24:11
SPEAKER_00: That was uh whenever you said that was literally a thing of like and that is to drug in this detection.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_01: Same way.
1:24:15
SPEAKER_01: Drug addiction.
1:24:16
SPEAKER_01: You know, we we have no drug addiction health care, we have no mental health health care, and and we're struggling just to keep our local ER open.
1:24:24
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:24:25
SPEAKER_00: Is is drug addiction a uh is is that a pretty bad thing?
1:24:29
SPEAKER_01: Um another thing that the Democrat Party lost rural America was the opioid epidemic in the 2010s and you know it devastated rural America.
1:24:38
SPEAKER_01: You know, if you ever watched Dope Sick or read the book that uh Macy's you know, she's running for Congress now, came out with Pantangap, Virginia, which is right next to me, was the epicenter of opiate marketing.
1:24:50
SPEAKER_01: And um, you know, it was they targeted rural America, they targeted the coal fields specifically.
1:24:56
SPEAKER_01: Really?
1:24:57
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, because I didn't know that.
1:24:58
SPEAKER_01: Well, let me tell you why.
1:24:59
SPEAKER_01: It's very simple.
1:25:01
SPEAKER_01: We have a very high percent back then, go back 15 years, percent of population that either had Medica Medicaid that covered 100% of drugs, or union minor insurance that covered a hundred percent of drugs.
1:25:18
SPEAKER_01: So where do you want to sell your drugs?
1:25:20
SPEAKER_01: Places that it costs the the end user nothing.
1:25:25
SPEAKER_01: Okay?
1:25:26
SPEAKER_01: So they marketed to doctors um pain care as being preventative.
1:25:32
SPEAKER_01: This is non-addictive.
1:25:34
SPEAKER_01: So they you know, there was a lot of doctors that handed it out like tic-tacks, like candy bars.
1:25:39
SPEAKER_01: And he got addicted.
1:25:40
SPEAKER_01: And see, it was 100% paid for by either insurance or Medicaid.
1:25:45
SPEAKER_01: So the families involved and all the opiates and stuff, they got billions, and and we uh saw families lose family members, you know, that got killed.
1:25:55
SPEAKER_01: Uh-huh.
1:25:56
SPEAKER_01: And all the while you had Democratic leadership taking big pharma campaign donations.
1:26:02
SPEAKER_00: I know.
1:26:03
SPEAKER_00: I I think I can I th I think it's one hand, but I that's still a lot of people.
1:26:09
SPEAKER_00: The number of friends that I've had die from overdoses.
1:26:14
SPEAKER_00: I it's it's multiple people.
1:26:16
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26:17
unknown: Yeah.
1:26:18
SPEAKER_01: And and you know, and I don't blame the doctors.
1:26:20
SPEAKER_01: They were lied to with fake studies.
1:26:21
SPEAKER_01: I mean, that's why they had the lawsuit.
1:26:23
SPEAKER_01: And then right now we're sitting here, they've had the lawsuit, they got billions of dollars in compensation.
1:26:28
SPEAKER_01: I don't see none of it here in rural Southwest Virginia.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
1:26:33
SPEAKER_01: So it was our people that died.
1:26:35
SPEAKER_01: There was a lawsuit supposed to be compensation to punish the big pharma, and none of it that I can see.
1:26:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean, yeah.
1:26:43
SPEAKER_00: We've been um way too long.
1:26:48
SPEAKER_00: No, man, this has been so much fun.
1:26:50
SPEAKER_00: We're gonna have to do this again.
1:26:51
SPEAKER_01: Well, I'm hoping I I'm gonna pitch this to you.
1:26:53
SPEAKER_01: I hope we can maybe do some shows with some of your guests and stuff, you know, to have that, you know, very rural western part of the state versus the eastern part where you're at with Norfolk and stuff and just have that dynamic.
1:27:04
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, dude.
1:27:05
SPEAKER_00: I would I would love to, man.
1:27:07
SPEAKER_00: Uh yeah, you're you're talking about like Candace running stuff.
1:27:09
SPEAKER_00: I I I I love this.
1:27:11
SPEAKER_00: So yeah, absolutely, man.
1:27:12
SPEAKER_00: We we got to do this again.
1:27:13
SPEAKER_01: Well, good, buddy.
1:27:14
SPEAKER_01: Well, I sure do appreciate being on and everything and appreciate the opportunity.
1:27:17
SPEAKER_01: Like I say, and I hope I'm sorry I I rambled on too much.
1:27:21
SPEAKER_00: Um You stuff your sorries in a sack, man.
1:27:24
SPEAKER_00: This was exactly what I was this was exactly what I was wanting, man.
1:27:28
SPEAKER_00: I yeah.
1:27:29
SPEAKER_00: This was a lot of fun.
1:27:31
SPEAKER_01: Well, buddy, until next time now.
1:27:33
SPEAKER_00: All right, John.
1:27:34
SPEAKER_00: Thanks for acting up with me, man.
1:27:35
SPEAKER_00: Okay, thank you now.