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Prostate of Dorian Gray's avatar

To save anyone the trouble of reading his book, the problem with those of us from Appalachia is "bootstraps." There's not a single new insight to be found. It's the same John Birch bullshit it's always been.

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meh's avatar

And whining about how jobs have changed and they don’t want to retrain, no sir. They want their coal mining jobs back….

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dave in texas's avatar

Hard to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if rich fuckers keep stealing your boots.

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VogonPoeticLicense's avatar

A lotta boots these days don't even have straps. What then?

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42tontom's avatar

Well, I reckon you better get to strap makin’

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Wokey McWokeface's avatar

Apparently being exploited and then abandoned by dirty industry causes an epidemic of bad work ethic.

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Brando's avatar

Poverty in general can be soul crushing. It changes your psychology and can drive you towards bad decisions. It's not wrong to suggest that poverty is more complicated that "need more money" but the Right simplifies it to "it's your own fault, you can stop being poor if you stop doing stupid things" which is what people want to tell themselves so they don't have to feel sympathy.

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Oblio's Cap's avatar

Black lung will do that to ya.

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Brando's avatar

I swear there had already been numerous articles in places like the National Review that said the same shit. It's all "you're poor because of your character".

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