Painful Truth: The Unhealthiest County in America Voted Overwhelmingly for Trump, Who Will Only Make Things Worse @alternet:
"With its soaring death rates, widespread illness, out-of-control drug abuse, and high rates of unemployment, Union County is in desperate need of a turnaround, including more social services, funding, and development—a longshot with any administration in power. The county is also 74 percent white. And perhaps unsurprisingly, in the 2016 presidential election, its citizens voted overwhelmingly for Donald Trump by a staggering 80.2 percent. To be clear, Trump won every faction of white voters, from the uneducated to the college educated, rich and poor, across gender lines. Those voting patterns say less about Trump than about white receptivity to a sales pitch steeped in racism and xenophobia. Despite Trump’s pan-white socioeconomic appeal, Union County is the kind of place news editors persist in falsely pinpointing as the loci for Trump support. It’s a power move, really; a way of punching down to avoid holding their own class accountable for voting with white supremacy as a primary, though more quietly spoken, motivator. The difference between Trump votes cast by residents of Union County and those from white America’s upper classes is that for the former, the decision will be far more consequential. Nine months in, there is already proof the result is an even greater imbalance of life and death."
