The Renegade Sheriffs

My parents and siblings live in this county. I moved from home before they emigrated there, but as my dad tells it, it sounds like the small Oregon town from Rambo, with the sherriff having near untouchable authority.

The tragic part for me is that, despite the endemic poverty in the area, the chief talking points in local politics just mirror the national ones--nearly irrelevant tripe about gun grabbing and other nationalist fear mongering, with rarely a word about how to solve the dearth of opportunities (because being poor is always your fault).

Then again, poor Southerners have nearly always been manipulated like that. The book 'White Trash' is worth a read here, but southern leaders focusing local Animus at the 'enemies' in DC while ignoring gross under development in their communities is a storied tradition. Sort of reminiscent of N. Korea, though scale is obv. different.