There is hillbilly Ohio. Huntington is just across the border and even in Columbus you get a lot of refugees from Appalachia, including my girlfriend. But he’s from fucking Middletown. I’m from the Dayton area with a grandparent who grew up in West Virginia myself, but given that one of my partners grew up in part in rural Tennessee, and even my ex in Lexington was far more Appalachian than I could ever be, I understand that I’m not someone who can claim this.

What gets to me is how Middletown does give him a sob story. It’s been hit hard by the decline of the rust belt. Like, it’s rough by Dayton standards. But he doesn’t want to acknowledge that the money ghouls destroyed his home state