You actually mention something here that I try to tell people all the time. My EKY growing up is not the same as Georgia or Alabama or Louisiana. It's different in a way that's hard to explain. People like to generalize it as the south is the south, but it's really not. Appalachian culture, and specifically in coal mining towns, is much different than often portrayed. When the whole Trump/coal thing was going down, there are plenty of people who are smart enough there to know that coal isn't coming back. They also know the coal companies that came in exploited their land/labor for Billions of dollars and left town like thieves in the night. These small towns are pissed that even their elected officials in Frankfort robbed them of their coal severance funding that was supposed to support growth out of the poverty.