What’s it like to be a liberal in a conservative state or a fantasy writer who’s also an English teacher at a time when books are being banned in some states?

Terry Bartley is a journalism, literature, and English teacher at Scott High School in Madison, West Virginia, and writer of the upcoming collection of short stories, Tyranny of the Fey.

Terry is the host of the podcast “Most Writers are Fans,” about the intersection between writing and fandom. He has professionally written for the Coal Valley News and Screenrant. He’s won awards for writing and broadcasting from the West Virginia Associated Press, the National Broadcasting Society, and MarCom. Terry has a B.A. in English from the University of Phoenix and an M.A. in English Education from Western Governor’s University.

Living in West Virginia, Terry is an unabashed liberal who worked for the Obama Campaign in 2012. He’s done a lot of community and economic development work in Southern West Virginia, as well.

Here are some questions we discussed with Terry:

Q. Well, Terry, what’s it like being a liberal in conservative, Trump loving West Virginia?

Q. What did you do for the Obama campaign? What was that like?

Q. You’re a fantasy writer. Is it a fantasy to think that Joe Manchin will ever vote like a Democrat? Is he vulnerable in WVA?

Q. Tell us about your community and economic development work in Southern WVA.

Q. Let’s talk about your podcast. What’s it all about?

Q. Now let’s talk about Tyranny of the Fey. Tell us about it.

Q. What is there about colonization and institutional oppression that prompted you to write this book?

Q. When will it come out and where will people be able to find it?

Q. What are your thoughts about the effort by Ron DeSantis and others to restrict what books can be carried in school libraries and courses that can be taught in school?

Q. Is it Trump or DeSantis in West Virginia? Or somebody else?

Q. If Trump is convicted and sent to prison, would he still carry West Virginia?

Q. West Virginia is a pretty religious state, right? How do those fundamentalists justify in supporting this man?

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Show Notes

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Show Transcript

Living Liberal in a Ruby Red State

[00:00:00] Bob Gatty: Hey, what's it like to be a liberal in a conservative state or a fantasy writer who's also an English teacher at a time when books are being banned in some states? That's our guest today, so stay with us. 

[00:00:15] Terry Bartley is a journalism, literature and English teacher at Scott High School in Madison, West Virginia and writer of the upcoming collection of short stories, Tyranny of the Fey. Terry is the host of the podcast, "Most Writers are Fans" about the intersection between writing and fandom. He has professionally written for the Cole Valley News and Screen Rant.

[00:00:42] He's won awards for writing and broadcasting from the West Virginia Associated Press, the National Broadcasting. Society and MarCom. Terry has a BA in English from the University of Phoenix and an MA in English Education from Western Governor's University .Living in West Virginia, Terry is an unabashed liberal who worked for the Obama campaign in 2012.

[00:01:08] He's done a lot of community and economic development work in Southern West Virginia as well. 

[00:01:14] Hey, Terry, thanks for joining us on the Lean to the Left Podcast. 

[00:01:17] Terry Bartley: Yeah, thanks for having me. Happy to be here. 

[00:01:19] Bob Gatty: You really got me when we were corresponding back and forth and I, sent you a question.

[00:01:27] What do you want to be on the show. And you said one thing I'd really like to talk about is being a liberal in a conservative state. So now's your chance, pal. What's, it like being a liberal in West Virginia? 

[00:01:43] Terry Bartley: Yeah I think it's a lot of things in, my life I've done various different kinds of organizing work to try to like figure out what exactly is going on in this state.

[00:01:54] And, I think it's interesting to be somebody that's grown up here. Because you understand where a lot of the mentality comes from. I think that a lot of people view this state as very conservative, but a big part of that is that people don't have jobs and they, and they just don't understand like why everything is shifting away from how they've always lived their life.

[00:02:17] And as somebody who has always been more progressive, has always been trying to be more accepting and also reach beyond what we've always done. Like the, what we thought of as tradition. Cuz like I live in Boone County, which is like very much the coal fields of West Virginia, right?

[00:02:34] And we think of like coal mining as like part of our culture, which it traditionally has been, but it's almost like people don't wanna move past that because they're so stuck in the idea of this being like who we are. And the idea of figuring out a different kind of economic way to move forward is like last for me and like it has been for a long time.

[00:02:58] So I think that has been an interesting struggle of like, how can you economically succeed in an environment where like the thing that we do is no longer profitable. I think that's honestly where a lot of the conservatism comes from in the state. 

[00:03:12] Bob Gatty: Is there a lot of fear about that? About the recognition that hey we need to, adapt.

[00:03:19] Times are changing, we need to adapt. But it's very scary. Is that an attitude or is it not that so much? 

[00:03:28] Terry Bartley: Yeah, I mean it's interesting cause I remember whenever I first started working, five or so years ago, I was doing a lot of economic development kind of stuff in the southern part of the state.

[00:03:38] And there was a lot of mentality of, that. A very much we, if you talk about anything other than coal, they're like what about coal? And our response was always like, what about coal? Like we're not taking it away like it's going away on its own without us. Like we just need other things to replace it.

[00:03:54] But I think if we have gotten to a place now where it is very much like now that we don't have the cool jobs, now that they've already left, I think people are open to But what else can we do? What else is there? And they're ready for anything. I think 

[00:04:09] Bob Gatty: I, have a frequent guest on my show.

[00:04:11] His name is Jack Kerfoot. He's a former oil industry executive who has, really changed his focus and he's now a big advocate for sustainable energy, wind, solar, and so on. And he talks a lot about, about the fact that coal is going away and it's going to go away even more than it has in the past so far.

[00:04:44] He always says people who work in coal mines have the skills to work on, offshore wind facilities, for example. Is that true though? Do people, is it really practical to say, Hey man, you worked in a. Coal mine for 30 years. Now it's time to go get a job working on a wind farm somewhere. Really?

[00:05:14] Terry Bartley: I think the thing that's hard for people to understand is just how much coal jobs paid here. Like people here, like I knew people that made literally six figures as a coal miner, like not as a supervisor really, but as a coal miner. And that's like a huge salary for this area.

[00:05:30] Sure. And they're just jobs that replace that. So like whenever people say oh, we're gonna replace coal with this or with that is not a one for one trade. So I mean something like, ah, a wind farm, like I think they pro likely do have the skills to do it, but like it's not gonna pay as well. Yeah.

[00:05:45] And it just isn't, yeah. 

[00:05:47] Bob Gatty: Also, it would require probably people uprooting themselves and moving somewhere else too. How many wind farms do you have? 

[00:05:55] Terry Bartley: That's honestly what's been happening a lot is, like the reason like the coal jobs aren't coming back.

[00:06:01] And the truth is, even if they would come back is not useful because a lot of the coal miners have already moved away to find other jobs. 

[00:06:07] Bob Gatty: Okay. What did you do for the Obama campaign, 

[00:06:14] Terry Bartley: yeah, so I worked on the 2012 reelection campaign. At the time I was working at a call center in Charleston and I was doing like tech support stuff.

[00:06:23] I had applied to be a fellow for the Obama campaign. I'm just on a whim, like I'd got an email from the campaign cause I'd always been a Democrat. So I was just on the campaign emails and I applied on a whim. I got the offer to be a fellow. And it was like a hard decision because being a fellow you don't get paid anything.

[00:06:39] It was like a glorified internship. But I decided to do it cause it felt like a once in a lifetime kind of opportunity to like travel and do these different things. So I eventually chose to do it, but then once I got there, I realized that I was as qualified as the other, like bill organizers, the paid staff.

[00:06:57] So I then I quickly applied to be one of those. I, got it like within a week. And I was a field organizer in Parma, Ohio, like right outside of Cleveland. And I did that for three, four months. 

[00:07:09] Bob Gatty: Okay. Was that a, an experience that you count as a important part of your background now? 

[00:07:20] Terry Bartley: Yeah I think it's the thing that I think back on and it feels like one of my biggest accomplishments because I had a hand how, small or how big, I don't know.

[00:07:27] But I had a hand in electing a president of the United States, 

[00:07:30] I did a lot of like volunteer organizing and I got to see a lot of really passionate people, do this work for somebody that they believed in. And, I think that what really changed in my head when they're working for the campaign is this idea that I don't want to do a job just for the sake of getting paid. I wanna do a job, like to help people and to do things that are like worth it. Like I wanna be fulfilled in the job that I work. And I think that it's been a thing I've really had struggle with after that because it's hard to find a job quite as impactful as a presidential campaign.

[00:08:03] Bob Gatty: You, mentioned a minute ago that you did some community and economic development work in Southern West Virginia. Exactly What did you do? And, 

[00:08:15] Terry Bartley: yeah, so I worked for this organization called the West Virginia Community Development Hub. We did what they call community development, which is we go in and we get volunteers together.

[00:08:24] We build like volunteer teams. And we would help them. They would each pick a, an economic sector that they wanted to work towards, and then those teens would then develop those sectors. And essentially we were just finding different options to increase the economy of the areas.

[00:08:41] So like we'd have a tourism team that would work to like open up different tourism opportunities and identify like what they needed to, flush out that industry. We'd have teams that would work on like energy, and they would try to figure out where are some other energy jobs that they could pursue, or like tech, and like what kind of tech businesses could they open?

[00:09:00] So that kind of stuff. And it was a lot of really just getting people empowered to feel like they had some hand in their future. Cause I think that when you live somewhere like here, a lot of times you feel like you have no control over your life because a lot of your life is determined by your geography, and, I think that a lot of what we did with that job was tell people that they do have some say in it. Like they have some power in determining what happens in their area.

[00:09:29] Bob Gatty: Yeah. As I mentioned, that is really important and especially in an area like that. You're a fantasy writer, Terry and when I read that part of your resume, i just wondered if it's a fantasy to think that Joe Manchin will ever vote like a Democrat? 

[00:09:54] Terry Bartley: Yeah.

[00:09:55] So to answer your question I, think that he does 90% of the time he votes for Biden's judges, he votes for administration officials. Like he votes for the Democrats 90% of the time. Yeah. When it's just their really important issues that he doesn't vote for, right? 

[00:10:10] Bob Gatty: Yeah, that's right.

[00:10:13] That's right. It's, a really important ones that, that he, sometimes doesn't and drives the rest of the. Democratic party freaking nuts. And what, about him? Is he in a real strong position? Is he vulnerable? Is he gonna run for president? What, yeah. What do you know?

[00:10:38] Terry Bartley: I feel like it's, you could make a career out of trying to predict what Joe Manchin is gonna do, because you're never gonna be Right. It's hard to understand his logic ever. But I do think, I like to think that he often believes the things he says, whether or not he often believes the things he, whether or not makes he senses, doesn't always fit.

[00:11:00] Like I believe that he actually does care about the deficit. I don't know why. Yeah. I don't know why he thinks that matters, but I think he really does care about it. And nobody's ever accused Joe Manchin of making sense. So I don't think I should start now. 

[00:11:16] Bob Gatty: What about his constituents?

[00:11:18] Do they care about the deficit? 

[00:11:20] Terry Bartley: I think they're supposed to. Yeah. Because I think that a lot of West Virginians are a lot of retired individuals. Cause that's a lot of who's still here. Sure. And I think that a lot of those people have that like Reaganomics mentality to it, where it's yeah, bring the deficit down and the economy will turn around.

[00:11:38] I don't think they really understand the logistics of it because they were told years ago, and honestly just to dig into this for a second, I think that a lot of people in West Virginia have been manipulated for so long by politicians, by corporations that they just don't know what to believe anymore, but they believe that things that they were told like 20 years ago Uhhuh, I think if that still informs the way that they vote now.

[00:12:03] Bob Gatty: Yeah, I imagine that's true. All right. Let's talk a little bit about your podcast. Tell me what it's all about.

[00:12:12] Terry Bartley: The idea is I invite other writers on and where I'm a writer, we talk about like their writing journey and like what I've got them into it.

[00:12:20] And then I use the term writer very broadly, so I also talk to like game designers and musicians, like songwriters, things like that. Because I feel like there's a lot of overlap in any kind of writing. So I Okay. You talk about what they got it, like what draws them to it. Cuz if you're a writer for some reason, you feel like the story you have to tell, like other people wanna read.

[00:12:41] So we do a lot of what drew you to that? What made you feel that way? And then we also talk a lot about like different topics and different tropes and genres also. So it's really just a bit of back and forth of oh you, write this way. I also did that in my writing, and we do a bit of we, relate to each other and I think it's a good podcast.

[00:13:04] What it has evolved into is a good podcast for other like indie creatives to learn about, like how to promote. How to grow, things like that because we do a lot of nitty gritty, dig da, dig into what kind of marketing do you do? What is it like to go to cons by yourself and carry boxes of your own books?

[00:13:22] Like how is that different than if you had the support of a bigger publisher? And that has been kinda take into that. 

[00:13:29] Bob Gatty: That sounds interesting. I, you guys check it out if you're interested in, writing and want to hear about that kind of thing. I think it sounds like an interesting thing.

[00:13:39] And so then that brings us to your book. You, mentioned in, in some material, you sent me something about colonization and institutional oppression, which prompted you to write your book and I, need to understand what that is. 

[00:13:59] Terry Bartley: Yeah, so I think within the past like, especially like post covid, whenever the big Black Lives Matter stuff happened over that summer and not that was new, but it was whenever really got into the mainstream.

[00:14:11] I think that we really started as a country reckoning with. This idea of institutional oppression. And like what I think about a lot is there's this neighborhood in Charleston, which is the capital of West Virginia it's the west side of Charleston. People often will talk about how much crime is there, and it's just like a thing that people say.

[00:14:27] And they've said it for a long, time. And it wasn't until a few years ago that I realized that the crime there statistically isn't actually that much more than in any other part of Charleston. There's just a lot of black people that live there. And it's a thing that I didn't realize that it was so built into, like the racism was so institutional that we didn't even realize we were perpetuating it, 

[00:14:47] Bob Gatty: huh? Yeah. I see what you're saying. So that brings up a whole bunch of questions about things like police reformed in, in, in Charleston in, in, your area. Are there issues where people are being abused by the cops when they get when they get arrested if they happen to be African American?

[00:15:15] You're having those kinds of problems. 

[00:15:18] Terry Bartley: You don't hear about it a ton here. And I think that it's just because our black population is pretty small comparatively to another area. Okay. Okay. That's not to say it doesn't happen, I think that you just don't hear about it as much. Sure. And I think that it's a thing, there's this thing that happens in this state that I've noticed, especially in my area where, like in Boone County where I live, there's maybe four to five black families that live here.

[00:15:41] And that's not even an exaggeration. It's probably just legitimate. And really people tend to say I'm not racist because like I know these people, but then they talked about how like they're our black people, you know what I'm saying? They've talked about them. How like, these, they're different because they're ours.

[00:15:58] Like they're our friends and I don't think they realize that is racist to say these black people are good. They're not like these other black people. Yeah. And, I think that it's, and I don't even think that it's malicious like in intense, like they're trying to say a compliment to these other people.

[00:16:16] But I think that they don't really see that it's like harmful broadly. 

[00:16:22] Bob Gatty: I live in, Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and of course, which I also am a liberal in a red state just as you are. And I think that probably South Carolina might even be worse than West Virginia in a lot of ways.

[00:16:41] Anyway, there was this guy African American guy who was the chair of the local Democratic party here, and I got to be good friends with him. I was doing a bunch of work with them and one day, I don't know, we were having this conversation and, we were talking about racism and I made some comment like I'm the least racist guy.

[00:17:08] He and I started saying something like that and he stopped me and he looked at me, please don't say that. And, then I caught myself and I thought, that really is a dumb thing to be telling this guy. And I think I put 'em off and I didn't mean to, I was trying to be positive. But he took it the wrong way.

[00:17:33] He took it opposite way. And, I, and coming from his standpoint, I could see that 

[00:17:40] Terry Bartley: Anyway. Yeah. I think the thing that we've learned over the past few years is that to not be racist is actually like acknowledging that you are racist in a lot of ways that you don't see.

[00:17:49] Bob Gatty: There's, stuff that, yeah there's stuff that, that was built into your psyche when you were a little kid, I think, 

[00:18:00] Terry Bartley: and yeah, I think that you're gonna mess up still like we, we all are. But I think that being able to like, listen whenever people say this is wrong, that you did this thing, and then understand why, and then learn from it. I think that's what being not racist actually is, like being able to listen.

[00:18:17] Bob Gatty: You're right. And that's one reason why I focus my podcast on social issues, including racism, sexism and other types of prejudicial attitudes. I don't know. I just think that if we talk about things like this and try to work together and overcome some of these attitudes.

[00:18:42] I just think that's a positive thing, and that's what I'm trying to do. 

[00:18:47] Terry Bartley: So yeah I'm a queer person that lives in a very red state, right? That's not always easy. And I, yeah, it's not have to navigate this world. Accepting that people are gonna say things that are gonna be offensive to me sometimes.

[00:19:02] And I think that sort of learning to pick your battles and to not always correct people. Yeah. When it might not be safe. Yeah. But whenever you do trust somebody, like doing it, like I think that our responsibility is allies like to the, to like people of color is just make ourselves people that they feel comfortable correcting making ourselves people that they feel like they can trust and not be like in danger by talking to us about this stuff.

[00:19:26] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Tell me about your book that you're working on. It's coming out in August, I think you said. 

[00:19:33] Terry Bartley: Yeah. So Tyranny of the Fay is a collection of short stories set in the same fantasy world. It stars three of queer women, all of which have different love stories and different sort of written in different ways in the book.

[00:19:46] And they're all like looking for adventure, like looking for ways to break out of their life. In, in, again, very different ways that they wanna do that and they accomplished that. And even that honestly speaks a lot to they always hit it right while, and as being, as somebody that's lived in West Virginia, especially like very rural West Virginia, for much of my life I've always been looking for that adventure looking for that thing that I can break out and find something new and different to do.

[00:20:12] So I think that this will speak to a lot of people that have similar backgrounds to me, that have always felt like maybe they didn't quite fit in where they lived and they. Wanna try to find the people, they wanna find their people find the people that they can connect with. 

[00:20:24] Bob Gatty: Where'd the name come from?

[00:20:26] Terry Bartley: Couple of different places. So, Feys are like really hot right now in fantasy, so I wanted to chase that trend a little bit. But also the Fey tends to talk about like elves and things like that. The elves in my world are the colonizers. Like it's a different realm. They're having a magical energy crisis to kinda like play on what we are experiencing right now, and they have to find somewhere else to go to.

[00:20:51] So they find a super magical world full of various kinds of indigenous peoples, and they choose to invade and colonize this world. And then so, that's part of the story is, that happening? But then we pick up mostly a couple hundred years later where we see the impacts of that, where the elves have them left, but then they've still touched every aspect of culture.

[00:21:16] The language that they speak is Elvin. Like where we, we speak English because the British colonized where we live. So, that's how I it's, been interesting to play on what would a magical world be like if the things that happened in our world happened there. 

[00:21:32] Bob Gatty: You have quite an imagination, don't you?

[00:21:34] Terry Bartley: If you think about it it's, a play on our world. I don't know how creative it is.

[00:21:38] Bob Gatty: Okay so the book's coming out in August people can find it Where? On Amazon and so on. 

[00:21:47] Terry Bartley: Yeah, it's for pre-order now. You can pre-order it in any independent bookstore that distributes with Ingram, which is like the main indie book store distributor, but it is also on Amazon.

[00:21:56] It's also on any other website. The audio book will be recorded now. That'll be available on Audible and, Apple soon. 

[00:22:03] Bob Gatty: Oh, it's being recorded now? Yeah. So the book is done then? 

[00:22:07] Terry Bartley: The book is, yeah. Yeah. The book has been finished for a couple months now. 

[00:22:11] Bob Gatty: Oh, okay. All right. All right. Okay. So you guys watch for, it's coming out in August and I know I'm gonna check it out.

[00:22:20] Let's see here. I wanted to ask you, I wanted to talk a little bit of politics. Can we talk a little politics? Sure. What are your thoughts about DeSantis and others that are trying to restrict books that can be carried in school and, courses that can be taught in school? What are your thoughts about that?

[00:22:40] Terry Bartley: Yeah, I don't like it, right? Yeah. I don't I'm not a big fan of it. Yeah I, think that as a as an English teacher, the way that I often think of my job, like what my responsibility as a teacher, Is to expose kids to books that they wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. So I try to, make sure that they read books by not just like other white authors.

[00:23:05] Because it'd be easy as an English teacher to just have books by white men all the time, right? Sure. Cause there's so many, which can, but I always try to make a real effort to include books with people of color and people that are, queer and like all these kinds of different cultures and stuff.

[00:23:21] It is frustrating to think about teachers in Florida that don't have that possibility now that I mean like the African American histories classes just not existing anymore. That's horrifying. Yeah. Yeah. Because like you're just saying we don't need to hear these other voices and like, how are we ever gonna be a cohesive society if we're not gonna listen to half of the country.

[00:23:44] Bob Gatty: Yeah. The, guy seems to be picking up I shouldn't say that. He's not really picking up steam that much, but the, whole idea of restricting what, what can be taught in school. Trying to I, don't know, I think hide some of the Some of the things that occurred over, the years, the racist ways people have been treated, and some of the bad things that have taken place in recent history in the United States.

[00:24:21] I, he can't sweep those under the rug. They happened. People need to be, need to understand that they happened. They need to understand why they happened, right? 

[00:24:33] Terry Bartley: Yeah. Whenever the Jewish community always says about World War ii, never forget, right? Never forget the Holocaust that we can learn from it.

[00:24:39] So it'll never happen again. If we forget about slavery, we forget about racism, we forget about civil rights, then it's gonna happen again, right? We're gonna start oppressing people again. So I think that we have to remember these parts of our history so we can learn from it. And then also on top of that, we talk about oppression and oppressed voices.

[00:24:58] Like you just have to let other people talk. You can't listen if you don't, if they don't, if you don't let them say anything. Yeah. And I think that's the real danger here is we're pretending like other people as specifically other, like non-straight, non-white people, non sis, don't exist.

[00:25:19] And that's just naive, right? Because they do exist. And I think that sort of like telling kids, like if you try to convince 'em that trans people don't exist and therefore they won't be trans, then all you're doing is just making it more dangerous for the kids that are trans. And then you make the world more confusing for the kids that aren't like they always say you don't want to confuse kids by telling them about yeah, transgender people.

[00:25:44] But isn't it more confusing for them to have a trans uncle that they don't know why or what's going on with that, 

[00:25:51] Bob Gatty: yeah, exactly. Okay. In West Virginia, is it Trump or DeSantis or somebody else? 

[00:26:01] Terry Bartley: Honestly, I feel like in West Virginia there's a lot of people that don't really know who DeSantis is yet, because I think that in West Virginia there's a lot of these like lower engaged voters.

[00:26:10] Who like they vote because that's how everybody else is voting. I think there's a lot of I think this person will win, so I'll vote for them. Like that mentality is pretty, pretty heavy here. And honestly, I think that Trump spoke to people here because he did that thing where he seemed unconventional and he seemed like he says the things that people aren't saying.

[00:26:31] The thing that people always said, like he says the saying, other people are thinking. I feel like DeSantis is trying to be more Institutional, like he's trying to be more of a traditional Republican and I don't know if that's gonna work here because the truth is somebody like Joe Manchin who feel, feels very right-leaning right when you think about him.

[00:26:50] He always calls himself a West Virginia Democrat, which I don't think he ever explains what that means. But I remember here in this state, whenever the Republicans took over the state legislature, They were like, oh, we're gonna clean up the budget. We're gonna cut, make so many tax cuts and so many cuts to like spending, so that things will change, be more conservative.

[00:27:10] Then they were like, oh, we can't do anything because the Democrats already cut spending so low, there's nothing left to cut because Democrats, West Virginia have always been pretty conservative. So I think that the reason that a lot of Democrats are switching to Republicans aren't because they like their ideologies changed that much.

[00:27:29] Just the parties have flipped or, the values have always been more conservative here. 

[00:27:35] Bob Gatty: Yeah. But the Republican party isn't anywhere near what it used to be I mean 

[00:27:41] Terry Bartley: they're, yeah, for sure. It's just gonna, and I think that it's, yeah. I also think that there's this mentality, not just to West Virginia, but like anywhere like West Virginia, any sort of more rural area.

[00:27:52] That the world is changing very fast, right? Like they, because you think about the fact that gay marriage was legalized like 15 years ago, something like that. And we're already talking about like transgender rights, which granted we should have been all like a long time ago. But I think that if you didn't even think about gay people existing 15, 20 years ago, like it feels like a rapid change, right?

[00:28:20] And I think that for those people, it's just jarring that the world around them is changing. And I think that it's just a little scary for them. And, I think that's what this institutional, like racism, institutional homophobia really is, this fear of change and not understanding things, 

[00:28:39] Bob Gatty: yeah. Hey, if if Trump gets convicted of one of these Various crimes that he's accused of in, in these various court cases that are currently going on. Would he still carry and, if he's even sent to prison, would he still carry West Virginia, do you think? 

[00:29:02] Terry Bartley: I think so. Because I talked a lot about how politicians and corporations manipulated the area.

[00:29:09] I think if people, like people used to say, I support coal as though that means literally anything and people would get votes for it. And Trump has said, I support coal on stage in front of people in West Virginia. So I think they accept their vote. 

[00:29:22] Bob Gatty: Okay. So, coal is still like the dominant factor in West 

[00:29:29] Terry Bartley: Virginia?

[00:29:29] It's cause it's a lot of retired coal miners that live here still. So they think that it matters. Yeah. When it doesn't, 

[00:29:37] Bob Gatty: yeah. But aren't there a lot of really religious types in West Virginia and the, especially in the Republican party 

[00:29:48] Terry Bartley: I think that there is, I think that like the idea of being a Christian, being like a strong value that matters here, I think does matter, but I think that it is almost secondary to why people vote. I remember growing up my family went to Church of Christ. We were very conservative in the way that we worshiped.

[00:30:09] I remember going up in church and seeing like those cards on windshields about these are the anti-abortion candidates to vote for them down the ticket, which did at that point didn't matter that much. Cause a lot of people had a Democrat back then. Straight ticket. But I think it, I think that kind of thing has become more pervasive as time has gone by.

[00:30:28] Bob Gatty: Yeah. Okay. I just wondered it, just, I don't understand how, if you are a religious person who believes in the 10 Commandments, let's just say, how can you possibly support Donald Trump? 

[00:30:44] Terry Bartley: My mom, who is relatively conservative often tells me she doesn't understand why people support Trump because like, the way he talks as president was so like not normal and aggressive and yeah, unkind.

[00:31:00] And those things seem very un-Christian to her. And I think that a lot of people see that, but I think that there is another side of people who care less about that and just Think it's fun to have this guy that's silly in the White House.

[00:31:14] Bob Gatty: So anyway, so what else? Anything else we need to talk about? 

[00:31:18] Terry Bartley: I can talk about this stuff all day. So I've, appreciated the opportunity for sure to, talk about this stuff. Cuz as, a writer, a lot of the podcasts I go on talk about, like my writing and my books, and this is something that is really important to me is like the politics of it and also just like growing up where I live and, to try to make people understand it a little better.

[00:31:37] Cause there was this real interest after Trump was elected into the people of Appalachia and understand who they are and what they do. And I feel like a lot of people were more interested in, like, why did they vote for Trump specifically as opposed to what got them to there? So I think that talking about that has been really great for me.

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