MOUNTAINS BESET BY CYNICISM, CORRUPTION

Last Sunday was June Meeting, the first Sunday in June, when, contrary to
regular Memorial Day, a gentle community of contrarians gathers in Knox
County to honor its dead, worship, eat and sing the old music. June Meeting
is much awaited, because it provides a potion to lift our spirits from
political letdown, which has just occurred.

At the feed we go to, they had homemade hominy and poke, so you can pretty
well tell that the property valuation administrator in the family would
never have to worry that somebody's consultant was showing political ads
with his hiney in them. Not all members of the political community go
around showing their tails.

There are two kinds of tail showing. The other kind is broadcasting an
opponent's arrest record or releasing scandalous information that letters
your opponent scarlet, even while guaranteeing her landslide re-election.

The politicians who cannot afford Ray Stewart and Dale Emmons are lucky, as
are their gentle communities. Those guys go from town to town and stand in
the middle of Main Street and shrow. "Shrow" is a made-up word combining
"throw" and what they throw. That may be entertaining down on Main, but it
means only puritans or formalistic fools can survive the inquiry that these
political consultants claim to have made.

It would be nice if gentleness were threatened only by cynicism. But in the
mountains, gentle people are threatened by corruption, and it is corruption
two or three layers deeper than an election in which two candidates were
murdered, one candidate's former employee was murdered and all the rest
shot at each other. Actually, we're not sure who shot what; it's all politics.

Drugs are not the root of the corruption, but a mere branch. In a culture
in which permanent and total disability became the only thing a laborer has
to sell, the mountain young of today grew up watching their parents take
pain pills and not work. Now we are going to lock away their unfortunate
offspring because they take pills and would even trade a vote for a few
hours of artificial ecstasy.

Corruption spreads worse than information in a place where the predominant
cash crop is illegal but largely acceptable to folks from a moral viewpoint.

Why not sell your vote in the mountains? What good have we done parceling
it out on any other basis? No matter who we vote for, we are not allowed
our own federal judiciary. We cannot prevent or get the rest of the state's
votes to help in preventing environmental atrocities equal to the
destruction of the rain forests of South America.

Corruption occurs larger when government is sold than when only votes are
sold. Government is sold to the colonialists in the uplands. Our
politicians rise highest who are best at serving the corporate interests,
but the corporate interests are contrary to those of the people. If all we
have to sell is a vote, how are we any different from the state's
legislators, who sell theirs every day?

What we really need in the mountains is Tom Barlow. When does he start
getting some credit? This guy was in Congress, gets a pretty good bang for
his political buck and is honest enough that nobody will give him a
political contribution. When he talks, he sort of sounds to the gentle
folks as if he has a little more sense than his opponents.

Two mountain myths were shattered the week before June Meeting. One was
that Gov. Paul Patton was supporting Lois Combs Weinberg. It must have been
hard on her Hindman friends to see that they have been naive. The
governor's inability to get rid of her more quickly must have embarrassed him.

The other myth is that there is a Bert Combs factor. She lost more votes
because of her current last name than she gained by her first last name.
She may be easier to get than either Patton or Sen. Mitch McConnell thought.