In Defense of the 14th

Georgia's 14th is mostly rural.

Sam Burnham, Curator

​The northwest corner of Georgia, from Haralson County, north to Dade County and from the Alabama line east to near Talking Rock, is designated as the 14th Congressional District. The district includes apple country, the spillover of Chattanooga’s southern suburbs, down through the Ridge and Valley region to where Atlanta’s Blob-like sprawl is consuming Paulding County at an alarming pace. It's eastern border, described as a "jagged line," follows the long-established borders of Murray, Gordon, Floyd, Polk, and Paulding Counties. Only Pickens County is divided by the district's limits.

​I know this district well. I’ve spent most of my life here. I’ve hiked these mountains, floated these rivers, roamed these towns. I’ve toured parks and museums and played in and cheered at sporting events. I’ve dined in restaurants and bars. Perhaps you’ve read about some of these places on this site.

So it should come as no surprise that I was troubled to read Charles Bethea’s recent New Yorker article on Georgia’s 14th. The article is billed as an exposé on the rise of the current Republican congressional candidate, Marjorie Taylor Greene. I’ll be offering no defense of Greene here as i find nothing about her defensible. I’m neither a supporter nor a fan. However I can’t seem to get past how much this article, particularly the first half, comes across as a hit piece on the people of GA-14, a group to which Greene has no real claim to membership. This is not the first such story I’ve read from Bethea. As I don’t know him personally I don’t want to pass judgment but it seems he makes a good living writing unfavorable stories about his fellow Georgians for his New Yorker audience.

He kicks this article off by describing the support that Greene has found in the district. He gives a long description of the people, immediately invoking race before pointing out educational and economic statistics. The way he presents the educational, economic, and electoral statistics is important to the election of Greene and the late Larry McDonald. Allow me to go a little deeper into these to demonstrate why the people of the 14th really vote the way they do.

---

High Praise from Sherman

It is true that the 14th voted for Donald Trump. But they also voted for Mitt Romney, John McCain, George Bush 41 & 43, and Reagan in 84. That looks like a pattern and it is but then consider that a Republican couldn’t have gotten elected as dog catcher in this area until the late 1990s. In my youth Buddy Darden, a Democrat, was our representative in Congress. Abraham Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt, for differing reasons, ensured Democratic control of this area for over a century.

​He mentions a statue of “the first grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.” This is a misleading statement that would make the district look particularly racist in the eyes of his New Yorker readership. I can see the images in their mind, that opening flourish of Forrest Gump of Forrest leading the Klan on horseback.In fact, the statue in question depicts General Forrest, the soldier, in the city he saved from destruction. Forrest pursued Col. Abel Streight across Alabama to stop the destruction of communication, transportation, and materiel infrastructure which was already sparse in the South. Forrest forcing the surrender of a force three times the size of his own prevented Streight from reaching Rome. The monument includes praise for Forrest by one William T. Sherman. As far as local Klan activities, the last demonstration held in Rome was held by Klan and neo-Nazi groups from Michigan while a larger group of locals held a counter protest across the street. Northwest Georgia doesn’t have enough local Klansmen to hold a rally. They have to come from elsewhere.

---

Romulus and Remus haven;t been diapered in 40 years or so,

Sidebar on statues: since one of his sources mentioned it, I haven’t seen diapers on the Capitoline twins in in Rome in about 40 years.I suspect the true motivation for this is similar to the motivation for inundating the neighboring fountain with dish detergent. We probably shouldn’t read too much into it.

Bethea continues with information gleaned from sources describing the region as “a greenhouse for heretical religious beliefs.” It is very true that you can have a startling experience in a small country church around here but this quote is excessive, doubtlessly inspiring visions of widespread snake handling throughout the district.

Do you see the picture that is being painted? Low incomes, few college graduates, widespread racism and religious fanaticism all swirling together to give the outside world a view of these people suggesting they are stuck in the past and entranced by a crazy woman.

---

Ellijay in Apple Country

Marjorie Greene found success in the 14th due to that depiction and a thousand more like it. And the more the people are presented as imbeciles and Neanderthals, the more they will support Greene and candidates like her.

To be honest, I am sickened by Greene myself. I didn’t and won’t vote for her. I see her as Hasbro’s newest action figure: QAnon Barbie with Kung Fu Battle Grip™️ - totally plastic, comes with rifle and Hummer. But we have to understand what is really going on to see why she was so successful. It helps to have a least sampled some of The South’s political history. A reading of V.O. Key’s Southern Politics makes Greene’s ascent quite understandable. Eugene Talmadge and Huey Long immediately come to mind.

What just happened in northwest Georgia can be explained by a population disenchanted with “weak” candidates, like Romney, finding a woman who knew how to present herself as “God, Guns, and Guts.” They saw someone who they thought would fight for them. After years of candidates willing to compromise and maintain their manners, she offered a powerful, if shallow, message for people so often maligned in the media. “I’m one of you. I believe in you. We’re the same. Vote for me and I’ll punish the people who look down their noses at you." They don't care about QAnon. Most of them have no idea what it is. They care about their lost jobs after the textile industry rode NAFTA out of town. They care about big city politicians and pundits threatening the things they hold dear. They aren't "scared." They're angry. 

---

Bremen's long shuttered textile industry

​Bethea’s article is a perfect example. A graduate of The Paideia School and Brown University, he’s easily got more invested in a year of education than many people in the 14th will make this year. He’s what the “poor, uneducated Trump voters” he has singled out would call “elite.” From where they stand he’s a rich man who portrays them as subhuman to his bourgeois audience. It’s no wonder they don’t have some Damascus Road experience and convert to his side of the aisle.

I was contacted by a local Democratic political leader wanting me to be interviewed for this story. She knew of my distaste for Greene and thought I could add my thoughts to the story. I declined. Perhaps that was a mistake. I feared that this story would go like several others: a hit piece on conservative leaning Georgians. I didn't want to be a part of that sort of story. The stark raving crazy Marjorie Taylor Greene deserves the hits. The good people of the 14th do not.

---

Beautiful Talking Rock, GA

I’d like to think that Charles Bethea means well. I’d like to think he is acting on good faith and is writing these articles because he has bad sources. A law professor in Athens is a poor source on the 14th so perhaps that’s the problem. But as the article progresses he continues to pile on the products of his personal political beliefs. Even after interviewing locals he seeks no true understanding. He started with a conclusion and then built a story to support it.

I wish we could get national journalists to visit areas like the 14th, to mingle in, to understand, to write stories that are honest and fair. I wish these places wouldn’t just be “flyover country.” The stories being written about rural America in the large newspapers, magazines, and journals are not only abusive, they serve to perpetuate and intensify the culture war and the political divisiveness that is destroying these United States. 

Should Mr. Bethea, of any other big press writer, want to get a good look at Georgia's 14th, I'd love to help them. All my inboxes are open.

---