My family hails from the blue ridge mountains of the great state of North Carolina. The blue ridge mountains extend southwestward for 615 miles (990 km) from Carlisle, Pennsylvania, through parts of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, to Mount Oglethorpe, Georgia. The people of the Appalachian mountains in North Carolina, so far, have escaped the very disturbing description of the lovely people of Appalachia that JD Vance paints. Why is he disparaging a country-loving, hard working, intelligent, enterprising, gracious and grateful portion of our society? I don’t get it? I appreciate that he rose from very humble beginnings and had tough obstacles that he surpassed, but I must wonder at his wisdom of denigrating a section of our country who is comprised of hard-working, community oriented, neighbor supporting, and beautiful people. What does he think he is accomplishing by this? He seems to think that by ridiculing a section of the country that definitely needs to be better respected and lifted up that he is somehow connecting with voters in a way that will lead to his success. I take offense to it; I find it untrue, disrespectful and quite dishonorable. I was born in the “north” but my people are from the Blue Ridge mountains (the Appalachian Mountain chain). I am a proud member of a family that has done amazing things and had great successes while rooted in and some flying from the Appalachian Mountains. Few of my family (except for a few cousins) left the mountains of North Carolina. However, my parents did and raised me in the “north” but, the love of the blue ridge, immediately upon retirement returned them back home to the beautiful blue ridge of North Carolina. My family is the most intelligent, hard-working, respectable, kind, generous, community-supporting group of people I have ever known. My grandmothers never used the language that JD Vance’s grandmother used and they never left loaded guns lying around their house for children to find. My extended family, all of whom still love and call the blue ridge mountains of the Appalachian range home, have held jobs in the top echelons of state and federal government; they have been teachers and lawyers, and have held high-ranking positions in the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the CIA and FBI, and at least three of them have earned phDs. JD Vance: stop with the knock on Appalachia – it is not doing you any favors. Help those residents of Appalachia who have not been as fortunate as my family and have been left behind but stop this meme that they are toothless idiots who feed their children with bottles of mountain due. You are better than this. We are better than this. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/jul/16/jd-vance-hillbilly-elegy-appalachia