I get that that's the message in all of these pieces but a lot of the pieces that I've read were written by those coastal elites - so it's more your peers pointing to problems in other places instead of us saying you abandoned us.

This is due in no small part that the educated and people of means tend to migrate from the country to the city. It's a trend that dates to the introduction of cities. As listed above, the trend/trap of homeownership has increased the static friction of the nomadic American workforce; one must have more means in order to relocate than before, which has caused a greater number of people to be trapped. Consider: all the migrants photographed fleeing the Dust Bowl were people who had nothing to lose. We now have an entire generation of homeowners who may or may not live near work.

And many of these people do not view their homelands as irredeemable shitholes. I grew up in rural New Mexico and I have plenty of acquaintances still there who think it's awesome, that everybody there is awesome, and life is good... despite the fact that whenever I head home I get to hear about another murder-suicide.

Thus, we get these narratives about how "the heartland" isn't an irredeemable shithole because not everyone had a terrible childhood and the loss of the family farm and the vanishing way of life of the coal miner because people want to have their cake and eat it, too - they want their Whole Foods and Pottery Barn lifestyle to be amenable to Walmart and Winco. And sure. On one side it is. If it weren't for the fact that I'm now staring down the barrel of Betsy De Vos as Education Secretary, for example, I'd have no animosity for them.

But I know down to my DNA that they don't think their salvation is tied up in me.