A ‘realist’ message from the Editor

By Matthew Young, RealWV

I’d like to tell you about 41 of our fellow Mountaineers. I didn’t know any of them, so I can’t share personal memories or experiences, but I’m quite certain that there are people out there who can. 

These 41 people were moms and grandmas, dads and grandpas. They were sons, daughters, sisters, brothers, friends and neighbors. I’m sure some of them were Republicans, and some were probably Democrats. And then a few of them most likely didn’t give a damn either way, which I can personally appreciate. 

I’m optimistic that they were all good people, but it’s very possible that they weren’t. They were, however, all West Virginians, and they all had names. I know this because I reported their names to you after their deaths were filed. And that’s just a few counties in the last four days.

They may have died peacefully at home surrounded by their loved ones, or alone beneath a bridge with a needle in their arm. But regardless of the circumstance, these were our people, and they mattered. They all had a name, and none were anonymous.

But that’s a funny word, isn’t it? Anonymous… 

It lacks substance and value, and it reduces those assigned to it to something less than human. It’s where we hide the things we deem unseemly – and the people we see as unworthy. We spend our entire lives trying to build a name for ourselves that we can be proud of, and is spoken with an air of respect. Our name is our word, and we are only as good as that. 

But anonymity is a double-edged sword because it can serve as a safe place for weakness to hide. Cowardly people can weaponize anonymity and use it to attack those with whom they disagree, and scream to the heavens for justice while cloaked in the protection they would deny to others. 

Anonymity is a tool of the weak-willed and the weaker-minded. Anyone who is confident in their beliefs and who has anything worthwhile to say will proudly use their name. And that’s something that deserves our respect, whether we agree with them or not. 

After all, our name is our word, and we are only as good as that. 

I say all this because our communities are becoming fractured in a way that hasn’t been seen in a very long time. I told someone just last night that we were spoiled by growing up during the 1980’s. We didn’t live through the Vietnam War or the Civil Rights era. We were spared the horrors of internment camps and the Great Depression. And we have no first hand experience with Jim Crow or our nation’s Civil War. 

What’s happening in our state and our country right now is human nature, I said, and it’s just our turn. But he didn’t believe that, and if I’m being honest with myself, neither do I. Yes, history repeats – especially when we ignore it. But we don’t have to be what we’ve always been because we are so much more than we were. 

The experiment of our country – a country founded on the principles of freedom and equality, and built on the backs of the most diverse population in human history – can end right now if that’s what we choose. We can tear down the promise of a more perfect union, and piss away the sacrifices of those who’ve given their last full measure of devotion. We have that ability, and quite frankly we’re off to a great start. We can rip each other to shreds on social media, and scream for the heads of everyone who sees the world differently than we do. We can continue to shoot each other on college campuses, and beat each other to death in the middle of streets from sea to shining sea. 

We can justify it as the repeat of history, and call it a return to how things used to be. We can blame it on an anonymous group of immigrants, an anonymous group of Christians, and an anonymous group of trans people. And we can even do it while hiding beneath the veil of our own anonymity. 

Or we can knock off the bullshit. 

We can recover as a state, and we can recover as a nation. It just requires some humility, a little bit of minding our own business, and a whole lot of listening to our better angels.

We spend our entire lives trying to build a name for ourselves that we can be proud of, and we’ve done that. We’re all West Virginia, and we’re all America. We should act like it, and we should be proud of our names. 

After all, our name is our word, and we are only as good as that.