HAZARD, Ky. _ The music stopped and Daniel Harnsberger _ all 6-foot-5, 237 pounds of him _ burst through the black curtain and jumped into the ring. Kids booed. Mothers shouted "snowflake." A girl shot him thumbs down, and a logger threatened to take a swipe at him.
Taunting his hecklers as hillbillies and saying coal was a "dirty lie," Harnsberger _ eyeing his nemesis and local favorite Pretty Boy Stan Lee _ ranted and prowled, the perfect villain on a rainy night in an abandoned school in one of the poorest regions of the nation.
"We don't like you," yelled a boy.
"You stink," screamed another.
Harnsberger lifted his arms and puffed his chest in full, agitating bloom: "You stupid, ignorant people."
Harnsberger is the Progressive Liberal, a professional wrestler whose renewable energy politics and preening arrogance have riled supporters of President Donald Trump across the Appalachian Mountains. He praises Hillary Clinton and invokes the Affordable Care Act. Worst of all he's an outsider, a real estate agent from Richmond, Va., who drives south on weekends and slips on "blue wave" tights and a conceit that he's better than out-of-work coal miners and Baptists with rifle racks in their pickups.
"Dan, well, that's a little complicated," said Beau James, a revered wrestler in these parts who has answered the bell in nearly 4,000 matches and broken 16 bones. "Somebody has to filter Dan or he's going to get killed. The whole thing of wrestling is to play on the raw emotions of the crowd, but with Dan there's a chance you may have to fight your way out of the building."
Harnsberger is both metaphor and caricature in these polarizing, reality-TV-inspired times. In the era of Trump, when entertainment, politics and alternative facts whipsaw through the culture wars, the Progressive Liberal appears as a self-righteous pundit who ridicules Republicans and conservatives on the back roads of America. He travels a well-tread wrestling circuit _ in these foothills a cineplex can be many miles away _ and preys on stereotypes, scratching at insecurities and what he calls the "persecution complex" of the South.
"All I do is touch the nerve," said Harnsberger, sitting in the gym of the A.B. Combs Elementary School, which closed two years ago after mining jobs dried up and families moved away. His headlocks are part of the act, but there's no make-believe in his politics. "These people are stuck in time. They're on the wrong side of history. They're not watching Rachel Maddow before they go to bed every night. So I keep it simple: Trump. Hillary. Russia. Coal."
These mountains, which Kentucky writer Chris Offutt described as "humped like a kicked rug", are unapologetic Trump territory. The region's sensibilities hew closer to NASCAR and Hank Williams III than Lady Gaga and "The Crown." And loyalty is prized: Republican Rep. Hal Rogers has represented this district for 37 years. That is not likely to change as the beleaguered president leads his party into next week's midterm elections.
Trump won 62.5 percent of the vote in Kentucky in 2016, but in the eastern part of the state that figure surpassed 70 percent in many counties, including Perry, where Hazard is the county seat. People here believe the president, who has a long history with professional wrestling and once clotheslined WWE promoter Vince McMahon at a scripted bout, will resurrect coal jobs, stop immigration, scrap environmental regulations, bring foreign capitals to heel and reinvent Washington with his tweets and anti-establishment fervor.
"President Obama gave mountain people a rough time," said Van Haynes, owner of a repair and equipment company who was 10 years old when he worked a coal mine tram six decades ago. He voted for Bill Clinton in the 1990s, but like most in this county, where Democrats hold a 3-to-1 registration edge, he has not cast a ballot for a Democrat since. "Obama sent inspectors in and wanted to kill coal. Mountain people don't stand for that. I'm tickled for Trump. I'm getting old and I've seen life. Trump is turning this country around. You know it. I know it."
Appalachia is a cruel and enchanting land of snapping winds and tin chimneys. Streams run like threads; morning mist scrims the hollows. Eyes peek from behind curtains and home-for-sale signs linger on lawns for years. The unions are broken and gone, and the coal trains that once shook the dawn no longer run to the steel mills of Pittsburgh and Bethlehem, Pa. Coal has succumbed to decades of globalization, mechanization and other factors that have turned men to fits and women to prayer.
For generations everyone feared what they hoped wouldn't come _ that the land would fail to sustain the people whose Scotch-Irish ancestors are buried on its hillsides and in the shadows of its steeples. The hard-pressed swallow their shame and shop at secondhand stores. Addicts wander the North Fork of the Kentucky River; the police station keeps a drop-off box for "unwanted" prescription pills. In a swath of America that boasts self-reliance, about 30 percent of people live in poverty and more than 40 percent of children rely on Medicaid, a program Republicans want to shrink.
"Our economy has crashed. The Magic Mart chain went under a few weeks ago," said Billy Campbell, a Pentecostal minister and apprentice funeral director. "Opioids are full-blown now. Every town. Every household. My father was an addict. He died 13 years ago. I've got aunts, uncles and a sister on drugs. Opioids. Meth. We're seeing people from 19 into their 60s laid out here. It's 15 percent of our business. All these tragedies."
Up the road, behind the courthouse where a sign reads that Elijah Combs settled this frontier with his seven brothers in 1790, Philip Stidham wandered amid guitars and a drum set at Taulbee Music, where he rings up customers on a 1920s cash register. He said Trump reaches into the working man's heart, which has long been forsaken by Washington.
"It's tough here," said Stidham, "A lot of coal miners have gone south to limestone and salt mines." He leaned on his desk, settling in for a long talk on a damp day. He knew a 23-year-old man _ he called him a boy _ who overdosed. He paused. "I saw a girl last night I went to high school with," he said. "She was on meth. Her face was so aged and ragged. She was once so beautiful."
That last word hit the air slow and soft, as if a man retracing footsteps. Stidham said he's learned Appalachia's uncompromising math: You take away one coal mining job (Kentucky has shed 10,000 since 2010), you wipe out 10 other people.
