I am a Belter. I live on the corpses of titans.
My people built the great machines the empire conquered the world with. My blood is gasoline, my bones are high-carbon steel. I piss the water of Lake Huron and Lake Erie, I shit Indiana corn. Mine is not the legacy of 1776 and Washington and Thomas Paine. Mine is not the legacy of cowboys and the West. People lump us together with the rest of the noncoastal US as the “real America:” the glorious, down-home, God-loving land of small towns and traditional values. Fuck that, the first human foot to hit Lunar soil came there from Ohio. Ours is the legacy of Neil Armstrong and Abraham Lincoln. The Rust Belt is a nation, our capital is Chicago.
We’re the most American part of America, and at the same time the most forgotten. When people set a story in “some small town in America,” odds are high it’s in Ohio, or Indiana, or Illinois. In the popular consciousness, we have no regional characteristics. No one can identify an Ohioan accent.
I’ve read shit by New Yorkers, and San Franciscans, and Angelinos, and I don’t feel like I’m from the same country as them. This has been discussed. At the same time, the South is out here trying to claim the whole rest of the US for themselves. Country music is supposed to be the music of the “real America” and the modern definition of the genre just seems to be “music by a southern person that isn’t rap.”
Ever noticed how the “and Western” got dropped from “Country and Western?”
Fuck Texas and the rest of the slave states. Fuck romance novels for making these people seem hot. Fuck the Nashville-industrial complex for selling my people Evangelical frat boys singing over repackaged hip-hop and rock sounds and telling us it’s telling our story. Fuck that, our music is Bone Thugs and the Stooges and Twenty-One Pilots and Nox Arcana. Fuck Southern Charm and Southern Hospitality. The fake friendliness hides that they think they’re better than you. If every American thinks they’re a temporarily-embarrassed millionaire, every white southerner thinks they’re a temporarily-dispossessed slave-tyrant. Fuck southern food and its ridiculous portion sizes. You made America fat.
Fuck Belters flying the confederate battle flag on their bumper stickers. In 1865 we proved Natchez cotton can’t stop Pittsburgh steel, and you’re out here capitulating to a beaten enemy.
Fuck conservatives who think they’re the final arbiter of who is and who isn’t a “real American.” Fuck the way they scaremonger about a crime rate that’s been in decline since the 1990s and use it to justify sending ICE agents to run roughshod over the country. Fuck their union-busting. Fuck their stupid AI-generated crying-immigrant getting carted off by ICE Miyazaki-style memes. Fuck the way they’ve made not liking modern movies part of their political platform. Fuck their stupid fixation on trans athletes and people not saying “Merry Christmas.” We have actual problems to deal with right now.
Fuck the liberals who abandoned America’s working class for Reaganomics just like Reagan’s party did. Fuck how little they care about the jobs we lost and fuck how they can’t understand the psychological toll of doing jobs where you don’t make something tangible. Fuck the way they think they can win back voters by being less “socialist.” You could get them back if you made us less poor.
Most importantly, fuck everyone who laid people off and closed profitable plants for a short-term bump to the stock price. Fuck the people who outsourced our core competencies. Fuck the fact that we aren’t training the engineers we need to make stuff. Fuck the government who won’t invest public money in any industry that isn’t weapons, then wonders why China is outcompeting us. Fuck the people who espouse free-market principles and then turn around and ask the government for tax breaks. Fuck the end of the Glass-Steagall act and the Wagner act.
Fuck Purdue Pharma and Oxy.
I’m a Belter. I live on the corpses of titans.
The land around the Great Lakes forms a natural linked system the same way the Mediterranean does. It’s why the French and the Iroquois built empires here. We’ve played a crucial role in the history of the USA, and I hope we’ll play a crucial role in the future. I’m not arguing for secession, but I think there’s something here in a way people don’t really understand. It doesn’t feel like anyone is looking after the interests of the Rust Belt, so I think we need to pursue our own interests.