On a Saturday morning in September, my husband and I jump in our truck and drive to Castlewood, Virginia, in southwest Virginia’s Russell County, for the annual United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) cookout hosted by UMWA District 17. Southwest Virginia is the most Republican part of the state, and Russell County is deep in this net of macho identity politics, Christian culture, social media political engineering and the disparate ways political parties divest and invest in rural districts....
