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Kindle Notes & Highlights
Make no mistake, people in the Rust Belt weren’t simple, and they didn’t respond to the blunt and relatable merely because they were unsophisticated or naive. If anything, they were guarded. For years they had been wounded by well-spoken politicians who fed them flowery speeches instead of results, and those wounds had scabbed over and grown scars, hardening into a deep, contemptuous distrust.
Tony was a Catholic who had fallen out of practice. Like me, he still felt the draw of the Church. My relationship to Catholicism had changed over the years, but I found that I could never abandon it completely. Even the bitterness I once felt toward the Church had faded with time, and I found myself called back to the ritual, the beauty.
If you looked at just the right angle, the sight of that flame could take your breath away. In its light, the mill seemed almost sacred.
