BRISTOL, VIRGINIA/BRISTOL, TENNESSEE—Otis and Stella Williams, of the Virginia Bristol, slipped into city hall a little after the lunch rush to vote. The polling station was in the city hall chambers, which looked, in turn, like the auditorium of an old middle school. There was a stage at one end, on which the mayor and city council held their meetings. Otis and Stella had come downtown to vote for Joe Biden, because Joe Biden looked like a winner to them.

“I’m not ashamed to say it,” Otis said. “I voted for Joe.”

“I thought about Elizabeth (Warren),” Stella said. “But what happened in South Carolina convinced me. Joe looked like a guy who could beat that man in the White House.”

An interesting thought had struck me as I drove into town. As I came down old State Street, past the Paramount Theater and Uncle Sam’s Loans, I realized that, being behind the wheel of the car, I was in Virginia. My coat and briefcase were on the passenger seat, which meant that they were in Tennessee. As you leave downtown and go up the rise toward the old Norfolk and Southern railroad depot, a huge sign hangs over the road. “BRISTOL,” it says. “A GOOD PLACE TO LIVE,” and, at the bottom, an arrow pointing down and to the left says, “VA” and an arrow pointing down and to the right says, “TENN.”

Bristol, Tennessee is the home of NASCAR’s famously tight speedway; the drivers call it the paperclip. Bristol, Virginia is famous for a guy named Ralph Peer. In 1927, Peer, then working for the Victor Talking Machine Company, set up shop in the Taylor-Christian Hat and Glove plant. As July became August, Peer advertised recording sessions for anyone who wanted to come and and play. Word got around the hills and valleys and, one day, Jimmie Rodgers stopped by and, later, the entire Carter Family, and Ralph Peer recorded them and released their music and, if country music wasn’t specifically born there on the state line on State Street, it certainly met the wider world there.

The Bristol Motor Speedway is another coliseum for America’s eternal battles between the genuine and the junk. Pool Getty Images

NASCAR and country music, two specifically American pursuits. One a homegrown spectacle of the kind in which this country specializes, and the other, a homegrown folk-art form, product of a hundred different influences, not all of them good ones. Both of them have been partly devoured by consumerism and a corporate entertainment culture, but both have shown an admirable ability to fight back in defense of what is genuine about them. And if you think this sounds like something that’s been missing in our politics, that’s only because you’re right.

This election is a search for the genuine, an excavation of the roots of democracy to see if they're still solid and holding. Politics—and therefore, self-government—has grown top-heavy with spectacle and laden full with the inauthentic. These two blights have found their combination in the current President* of the United States, who believes the rest of the world is set decoration for his own onanistic spectacles, and whose entire public career has been built on the tacky, the tawdry, and the inauthentic. He is the political equivalent of those shiny new NASCAR palaces in places like Phoenix. He is one of those guitar-pounders in jeans and $500 boots. He is American cultural junk food come to politics. And he has sickened the republic unto death.

Trump is American cultural junk food come to politics. And he has sickened the republic unto death.

Still, there are buds and shoots here and there that make you believe that the root structure might still be healthy if you dig deeply enough. Justin Hall was the election judge at the polling station in the Bristol, Virginia City Hall. “I might have another story for you,” he said. “This August, we’re going to have a Pride Parade here in Bristol. We’re going to walk right down State Street and under the sign and it will be the first Pride Parade ever in Bristol, Virginia.” With any luck, there will be a big enough crowd to fill the street so that half of the Pride marchers will be marching in Tennessee. There’s something to hope for.

Editor's Note: The election judge's name is Justin Hall. We regret the error.

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Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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