I watched Diane Sawyer's report on Appalachia's Children as an ABC 20/20 special, "A Hidden America: Children of the Mountains" Friday night. The word had gotten out in these parts to be sure to see how accurate the report would be.

So I watched.  I'll admit, there were positives and negatives to the portrait of children in Appalachia.

The positives:
   *The children were endearing, from the young girl who sang like a bird to the young man who was a high school football hero.
   * The portrait of the young toothless mother walking 16 miles a day to get to GED classes was overwhelming.  I wouldn't do it!

Now the negatives:
    * Too many stereotypes, such as high incidents of incest and welfare-dependent families.
    * Ignorance of some real issues in Appalachia, such as the mountain top removal devastation of the people's homeland.
    * Doctors and elected leaders were let off the hook. Did we hear anything about corrupt county commissioners who feather their own nests and care nothing about the squalor at their neighbors?  Did we hear anything about doctors who too freely prescribe unneeded painkillers, or what about the pharmaceutical companies that make Oxycontin?
    * What other causes are there out there for the rotten teeth we saw in the children in this program?  Kids throughout the US drink sugary soft drinks.
    * What about the water these Appalachians are drinking?  No mention of how the streams and wells have been poisoned by coal mining.
    * No mention about availability of a variety or fresh and nourishing food for sale in local markets.  No mention of any efforts to help people continue their gardens that Appalachians in the past were dependent on.
    * There was little discussion of what stresses are causing Appalachians to turn out and turn off the pain.
    * There was no mention of the high incidence of absentee landlords that make it nearly impossible for poor Appalachians to ever hope to own their own homes.
    * There was a lack of discussion of why there is no free or cheap ways for people in Appalachia to dispose of their wastes.

Perhaps the negatives above were addressed. But very little time was devoted to these systemic problems that underlay many of the sensational problems we saw in this program.

I have lived in Appalachia for more than half of my life.  I came from Iowa, and we have many of the same types of people in Iowa as I saw talking to Diane Sawyer in her tear jerker.

If you haven't got the jest of my complaint yet, let me be more blunt.  I preface this with a warning that I do tend to look for the less obvious causes other than personal failings when I analyze problems.

I see in Appalachia today a total run on greed by forces of power in this country. There have actually been plans written up on methods governments and corporations could use to get people to actually leave the hills and hollows so these areas can be further pillaged without interference.

Appalachians are known for their love of place, their hollow, kinship, the homeplace.  Appalachians have even been known to defend their territory with their guns when outsiders come in and threaten their way of life.

Their way of life is now threatened by devastating coal mining that is changing what used to be beautiful in Virginia, Kentucky and West Virginia into a cancer of coal dust, polluted water, dangerous sludge ponds, and low or no wages.

So the media, those in power, the government and the corporations blame the people themselves. These people, many of them, are in pain as their homeland is being destroyed, mountaintop by mountaintop.  

Look at the Indian population in this country. When we took away their land, they also turned to sugar, to alcohol, to dropping out, to bouts of depression, to domestic violence. Are there any similarities here?  Can we not see the writing between the lines?

Yes, many mountain families are in pain...physical, mental and spiritual. These pains are easily medicated.  When medicated, the rebellious persons mellow out.  They just don't care anymore.  The powerful are free to go about their business without the old Appalachian fight that would normally make the current devastation very difficult.  

The folks, now medicated, find that they can't work the way they used to.  But their drugs, given to them through Medicaid, are valuable on the open market.  A new drug culture begins to thrive. Families become dysfunctional.  Bad things happen.  Now even the small numbers of jobs out there can't be filled.

Appalachia is now on its way toward genocide, and no one will be blamed but those who are the victims themselves.

Sure some will make it out of this wicked maze.  But they will most likely leave the area, and that's what those in power wanted in the first place.  Get out of there, and let us destroy your mountains, your schools, your water and your gardens.

This is my spin on what is happening in Appalachia.  The people there don't want charity. They want their land back.  They want clean water with fish ready to be caught.  They want respect from the rest of us, not our pity, not our sense of superiority, not our criticism of their way of life, not all the blame.

Appalachia is, in my opinion, God's country.  Walk in its remaining mountains, ponder the grace of one of its waterfalls.  Discover the rare species and unique biodiversity of plant and animal and reptile life that call this area of the country their own.

We are destroying Appalachia, not just its children, but its soul.