Hillbilly Elegy - Jan 29

During an undergraduate seminar in foreign policy, I listened as a nineteen-year-old classmate with a hideous beard ________(大放厥词) about the Iraq war.

It was an objectively terrible opinion — my friends from the Marine Corps ________(跨过了政治领域) and held nearly every conceivable opinion about the war.

But none of them had ever ________(放言如此不加思虑的狂妄之词).

As the student ________(to ramble, chatter, or babble (about someone or something) in an idle, meaningless, or incessant way), I thought about the never-ending training on how to respect Iraqi culture.

I ________(和咨询顾问碰面) and ________(对我完成学业进行了计划).

But I continued, and in August 2009, after one year and eleven months at Ohio State, I graduated with ________(一个双学位), summa cum laude.

Aunt Wee had taken Mamaw’s place as ________(本义是家庭女性掌管人，这里好像就是大家庭团聚的地方): She ________(处理紧急状况), hosted family gatherings, and kept us all from breaking apart.

I ________(做零工) to save money and grew closer to my aunt’s two daughters.

Years of decline in the blue-collar economy ________(在Middletown居民的物质生活发面暴露了[自身问题]).

The Great Recession, and the not-great recovery that followed, had ________(加速了Middletown衰败的进程).

The space program, long a source of pride, had ________(To go extinct or become obsolete), and with it the celebrity astronauts.

Nothing united us with ________(核心结构) of American society.

To understand the significance of this ________(文化脱离), you must appreciate that much of my family’s, my neighborhood’s, and my community’s identity derives from our love of country.

“Bloody Breathitt” allegedly earned its name because the county ________(填满了一战的征兵额度) entirely with volunteers.

After ________(经历了....的七十年) marriage, children, grandchildren, death, poverty, and triumph, the thing about which Mamaw was unquestionably the proudest and most excited was that she and her family did their part during World War II.

I ________(凝噎) when I hear Lee Greenwood’s cheesy anthem “ Proud to Be an American. ”

I regularly hear from acquaintances or distant family members that Obama ________(与...有牵连) Islamic extremists, or is a traitor, or was born in some ________(世界上某个遥远的角落).

Of course, Obama overcame adversity ________(凭着自己的能力) — adversity familiar to many of us — but that was long before any of us knew him.

We know we’re not doing well. We see it every day: in the obituaries for teenage kids that conspicuously omit the cause of death (reading between the lines: overdose), in the deadbeats we watch our daughters waste their time with.

Barack Obama ________(触痛到了我们心中最深的不安全感的中心).

He is a good father while many of us aren’t. He wears suits to his job while we wear ________(工作服), if we’re lucky enough to have a job at all.

Admittedly, there is an industry of ________(阴谋论传播者) and fringe lunatics writing about all manner of idiocy, from Obama’s alleged religious leanings to his ancestry.

With little trust in the press, ________(没有什么能够阻止网上的阴谋论) that rule the digital world.

From ________(电子邮件链接), a story that the Obamacare legislation requires ________(芯片植入) in new health care patients.

________(这个故事还有更多的寓意) because of the religious implications.

________(这是个不错的选择) that the other conspiracies ________(流传度更广) than we’d like.