The Peace and Quiet in Munfordville
If in the world outside Democracy is dying and the international world order collapsing, you would not know that spending a few days in Munfordville, Kentucky. Because this small town with its 1686 inhabitants and 776 housing units at Interstate 65 halfway between Louisville and Nashville has everything you would need if you like the peace and quiet as everybody here does; those who have always lived here and those who came here from one of America’s big cities. But there are a few faint worries creeping in.
As the seat of Hart County Munfordville has everything you need in life: a Dollar Store and Pizzahut, ACE Autoparts and Sweet Farming Equipment, a friendly “Welcome Center” and a wonderful Public Library with the jail right behind it; enough churches, a medical center and a lovely sporting ground next to the Green River, a Buffalo Crossing, a prim looking German American Bank, doctors and dentists, a drug store, law firms and a clothing store for motorbike enthusiasts with a mobile coffee shop next to it – plus Mexicans.
Let’s start with the escapees from urban life. There are Harry and Larry sitting next to the “Open Road Leather” shop. Harry came from Wisconsin via Texas to Munfordville and runs the shop plus coffee bar, and Larry from Michigan runs the gorgeous and gleaming 1700 ccm “Triumph” bike parked in front of him.
Harry’s story is that one day not too long ago he was driving along on a Houston highway when gang members started shooting at each other from their racing cars right in front of him. “That was the day my wife and I decided to move to a quiet place”. Here in Munfordville, he can take out one of the three Harley Davidsons from his garage and ride undisturbed through a beautiful rural scenery. “If somebody shoots you here, you know that it was intentional” he laughs with a wide grin behind his impressive white beard.
Larry can also add a few more stories about crime in Michigan. They both voted for Donald Trump and no regrets whatsoever. “Trump is only doing what we needed,” says Larry, “abolishing the IRS and living on tariffs”. And clearing out the fraud in government. He’d just heard on the news that Elon Musk’s DOGE-people in Washington “have found eight hundred 150-year-olds in the social security register.” No, you won’t find that kind of behaviour in a place like Munfordville.
Before this encounter the lady in the “Welcome Center” had briefed me well. From here she doesn’t need to drive to Louisville to do her shopping. “Too many cars and lanes on the motorways”. For her the 18-mile ride to Elizabethtown will do. That’s why people come here, she says, because it is comfortable and peaceful. “Yes, it’s all conservative, that’s who we are”. Of course, she has voted for Trump as 80 % of the voters in Hart County have. “What’s wrong with it?” Her being so helpful to me it seems to be absurd and unfair to ask her what she thinks about Trump ignoring the Supreme Court or cutting federal funds for elite universities since she just wants a quiet life.
Here, she explains, churches are very strong. The largest denomination in this area are the Southern Baptists, followed by the Methodists and others. And, yes, there are also the Amish communities who have only moved here in the early 1990s from Ohio and elsewhere. “Very nice people with their own schools and some of them conservative”.
From the “Welcome Center” to Wikipedia. The population of Hart County is 87.33 % white and 11.45 % black, the per capita income is 11.447 Dollar, that makes it the 20th lowest median household income in the US. More than a quarter of households are below the poverty line.
Mexicans hardly figure in those statistics, but they run two successful restaurants, and you can find them on the soccer ground on Saturday morning forming two teams with some spectators, people like Eric whose team has just won the game. What does he think about the political situation? He doesn’t want to say. Did he vote? No, he could have but didn’t. Why not? “Politics, technology and all that stuff is just too much for me”. Eric has chosen “to stay out of this”. He can’t be worried about Venezuelans being deported to Salvadorian jails, because he “does not follow that.”
His wife Jennifer sometimes watches the news and is concerned that Donald Trump is not following the law. “It should be due process at least”. But what can she do “if most people here just follow the churches.”
Then we meet John who as a “self-declared leftist” did definitely not vote for the Republicans. Can he explain why people don’t mind the democratic damage Donald Trump seems to have caused during the first three month of his presidency? He calls it “wilful ignorance”.
For John people in rural Kentucky live in a different world. “They think their tax money goes to fat African American ladies in the cities who will have another child to get more benefits.” Where in fact, as he explains, a lot of that money goes to their aunts and grandmothers who are on Medicare.
John says most people in his county are “one issue voters”, the issue being abortion, alcohol or guns. But he calls them “racist” because they knew that they voted for a man who’s first act in his first presidency was to ban Muslims from coming to America. John knows about racism and reality. His wife is a Filipino lady, so his kids grew up being of a minority in Louisville when he worked there as a teacher.
But how does a solitary leftist cope in such an archconservative environment? Well, for a while John stopped talking to the Trump voters in his family but that didn’t really help. Thus, he has recently started doing work for the Abbey of Gethsemane, a Trappist monastery not far from Munfordville, as John sees himself in the tradition of the catholic peace-activists Daniel Berrigan and Thomas Merton from the 1960s. Fleeing from one religious environment to another one John hopes to find the personal balance you need as a loner among the people of Hart County who, for him, seem to have lost touch with reality.
Yet slowly the reality of Trump 2.0 has started to impinge on Munfordville. “Kentucky libraries could lose $ 2.7M”, is the headline of the “Courier Journal” on April 21st. And: “Granting institute hit by Trump order to halt work”, the subheading reads. So, people like Trish, the main librarian, are worried about the future. But they are just not saying it out loud, “to not overwhelm people even more”. Trish will choose the institutional path taking her concerns to her republican Senators or to Governor Beshear in Louisville who happens to be a Democrat and is being talked about as potential Presidential candidate in 2028. Mary sees the new reality coming for Munfordville and her county. “They are starting at the top”, she says, “before coming to us”.