By Declan Walsh

New York Times

POWELLTON, W.Va. >> Deep in the belly of an Appalachian mountain, a powerful machine bored into the earth, its whirring teeth clawing out a stream of glistening coal. Men followed inside the Maple Eagle No. 1 mine, their torches cutting through the dank air. One guided the machine with a PlayStation-like controller; others bolted supports in the freshly cut roof.

They were angry. The coal industry that made West Virginia prosperous has been devastated. Every day, it seemed, another mine laid off workers or closed. Friends were forfeiting their cars, homes and futures.

For these men, this season’s presidential campaign boils down to a single choice. “I’m for Trump,” said Dwayne Riston, 27, his face smeared in dust. “Way I see it, if he wins, we might at least stand a chance of surviving.”

Few places in America offer such a simple electoral calculus as the rolling, tree-studded hills of West Virginia.

Even as Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, lags badly in crucial swing states and loses his grip on white male voters overall, he remains on solid ground here with his promise to “bring back coal.” The fact that his Democrat opponent, Hillary Clinton, said in March, “We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” has helped, too.

But this is not just about economics. West Virginia’s coal country is part of the broader white, working-class vote that has coalesced around a single candidate like never before. Trump’s support here stems from a profound, decades-in-the-making sense of political and cultural alienation that has left people feeling distant from their leaders, and even from fellow Americans.

“I kind of feel that people are looking down on us,” said Neil Hanshew, a miner, voicing a common sentiment. “They’re looking at us like we’re a bunch of dumb hillbillies who can’t do anything else.”

I found my way to the Maple Eagle No. 1 mine after I met the mine manager at a church in Mingo County, famed as the center of the Hatfield-McCoy feud more than a century ago, when rival clan members battled it out along the border with Kentucky. This is not my regular beat — I’m usually reporting on the Arab world as The New York Times’ bureau chief in Cairo, but I have come to the United States for a few months to cover this unusual campaign from a foreigner’s perspective.

After Trump’s combative nominating convention in Cleveland and Clinton’s coronation in Philadelphia, I hit the road to explore how the campaign themes were playing out on the ground.

Mingo County, a picturesque district of twisting valleys, is steeped in the lore of coal, corruption and violence. A gunbattle between mine company officials and unionized workers in 1920 brought the nickname “Bloody Mingo,” fodder today for history tourists and TV serials. I checked into a hotel in the county seat, Williamson, where the manager offered a rundown of the area’s more recent dramas.

In 2013, the county sheriff was murdered as he ate lunch in his patrol car. A year later, a senior judge was jailed on corruption charges (“Folks knew him as ‘the king,’” the manager said). More recently, the local coal magnate, Donald L. Blankenship, started a one-year prison sentence for breaching safety standards at a mine where 29 miners died in an accident in 2010.

And in May, a wealthy coal executive was fatally shot in the town cemetery as he visited his wife’s grave. A pair of drug addicts have been arrested.

Williamson, a town of 3,000, is a picture of social and economic decay. Unemployment, at 12 percent, is more than twice the U.S. average. Cash-for-gold stores crowd alongside lawyers’ offices and gun dealerships. Rates of heroin overdoses and obesity are among the highest in America. Many residents scrape by on food stamps.

In the surrounding hills, abandoned coal mines hum with the noise of ventilation pumps still circulating oxygen through the empty shafts, in the hope that they might one day be reopened.

Yet the people of Mingo County have forged their own brand of resilience, one born of the tight-knit rural values that draw embattled citizens together. For some, that means planning for a better future: Dr. Dino Beckett, a local physician, has spearheaded initiatives to grow healthy food locally and reduce diabetes. For others, it means lifting a defiant finger to the outside world.

At the Regional Church in Delbarton, 10 miles from Williamson, Sunday services were both exuberant and solemn, a mark of the conservative Christianity that holds strong here. Peals of catchy gospel songs were followed by a fervent sermon delivered by an evangelical missionary who had taken 900 Jewish immigrants to Israel (in fulfillment of a biblical prophecy, she explained) and sought to convert Arab Muslims.

Among the singers on stage was Bo Copley, the area’s most famous out-of-work miner. His celebrity stems from a visit Clinton made to Williamson in May, when hundreds of jeering protesters, many wielding Trump signs, lined the main street. “Go home!” they yelled as Clinton, wearing a strained smile, slipped into a private meeting.

Clinton has apologized for her comment about putting coal out of business, saying she was misunderstood. But Copley, who had been called to meet Clinton, challenged her, sliding a photo of his three young children across the table while the television cameras rolled.

“How can you come in here and tell us you’re going to be our friend?” he said, his voice cracking with emotion. “Because those people out there don’t see you as a friend.”

Days later, at a Trump rally in the state capital, Charleston, Copley received a standing ovation.

“People are tired of politicians,” he told me during my visit. “Trump is a break from the status quo, which promises the moon but doesn’t deliver.”

Political fury in Mingo County focuses squarely on the Environmental Protection Agency and President Barack Obama, who is seen as having started a “war on coal.” Issues of race and class bubble under the surface: Mingo County, population 27,000, is 97 percent white, and racial epithets that are taboo in much of America still ring out openly. Support for Trump’s proposed ban on Muslim immigrants is strong, even though Muslims constitute only a tiny fraction of West Virginians.

In 2012, local Democrats selected Keith Judd, a felon incarcerated in Texas, as their nominee for president instead of Obama.

On a sleepy Sunday afternoon, a red pickup truck rolled slowly along Williamson’s main street, bearing two giant flags: one for Trump, the other emblazoned with the Confederate colors. Corey Matney, 26 years old and wearing a National Rifle Association T-shirt, stepped out and asked why I was taking pictures. Of the Confederate flag, he said, “That’s heritage, not hate.”

Matney, who was in Williamson to play Pokémon Go with his girlfriend, is a linesman for a telecommunications company that, he said, is losing 500 customers a month.

“Families are moving away,” he said. “I know Donald Trump may not be the best man for the job. But he’s the lesser of two evils.”

There is no doubt that Trump, a brash Manhattan tycoon who lives in a gilded tower, can seem a discordant political idol for rural America. Many overlook that, pointing to his business success and his war on “political correctness” while berating Muslims and “tree-hugger” environmentalists. But some have been jarred by his ideas.

Copley’s wife, Lauren, has a sister whose husband is Jordanian, and was upset by a recent question from her 6-year-old niece.

“She said, ‘If Donald Trump comes in, does that mean that we have to leave?’” Copley recalled.

Copley started to cry. “He just spouts off,” she said. “I can’t fathom that.”

“Some of the things he says really bother me,” her husband added. “But we have a lot of people in this area who are very angry, very upset.”

© 2016 The New York Times Company