Feudalism

Feudalism is alive and well in Kentucky. I know, it's widely known that connections are what matters in getting ahead, and the value of a degree from a school like Harvard is mainly valuable in terms of the connections that you make, and not in the knowledge gained from your courses. Hillbillies carry the concept to a new level, like they do with everything else they touch.
To the hillbilly, kin is everything. When you first arrive in hillbilly land, one of the things that the more observant notice is that there are family names that run all the way to high offices in Frankfort. These same families have kin that are in and out of the local jail on a regular basis. Now, in a normal place, this wouldn't be a big deal. You'd have two branches of a family that took different life paths and the family branch that "made it" would be rightly embarrassed of the branch that didn't. That's not quite the case in Eastern Kentucky.
In Eastern Kentucky, kin is everything. So the drug dealing branch still has connections with the political office class. It's kind of like the mob, only they control law enforcement and the courts. That, boys and girls, is called feudalism.
I should have known the first time I called law enforcement here and the first question they asked was, "whose kin are you, and whose kin are you calling on". You see, without knowing the family connections, how could anyone be expected to know which law applied. Silly me, I always thought that there was one set of laws, but you soon learn differently in Kentucky.
If you want to witness feudalism first hand, come to rural Kentucky.