Donesky describes “The Kentucky Cycle” as a drive by shooting because it’s devastating and there is no chance to respond to it before it’s damage is dealt. The damage in this case is the perpetuation of damaging negative stereotypes about the Appalachian people. Schenkkan portrays the people in the worst tradition of Frost and Caudill, as lost in time and possibly genetically inferior, as former violent indentured servants who fled to the hills to escape their debts, and who, as a people, never progressed past this point. He portrays their problems as of their own making, a perpetual cycle of violence, acted out generation after generation. Schenkkan also paints the exploitation of the Appalachian people and land by big mining companies as their own fault, either through their greed, or almost as damnably their ignorance and fatalistic attitude. In his play, right until the very end, when Appalachian people do make a decision it’s usually a terrible or malevolent decision. The flip side of this is his infantilization of Appalachian people, where they need an outside labor organizer to come in, and “show them how it’s done.”

That’s the damage of the drive by shooting, the “no chance for response” part comes from it’s winning of the Pulitzer prize, with no chance for input, or an ignoring of input by Appalachian sources/scholars.