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Cry me a river. Clinton had a plan to retrain and retool these coal towns your describing into productive green energy leaders and they rejected it because she eats babies and wind farms kill birds, or whatever. They are totally irrational and I'm not going to keep pretending otherwise. The real government failure is lack of education spending and critical thinking skills (thanks GOP) that is going to take generations to correct.

Edit: I'll add there are sparks of "hope" in rural america now that farmers are seeing the impacts of climate change effecting their yields, I think they are starting to come around. Probably too late, but it's something...

These people have real and legitimate grievances. Their government has failed them.

Yes, they do and yes, they think it has. The problem is that they have been in the business of voting for people who campaign on the "Government is bad, vote for us and we'll show you just how bad we can make it." It's their own fucking fault that the government doesn't work as well as it could. And despite their best efforts we still manage to have rural internet to connect them to the world in places where they would never be able to afford it, interstate roads to send their crops to market and bring every modern amenity to their local stores, a national air transport system to bring them a new liver or kidney after they've destroyed theirs, working ports to bring their tractors and 4 wheelers and snowmobiles, billions upon billions of dollars in (otherwise unaffordable) crop insurance and price supports for their products, and an army of adjusters with stacks of cash to rebuild after every tornado, flood, heatwave, snowstorm, hurricane, and forest fire.

The government has not failed them, they have failed their government. Their hand is out whenever they have a bad day, but their memory is wiped out every time they see that all those benefits might cost money.

There's only so much handholding you can do for people who actively refuse to listen to facts and science that tell them their way of life, based on the mining of fossil fuels, is long past being sustainable. The best I can offer is my sympathies that they ignored the same writing on the wall that the rest of us have been reading for a couple of decades. It's on Daddy and Grandpa for not telling their kids that the "family business" is a bad future career choice and not directing them towards something with a more sustainable outlook.

You can't engage with people who want to murder their perceived enemies. Sorry that it sucks to live in a rural area, but they have to regain some semblance of sanity before a conversation can take place.

The people who IDOLIZE Timothy McVeigh will never be on your side I hate to break it to you.

And Fascism is already here. The Nazi rally’s at Madison Square Garden in the 1930’s was an indication of that.

And the Civil War, that was Americas brand of Fascism at the time.

These folks believe in Gods kingdom as the ONLY reality, they don’t look at the world through your lens.

The coal mine closing, rural lands becoming industrial, Sacklers killing their innocent kids, that’s not what drives them.

Fighting the spiritual war is the only thing to do because everything else is literally out of their control.

Their ill placed revenge is always going to be a vote against you.

They were bred that way. We can’t change it. They have to, and that ain’t likely.

Check out Deer Hunting With Jesus by Joe Bageant. It’s a rednecks view of his own people and some predictions that came true.

Yeah we absolutely need to find ways to revitalize the rust belt and Appalachia in climate friendly ways. But it should be remembered that when they’re offered compromises that help them I’ve seen plenty get mad. Like yeah Appalachia has suffered for coal’s death, but the jobs aren’t coming back. It just doesn’t take a town to level mountains for coal. And nobody has suffered more for coal’s presence than small coal towns. They’re still poisoned from the mining runoff. And even without decarbonizing coal isn’t coming back. It’s too expensive and inefficient compared to solar and natural gas.

The patronizing attitude is extremely well earned.

I agree with the idea behind this post, and its why I always approach right wingers with an attitude of education. Their opinons (which themselves are caused by legitimate grievances) are accellerated by ignorance. They cant argue or debate because their viewpoint is not a realistic representation of what has to be done. Their platform has turned into a joke, and thats honestly disappointing to see.

The increase in right-wing extremism is only fueling further ignorance, and radicalized ideas never hold up in any kind of evidence-based debate.

That's a cherry picked example. Most of these people have jobs outside of the coal industry. That isn't why they are like this

If you live somewhere where there's no work, and you don't do anything to help yourself, I don't really have much sympathy. That's not the government's problem, it's yours.

Now if you're disabled or something that's a different story, and we do have programs to help those people. But "regular" people who can't understand that times change shouldn't hold everyone else back.

TRhis is an extremely good point. I fear a further polarisatoon of society is almost inevitable, it seems we (different bubbles in society) are slowly drifting apart like tectonic plates. A process like that is hard to slow down, let alone stop or reverse.