4 ms·
You've missed the point I and the GP are making completely. GP is making an argument about what is happening to displaced people, not about what is happening to
by thehardsphere 9y ago
You've missed the point I and the GP are making completely. GP is making an argument about what is happening to displaced people, not about what is happening to the coal industry.
The claim in the GP is _not_ that coal "is dying to political disfavor", the claim is that political disfavor of coal exists and is not helpful _to the people who used to mine it_, for whatever reason those people were displaced.
It really doesn't matter if coal is dying because alternatives are better or if it's the Illuminati doing it, because that doesn't change the fact that politicians are not doing anything to address the effects of it and in some cases are being explicitly callous towards people who used to be employed mining coal.
- nate_meurer 9y agoYes, I get it, you really don't like what Hillary said. Neither does she; in her new book she calls that statement one of her biggest mistakes. But one politician's ill-considered indulgence in the heat of a campaign does not make your case that "politicians are not doing anything" to help coal miners. Quite clearly, the opposite is true. Coal miners are America's most fashionable symbol of blue-collar righteousness, and politicians on both sides of the aisle are tripping over each other to be seen "doing something" for them. In both state and national politics, this has given coal miners influence way out of proportion to their constituency, and far beyond that of any other jobless group such as former steel-workers or loggers or out-of-work retail store workers. Invoking the bogeyman of coal-hating elites is nothing more than a way to keep a political football inflated.