The thing is, if these people are going to act completely unreasonable, and completely unwilling to learn new trades, they aren't going to get a lot of sympathy

The thing is, if these people are going to act completely unreasonable, and completely unwilling to learn new trades, they aren't going to get a lot of sympathy from the rest of us when they go around screaming nonsense and filling their kids heads with outright lies. As others have pointed out, most of the coal jobs are already gone, these communities are already fucked, and protesting clean energy will do nothing to un-fuck them. I fully support jobs programs, training programs, welfare programs, and a whole host of other "liberal" things that would help these communities transition away from being dependent on fossil fuels, but they just get super pissy and throw all of that back in our faces.