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| Mullins |
"Even before the US Senate recently confirmed President Trump’s pick of a former coal executive to head the U.S. Mine Safety and Health Administration, Appalachians were already bracing for the bitter taunts from self-righteous liberals and environmentalists, 'That’s what you get for voting for Trump,'" Nick Mullins writes for Huffington Post. "We hear it. We don’t like it. And attitudes such as these must change if we ever hope to see change."
Mullins, who writes a blog called The Thoughtful Coal Miner, says coal miners don't vote for pro-coal industry politicians because they're naive or gullible. And it's not because they're "old-style traditionalists dedicated to mining coal as a continuation of the way of life they've inherited." Instead, he says, when they defend the coal industry even when it doesn't necessarily benefit them economically, it's because of the "assault on their culture by outside elitists and out-of-touch environmental groups."
Miners don't have many choices beyond coal, he says. They'd love to work somewhere that paid a living wage and didn't cause health problems, but relocating one's family away from the supportive network of family and community is hard. And that's if a former coal miner could even get a job in a metro area where he or she would be competing with applicants from better-funded public schools and probably a college degree. And, he writes, job retraining is little help when there are no local jobs that can earn someone the same wage and benefits they get from coal mining.
"This is all obvious to us 'ignorant hillbillies.' It is also obvious to us that we are frequently characterized as simple-minded white trash in the national media and by faux hillbilly authors like J.D. Vance," Mullins writes. "And we know why this happens: because this kind of caricature makes it seem to be our fault. Like we were too dumb to leave when the coal industry crashed. Like we are the ones too stupid to understand the environmental costs. Like we were the ones who foolishly believed Trump would bail us out."
But the coal industry is a "necessary evil" for many Appalachians, he writes, and wishes more Americans understood that.
from The Rural Blog http://ift.tt/2BoLdd2 Former miner turned activist has blunt words for outsiders who judge Trump voters in Coal Country - Entrepreneur Generations
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