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So, I'm pretty exasperated with the Trump fans too.

However, I also did do what I could to understand where people are coming from. Bought several books written by political science people talking about the elections and motivations.

Let me put it this way. A lot of people here on the left, on the Threadiverse, would probably criticize Margaret Thatcher because she largely shut down coal mining in the UK.

The coal workers in the article are basically in the same boat as those coal workers. Hillary Clinton once --- truthfully, if perhaps not showing a lot of sensitivity --- said that "we're going to put a lot of coal miners out of work". Those people are right wing, but in significant part, they're voting for Trump for the same reasons that the coal miners in the UK voted for Labour --- because they're scared of their coal mining jobs going away, want more demand for their labor. For them, Hillary Clinton is their Margaret Thatcher, and Trump at least represents the possibility of salvation.

We have to stop burning coal. We can't continue emitting carbon dioxide.

I agree. I'm not arguing that we should mine more coal. I think that shutting down coal mining here is the right move (and, for that matter, that shutting it down in the UK was too). But I do think that it's important to at least understand why people are doing some of the things they're doing, even if one doesn't agree with them.

There aren't that many people employed by the coal mining industry directly, not anymore, but there are companies that support the coal mining industry. Maybe they provide rail or maintenance services. Maybe they're a restaurant that serves people who get money from the coal industry. Stuff like that. Coal goes away, so do the supporting businesses.

Those people probably aren't making very good political moves, not by my estimation. But they're doing it because if the industry goes away, so do their jobs. So do a lot of their villages. I'd say that Trump is lying, yeah, but Trump is promising them hope -- a coal renaissance.

Wyoming and West Virginia are our two top coal-mining states. They also had the highest percentage vote share of all states for Trump in the 2024 general presidential election.

And then you have the oil and natural gas industries. Those are a lot bigger in some other states. If you transition to other power sources, those guys are going to be out of a job too.

I'm willing to say "Well, sorry, guys, but that industry just doesn't make sense any more. You're going to have to find new jobs, and you are probably going to have to move." But for those people, that's going to mean losing towns and stuff that they put time into. Their social network goes away, has to be rebuilt somewhere else. The largest investment that most Americans make is in their home. If people leave en masse, the value of that property falls too. Their net worth falls. I'm just saying that what Trump is dangling in front of them is the prospect of not having to do that. Yeah, it's not true --- he's giving them a pleasant lie. But I think that it is, unfortunately, a very human trait to readily believe things that we want to be true, especially when someone is working very hard to make us believe them.

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