Coal Country

Here is what the right-wing press would have us believe about Hillary's comments when asked why coal miners should vote for her:

"God only knows, because when I'm President, I'm going to put a lot of coal companies out of business and a lot of coal miners out of work," she said, while rubbing her hands together and smiling gleefully.

While in reality, according to Politifact, this is what she really said: 

"Look, we have serious economic problems in many parts of our country. And Roland is absolutely right.  Instead of dividing people the way Donald Trump does, let's reunite around policies that will bring jobs and opportunities to all these underserved poor communities. So for example, I'm the only candidate which has a policy about how to bring economic opportunity using clean renewable energy as the key into coal country. Because we're going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business, right? And we're going to make it clear that we don't want to forget those people. Those people labored in those mines for generations, losing their health, often losing their lives to turn on our lights and power our factories. Now we've got to move away from coal and all the other fossil fuels, but I don't want to move away from the people who did the best they could to produce the energy that we relied on. So whether it's coal country or Indian country or poor urban areas, there is a lot of poverty in America.  We have gone backwards. We were moving in the right direction. In the '90s, more people were lifted out of poverty than any time in recent history. Because of the terrible economic policies of the Bush administration, President Obama was left with the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and people fell back into poverty because they lost jobs, they lost homes, they lost opportunities, and hope.  So I am passionate about this, which is why I have put forward specific plans about how we incentivize more jobs, more investment in poor communities, and put people to work."

Which is the correct strategy to raise the coal-producing areas of the country out of the poverty that has afflicted them for generations. Contrast this tough, but honest, portrayal of the situation with Trump's pandering promises to bring back lost jobs by using his magical conservative powers to make coal an economically competitive source of energy again.  

Coal country is where I'm from.   My father was a coal miner and my mother a coal miner’s wife, which meant she worked longer hours than he did.  We were poor, as was everyone we knew. The wealth of the region traveled north with the coal trains, leaving behind poverty, ravaged mountains, polluted water, and poor health.  The men worked in the mines until they died or were disabled.  The women cooked, cleaned, tended garden, and cared for sick and dying husbands, parents, and children. 

My father died at the advanced age of 58, scarred and bent, an oxygen tank by his side and a plastic tube beneath his nose.  He never complained, though. None of them did.  This was their life.  Just as it had been the life of their parents and grandparents. So, when I saw them cheering for Donald Trump as he complained that, because of the fight to slow global warming, his favorite hair spray was not as effective as it used to be, I was sad, but not surprised.  This has been part of their lives, too: another rich guy from the big city promising a good life for them and their families, all the while planning to take everything they have now and everything they ever might have. 

There are no morals more relative than conservative morals, and no hypocrisy quite like conservative hypocrisy.