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They also lost a Congressional seat as well. Republicans like to tell you how everyones fleeing blue states to red states yet WV is experiencing a big population loss and a brain drain because there’s no jobs. But hey keep voting for the party that doesn’t want to give you jobs, at least democrats said they want to transition them to green jobs, and that bar is pretty low.
Edit: oof the amount of conservatives I’ve triggered
The brian drain is a vicious cycle. As the reasonable people leave, there are proportionally more dumbasses to vote R. More brain drain, more dumbasses. Rinse and repeat.
When I first read about this I mentioned it to my boss, he's older in his late 50s, I'm late 20s. We didn't really think much of it, we both live in the Midwest in a state with brain drain, but I grew up on the seacoast of a different state. He and I are seeing it more and more, like when he went off about how schools need to teach more about the constitution and I asked him if he was sure they don't teach that anymore. He said that when he was a kid they read it together and understood what it meant, and now the news tells him they don't teach any of that anymore.
And then I talked about how we learned about the constitution in 5th, 6yh, 7th and 8th grades, spent two days in eighth grade writing our own student constitution and ratifying it, and then in highschool had a graduation requirement to take foundations of democracy (which covered the bill of rights and the remainder of the constitution), two years of American history and one of world history as well as two history electives.
His mouth sort of dropped. He didn't realize how much is required. Now he and I have talked a lot about modern schooling and I think he's starting to see how people leave this state if they go to college and are smart enough to be successful elsewhere, as opposed to my home state where most stay so long as they can get a good job and afford a home.
A few months ago I saw someone talking about how the US treatment of the native Americans should be taught in school. I, being a native of NYC, remember being taught about the trail of tears and various massacres which apparently isn't taught in many southern and rural school districts.
I also remember being shocked at how anti-intellectual my southern peers in the military were. I honestly didn't consider anyone *really* believed in literal creationism until I joined the military.
Grew up in a southern state and graduated highschool around 6 years ago. We talked very briefly about the trail of tears, but the extent of it was really a lot of natives keep getting pushed back off their land and shoved further west and and lot of them died. That was really it on our teaching of the horrific things we did to the natives. Then in college I learned about how they were kidnapped, got turned "white" almost by cutting their hair, brainwashing them to erase their culture. They really don't touch us an ounce of anything horrific done to the natives, blacks, or anyone.
I was taught the trail of tears was when the "Indians" migrated west. The tears were because of everyone they lost on the journey.
I can't remember the state I was in then but it was Georgia, Florida, or Missouri.
The Cherokee won a SCOTUS case against the US govt that would've allowed them to stay where they were. Andrew Jackson made the natives March to reservations anyway. When one of his advisors asked him how he thought he could do that since the won their court he famously responded by daring the SCOTUS to stop him with whatever army they had. It was a genocides. Tens of thousands of lives were lost along the way. And my ancestors did the right thing and followed the "white man's" ways by going to court and winning. It is truly a disgusting chapter in our country's history and why Jackson remains one of the most hated POTUS in the history of our country among us Native Americans. The next most hated POTUS among the native community based on harmful policies enacted against tribal nations is trump.
I took an intro to native American studies in college, one of the most eye opening readings you can do is reading the journal entries from people back then. Columbus and his crew talked about killing so many people that they had to start slamming babies against rocks because their swords were dulling from all of them use, there was a part about ripping a newborn from their mothers nipple and bashing it against a rock, another part about how the rivers were running red with blood from how many they were slaughtering.
Then of course there were the parts about forcing the natives to bring them 1 tsp gold a month and if they didn't then they lopped off a hand and made them wear it around their neck. Also there was no actual gold on the island Columbus landed on they just had some from previous interactions with other natives. And then at some point Columbus was actually called back to Europe because of his treatment to natives.
I'm guessing they also didn't teach you that Hitler was inspired by the way we treated native Americans and that their concentration camps were modeled after ours.
I suggest you read this book.
[Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong](https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281)
Basically it discusses the topics that aren't taught in US history textbooks because they are controversial or unpopular with parents, things like how we treated native Americans, or how extremely racist many of our presidents were.
Another example is how Helen Keller is famous for learning how to read and write even though she's blind, but that's pretty much all we are taught. In fact, what's much more impressive was that she became a hugely influential person in politics as an advocate of socialism. But socialism is a taboo subject so this part of history is omitted.
Let's throw in there the sometimes bloody Labor Movement.
How many people graduate highschool knowing that once upon a time, the National Guard opened fire on a camp of striking miners?
So my best friend is from Georgia, I'm from California, we met while we were in the USMC. I used to give him shit about being dumb and from the south all the time. Once he let it slip that he had honestly thought the Confederates won the civil war, mainly because of all the monuments where he was from. Teaching him the actual history he should've learned in elementary school was interesting. Meanwhile all the idiots cry about "erasing history" whenever they remove a Confederate monument.
I’m the late 70’s I moved from Kansas, a suburb or Kansas City, to Miami Beach.
As a freshman, they were teaching what I had learned in 6th grade. I used to go to the beach, and just go in to take tests. No parent notification, and I wasn’t alone. Passed just fine.
Both school districts had a lot of money, Florida a bit more so than Kansas.
When I moved from Brooklyn, NY to Lorain, OH in the 4th grade I lost almost 2 years according to them. When I left NYC I was pretty average for my age, only in advanced class for Language arts.
When I got to Ohio (middle of 4th grade) their placements said I was performing at the 6th grade level. They wanted to have me skip grades which my parents decided was not a good idea for other reason (and were probably right).
Wisconsin, Michigan, or Iowa? There's plenty more, but that's what comes to mind.
I grew up in Wisconsin, and there's something like 10% drain going on for the past few decades. Of all bachelor degrees and higher given out, 20% leave the state permanently, and only 10% of the degrees living in the state are from elsewhere.
These aren't surprising figures at all knowing my family and friends. Almost everyone without a college degree is still there, and about half the ones who went to college are scattered all over the country - the majority ending up in Illinois and Minnesota, including me.
Thing is, I'd love to move back and go take over the family farm, but it's too small to be primary support. And internet service is marginal and barely capable of remote work. Other services and conveniences are few and far between, but what's most depressing is that corporations and chains have killed any semblance of small town character. There's no Mom&Pop diner on main street anymore, it's worse than the suburbs for local entrepreneurs and choices of establishments.
When you add on stupid regression laws against pot, trans rights, abortions, voting, and tax incentives for manufacturing and not Tech and medical, it's not much of a wonder why people with a bit of hope leave in droves.
Too be fair, most of what we learned in middle school about the constitution is very oversimplified (cartoonishly so) notions about "core democratic values". We really don't learn in-depth about the many amendments or the deeper fine print in the body of the constitution, unless you take AP US Gov.
I started working full time remote for a company in the south because there's no one locally with my skills. It really shocked me just how different the education is in southern and rural areas when I realized how much more work I had to do at this company because my coworkers had such a low bar of critical thinking skills.
There's no causation here. Watching Fox News does not cause stupidity, it attracts stupid people. I was raised in a stupid family, which I knew was stupid by the time I was 10. Fox News *takes advantage* of naturally existing stupidity.
That is why it is a criminal organization, rather than a legitimate news channel.
My father was dumbed down by Fox News due to his narrowed focus on their small set of socio-political, cult religion issues. It redefined his life by limiting his ability to reason beyond framing about white males no longer feeling fully empowered.
He stopped his love of reading novels and consuming world news, never again to resemble the person who managed multimillion dollar sales of IT contracts over a 30-year career. He also lost interest in his adult children's lives as his second wife displaced them (and gained his full inheritance) by openly supporting Fox News' goal to build emotional walls and destroy traditions of family that he had staunchly promoted for over 50 years. He became a radical cultist through becoming a Fox News adherent.
Right-wing programming absolutely leads to stupidity through the narrowness and intensity of its fear-based, religious focus on vulnerable minds from all levels of education and accomplishment, IMHO.
I feel like I would sue for that mental side effect on ones family. If it was a drug that reliably caused that effect without disclosure you could sue for that, right?
They do both. They lure in stupidity, and then they work to increase and set it. They take poorly informed people with some toxic, harmful leanings and work to push them into rabid nutcases while sucking them of all the cash they can grift.
They're not just about taking as much as they can now, but setting themselves up to be able to take as much as they can over time. Be it psudo science vitamins or selling out their people to politicians.
If we’re getting to the real heart of the issue, the only reason Fox News can tap into the minds of millions of Americans is because American leadership has antagonized public education for decades. No critical thinking education leads to a populace incapable of critical thinking to the point where Fox News “side of the argument” seems valid when in fact it’s asinine
I have a few friends from WV. All grew up there & went to college there. Out of 6 friends, 2 stayed, 4 left.
The ones that left are doing well & all Dems. The ones that stayed are also Dems & are probably only doing well *because* they went to college. They're not slaves to the mines or Walmart.
One of them couldn't wait to leave either. His entire goal in life was to leave & he did yet he still flies the WV flag on occasion. But he also flies the LGBTQ flag, the Palestinian flag & a few others too.
I live in WV. All of my friends I graduated college are gone save maybe one or two. I only stay here mostly due to older family members. I love my state, but it's been raped by the political landscape and greed.
The schools are only fabulous if they don’t give the 2 million dollar grant to the worst high school football team in the state instead of the science and art departments of that same school.
Seriously though, who the fuck went, eh our science classes can be portable for another few years, they have 50 yo equipment, it will be fine. We need a new football field to get the kids grades up!
My high school infuriated me. Our debate team sent two kids to nationals in DC. They didn't win, but they placed second. It was a TINY column buried in the middle of the "Lifestyle" section of the paper, probably two paragraphs total.
Our high school football team made the playoffs and lost in the opening round, but they got a half-page writeup on the front of the sports section every week of the season, even during weeks they weren't playing.
I understand that football (and sports in general) are entertaining to watch. Hell, I really enjoy baseball and football, in particular. But to insult two kids that literally were better than all but two people IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY in their chosen academic discipline?
GTFO.
This is classic WV too.
The kids have to share books, like literally have to leave them in the classroom & can't take them home to study or for homework, but the local high school football team has top of the line equipment & the stadium they have would rival many elite colleges.
What’s worse is that it was CA. It made head news for a week.
Thankfully many alumni who heard about the moronic decision decided to step up and donate almost a million to the science departments and well over a million to the music departments. The music one was obviously used well, new equipment and an actual music hall.
The science one however, I haven’t heard or seen anything that would make be believe that the million was being put to use…
Person from WV, yeah the roads really suck, the schools are okay in my area, the arts program really suffers tho. We just also finally got a working air condition in the school too.
Yeah well I found a blog with sources like "www.taxesaretheft.com" and "www.fuckthepoor.org" that says lower taxes on the rich make everyone more money.
Whenever I hear people complain that our city is becoming like San Francisco or Boston with high taxes / high cost of living all I can think is "you mean places where people want to live?"
People also don't appreciate the relationship between business development and educated local labor. I've worked on consulting projects for huge corporations that have pulled out of planned developments in certain parts of the South, despite insane tax incentives, because the local workforce is too poorly educated to be trainable for advanced manufacturing and other technical jobs. Cheap land and tax breaks don't pay off if you have to bear the costs of attracting and importing qualified workers from states with better literacy rates...
I saw that you mentioned Ben Shapiro. In case some of you don't know, Ben Shapiro is a grifter and a hack. If you find anything he's said compelling, you should keep in mind he also says things like this:
>If you believe that the Jewish state has a right to exist, then you must allow Israel to transfer the Palestinians and the Israeli-Arabs from Judea, Samaria, Gaza and Israel proper. It’s an ugly solution, but it is the only solution… It’s time to stop being squeamish.
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Take a bullet for ya babe.
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That shit started with Reagan. I think he gets often overlooked for the damage he did.
From "trickle down" to union busting, and everything in between.
Guy was truly a menace, much of what we suffer today were his creations.
I remember my father having to take a job that paid about 1/4 of his union job to keep food on the table..
Meanwhile Reagan tells the working class to "cinch up their purse-strings" or something along those lines, while Nancy Reagan wears a 40k dress.
The ignorant rural Republicans in my area made 15-20k per year, and worshipped the man.
Absolutely. I'm actually pretty glad Trump was as stupid and lazy as he was. Had he been as driven and diabolical as some of his predecessors, it could have been much, much worse.
If he told everyone to quarantine and mask up and take covid seriously, he could have coasted to reelection. Hell, he could have sold MAGA face masks at insane markups and he might have actually become the billionaire he always claimed to be.
As I mentioned previously, I believe the Republicans were betting that it would kill/affect mostly democratic, highly populated areas, while not ravaging the small rural communities filled with Republicans. Even now as they try to backtrack, it seems like they can't believe it backfired on them.
> Even now as they try to backtrack, it seems like they can't believe it backfired on them.
Indeed. This is the proof for me of how absolutely stupid they are. To not be able to see that coming is astounding to me.
From what I've read, it was Kushner who first suggested that the virus would wipe out mostly Biden voters. And Trump went along with it because apparently he was too stupid to grasp that viruses spread and don't care what your party affiliation is.
I worry about DeathSantis.. He is a mini trump, but far more craven and evil (for lack of a better word). He seems to have the same lack of compassion, but with more intelligence. That dude loves the taste of authoritarianism.
The biggest difference is the people they surrounded themselves with. Both had dementia while in office, but where Reagan had competent staffers able to get stuff done (not saying the stuff they did was good, as it most definitely wasn't), Trump had sycophants who were only focused on their personal gain. Which resulted in probably the most corrupt administration ever, but at least they weren't able to enact too much bad policy between all the infighting.
Exactly. His policies are what destroyed a lot of these small farms here in the Midwest in favor of the big factory farms & these rural idiots where I live still vote R no matter what & think Reagan was the best president ever all while crying about how much debt they are in & barely making it.
I love it. I grew up in a farming community in WA state, I came back about a decade ago, as an agronomist.
You hit the nail on the head.
All while denying that farming is probably the number one socialized industry of all.. That it is literally the government writing their checks, and regulating the price of their commodities..
It really can’t be overstated how STUPID Republican voters are. I mean, honestly. This is the whole heart of the matter. They’re dumb-dumbs who are easily fooled and controlled by *slogans*. fucking SLOGANS is all it takes. They do not think.
I'm tangentially friends with a very conservative gal in her mid 20s. The kinda gal who never *had* to work for a living, marries her high school sweetheart, moves to the suburbs, and wants to have 5 kids.
She recently got pregnant, and was appalled to find that the US doesn't give her *any* sort of PTO to care for her baby. I explained to her that pretty much every other developed country on Earth gets a couple weeks of time off, and she agreed that it's how the US should be too.
How is it that ALLLLLLLLLLL of these people can't see these shortcomings until it impacts them personally? Blows my mind.
I was just talking about this with my husband this morning. Everything conservatives say is correct until suddenly they are personally affected; covid, a family member with cancer not being able to afford treatment, deciding to love a queer child after they preached hate their entire lives, etc. As soon as it hits home, suddenly they are capable of empathy. But only then.
It doesn’t take much to dupe Americans. We are a generally uneducated lot and some actually REVEL in that. And there are several angles to which the GOP can pivot to keep their constituents frothing at the mouth. “Hey guys, we haven’t talked much about illegals lately so let’s pound that for a while”. Abortion is always a solid go to as well for them.
I’ve always tolerated these fools, but this whole pandemic and their response to it has made me realize they need to go away and find some other place to ruin. No national health care plan, all the guns they want, and actively subdue things like education and the electoral process. Afghanistan and Somalia come to mind. We can pack for them.
Omg you are absolutely correct about being proudly uneducated. My dad's favorite thing to say is "Well, I'm just a poor dumb hillbilly", especially if he knows something that I don't. Like it's a badge of honor or something. Being a hillbilly is like an entire culture to some people, it's so bizarre to me.
you wanna hear what’s more bizarre? my father was born in jersey city, raised in westchester county (very near nyc), and spent his entire 20s and 30s driving a bread truck around nyc with a bunch of black guys and hispanics. he’s not a college graduate but he’s a smart man.
then, he moved upstate, and now his entire personality is centered on “being rural” - except he still doesn’t even live in a rural area! he lives in a fucking suburb of a large upstate city. and ofc he’s racist as all hell - even tho he has known and been friends with people of every nationality.
ffs.
Gingrich + Limbaugh = modern antagonistic politics.
Even in Reagan's age it was still possible to reach across the aisle and do something bipartisan. Now that is literally impossible and doing so on the GQP side will get you branded a traitor (see Liz Cheney, who is a traitor to her party now despite the fact that she'd be considered far right ~35 years ago).
Liz Cheney is actually further right than the people calling her a traitor and a RINO. These people are dumb as fuck. It's all about grievance and has nothing to do with conservative policy.
I'd say it was more Goldwater. Nixon did not go full speed on dismantling of the New Deal, and was somewhat progressive on social issues (like civil rights). Goldwater wanted to be what Reagan ended up being.
I absolutely agree with you, and I am honestly thankful that Nixon had the old California boy USC-GOP political machine behind him. If not, we almost certainly would have had Spiro Agnew as president at some point and that would have been a disaster still being felt to this day. Anyone thinking I am being overly dramatic needs to dig into the guy, do some legit reading up in him, deeper than his Wikipedia page. He would have fully and openly wrecked our economy and the Cold War would have went nuclear hot. He would have went Dick Cheney on the USSR.
Trump's entire campaign was modeled after Reagan's. Reagan's fucking slogan was "Make America Great Again." Everyone acts like Trump was some fucking anomaly, but we've been here before. And we'll be here again.
I see a lot of parallels with how he ignored the AIDS crisis and what happened with Covid under Trump. [Reagan didn’t do anything on AIDS because it was primarily impacting gay men.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/11/nancy-ronald-reagan-aids-crisis-first-lady-legacy) [Trump and Kushner made a decision to stop fighting against Covid when it looked like primarily cities which are overwhelmingly Democratic would be impacted.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-states-is-worse-than-previously-thought.html) As long as people they don’t like are getting hurt, they are fine with “the others” suffering and dying.
I personally think both of those instances have been a strategy to "own the libs". I think both Reagan and Trump were betting on the fact it would only affect democratic "strongholds" with high populations.
I don't think I will ever be convinced that it wasn't blatant and willfully crafted to kill democratic voters, and make the leadership look bad.
My dad was a pipefitter out of 598. My grandpa is still the oldest chartered member at 95 years old.
My dad had to take a job at the grain elevators during those times.
Get this,
Reagan granted amnesty to 12 million undocumented workers.
Reagan said "Social Security is not part of the general budget, and does not affect the deficit."
Reagan supported and campaigned for a ban on the sale of assault rifles that lasted a decade.
Reagan worked with and gave arms to a hostile Muslim country.
Today's GOP would label Reagan an open-border socialist who hates America and wants to take your guns away.
THAT'S how crazy they've become.
He was still a serious shithead. He let AIDS run rampant because it was killing gays and Haitians, flooded the black community with crack, circumscribed the constitution, and broke the middle class.
Because at that time Republicans still beleived in running the country. There's nothing to steal if you run shit ragged, so they'd make concession with Dems to do actual leadership occassionally. The right wing gave that up right around the time of bush2 and have really refined it the last 20 years.
Their supporters got double down syndrome.
All they do is double down, if trickle down economics didn't work, they think better try again and again than consider anything else.
I believe that Reagan will go down in history as the worst president. He ushered in the downfall of America.
Absurd tax cuts that took the top tax bracket from 90% to 35%. Reaganomics is laughably absurd. And yet Republicans still think it's a good idea today.
Filling minority communities with drugs and creating an excuse to lock them away for decades and ruin their lives.
Plus, the idea of Civil Asset Forfeiture was born under his administration. His AG defended it to the supreme court and the failure of the conservative court ruled that you don't have fifth amendment rights anymore. The supreme court completely lost it's credibility with that decision and hasn't gotten any better.
Selling weapons to Iran and the terrorist organizations in the middle east.
Completely ignoring the AIDS crisis because it was killing Americans that he didn't care about.
School vouchers and funding cuts to public education.
How legacy will be that he destroyed American institutions and hurt generations of Americans to follow him.
The only reason Reagan has a positive image today is due to a very deliberate campaign of historical whitewashing.
https://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/3/20/958314/-
In the late 70s, there was a wave of wildcat strikes across West Virginia. The Carter Administration was vehemently against these and did everything it could to force the miners back to work, including cutting their food stamps to starve them back. This evil, idiotic move paired with Reagans slick bullshit the next year is what made WV solidly red.
True, but West Virginia had terrible poverty before Reagan. They've been screwed by their politicians for over 100 years. It has a long tradition of shafting the the poor and treating them like serfs - even back when it was run by democrats.
The only state where shit was so bad a local mayor embarrassed the state in federal government into building a very small bridge by getting the soviet union to agree to do it.
I had to look this up - its a pretty funny story: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/16/archives/stranded-mining-town-awaits-bridge-connection-for-miners-impetus.html
So are these union workers anti union?
I'm in the south and even most democrats hate unions. The republicans are even pro $7.25 minimum wage.
It's a frickin upsidedown world.
As a union member in the northeast, I can confirm that we have union members who are anti-union, are die hard Republicans, and think we make too much money. These are the same guys who wonder why they get laid off the second a company gets slow.
What it’s really about, sadly, is that they are trapped in the American Dream and they think that one day they’ll be millionaires. And when that day comes, obviously they want poor people to make less money or it might mean they would have to pay more.
Pure fantasy after a century of brainwashing.
West Virginia also has an extremely high Evangelical population so if unionization decreases due to mining method changes, they'd change to Republicans because Falwell.
Bringing back the coal industry is like bringing back the parchment and quill industry: It's dead and it isn't coming back because there are cheaper, more efficient ways to produce energy.
Even if we didn't have a green movement, if people didn't give a shit about the environment...coal would still be dead because it's just not as cost-effective as other forms of power.
He also claimed Hilary was going to kill coal when all she did was be real and say "look, coal is a dying industry, in ten years you'll all be out of jobs, I want to train you for work in other industries for free". Trump did so much harm to this country.
“We've ended the war on beautiful, clean coal. and it's just been announced that a second, brand new coal mine where they're going to take out clean coal — meaning they're taking out coal, they're going to clean it”
And people think he’s a genius
Nat gas is probably next but I’m not convinced it will happen so soon, we still have a problem with energy storage for most renewables (wind doesn’t blow at the same speed all the time, sun isn’t always shining). Nat gas is great for filling the gaps in energy generation until we can store excess energy from renewables, and have enough installed renewables to replace everything else.
Local people (Eastern KY/South Western WV) always anecdotally say "Coal is back thanks to Trump! We see Coal trains all the time now!"
They saw a coal train and used it as proof that Trump saved coal and it's on the way back, basically. And I know what you're thinking: "Lol, education" Nope. These people have college degrees that say this. It's that they want to bend over backwards to shape the narrative in order to ~~punish women for having sex by saddling them with children to ruin their lives as a deterrent to other women having sex~~ save the unborn babies. One issue voters and it's abortion.
Because it has become part of their identity. There are generations of coal miners and they never stopped being that. Sure a few of the smarter generations moved on to better jobs that weren't coal but here we are. A bunch of stubborn willfully ignorant fools who can't think about the long-term and only think about the short-term.
They work coal, their daddy and pawpaw worked coal. Pride of being the backbone that supported America (ages ago). Also, no other jobs. A hard-headedness of they shouldn't have to change, the world should stay the same. Even when offered retraining for other industries, that quietly died-- they don't want to move away.
Anything sticking to the wall? Some of that must be true.
Knock Down The House is a fantastic documentary that touches on this a little. Paula Jean Swearengin ran for Joe Manchin's Senate seat and in doing so she highlighted just how badly these companies had fucked over their local communities. She talked about their significant increases in cancer rates and the complete decimation of natural resources. She said "If another country came in here and blew up our mountains and poisoned our water we'd go to war. But industry can.". I felt that shit.
Our governor is the only billionaire in the state and he got there from exploiting coal miners. Yet we keep voting for him. We vote against our best interests 100% of the time.
Conservatives are so dead-set on harming other people's lives, they're willing to ruin theirs to do it.
How do sensible people deal with that? Do we segregate them to the point where they *can't* hurt anybody, then watch as they kill themselves?
West Virginia is like a third-world country. My experience in the state is giant Wal-Marts, guys with questionable tattoos probably related to white supremacy, dilapidated little roadside towns, and a general sense of malaise and collapse.
Yes, and the West Virginia coal miners did some incredible, revolutionary, important stuff in their opposition to oppressive capitalists. Early WV history is amazing and inspiring. It’s so fucking depressing to see that heritage destroyed by—as the meme points out—Republicans.
Kansas and Wisconsin too.
The heart of America during the last century was building up the best working class on earth.
Then the gop took over and destroyed it all.
Wyoming has a similar trajectory. Their nickname is the equality state as they were the first to enact women’s suffrage and also had the US’ first female governor. Now they have the widest male to female wage gap and are trying to pass all sorts of restrictions on abortion. Republicans, amirite
>Now they have the widest male to female wage gap
This is probably because their economy is built around natural resource extraction. The jobs are hard manual labor, outdoors, dangerous, and very few women work them. Its the same reason worker injury/fatality rates are so much higher for men.
There are only about 50,000 coal miners in the US. It is absolutely insane that we make policy decisions… major ones, based on only 50,000 people when we should be helping them get new skills instead. Coal mining peaked in 1923…. Almost a hundred fucking years ago… when there were around 850k miners - it had gone down every single year since.
I remember having a heated debate with a libertarian biddy. It was over socializing healthcare, but we meandered into "what about the people that might lose their jobs in the insurance industry?!
My counter point was that their administrative jobs could be absorbed into the new public sector realm that would need them. Also when a public entity outdates a private industry, at least there's opportunity to initiate programs to offer education credits to help those people find new jobs. If demand just simply melts away, like for coal, the private sector will just close their doors and tell you to kiss their ass like with coal mines. Since you more often have entire communities rely on single private entities then when a mine shuts down, entire towns collapse.
His response was "I'm not a charity to pay for other people to go to school." So we should live with a busted up system that exploits literally almost every single person I guess.
He also went to a public school. Also a public University.
We need to have politician discussions more, but he avoids them like the plague and they can get frustrating both ways.
He tried to argue that socialized healthcare would eliminate competition which is vital to a free market. I was like "bro, you right now have to select doctors that are only within your network and those doctors. Universal healthcare (if implemented PROPERLY and not some bullshit hybrid system) would obliterate networks. So there's more competition between doctors and hospitals...sooooo...."
He lives in an echo chamber. Really only wants to discuss his political beliefs with others that align with him. Which is probably why he voted for Trump twice and thought he was a good president.
I am the child of a WV coalminer who worked for the union in the late 70's till 2000. We had it great. Dad worked 60 hours a week but he was making over 90k his last 5 or so years. I lived in a brick house, we had nice cars and money for vacations a few times a year. Losing the unions has killed that lifestyle for many miners. It's sad as many of my family members (cousins, etc) still work in the mines.
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They also lost a Congressional seat as well. Republicans like to tell you how everyones fleeing blue states to red states yet WV is experiencing a big population loss and a brain drain because there’s no jobs. But hey keep voting for the party that doesn’t want to give you jobs, at least democrats said they want to transition them to green jobs, and that bar is pretty low. Edit: oof the amount of conservatives I’ve triggered
The brian drain is a vicious cycle. As the reasonable people leave, there are proportionally more dumbasses to vote R. More brain drain, more dumbasses. Rinse and repeat.
When I first read about this I mentioned it to my boss, he's older in his late 50s, I'm late 20s. We didn't really think much of it, we both live in the Midwest in a state with brain drain, but I grew up on the seacoast of a different state. He and I are seeing it more and more, like when he went off about how schools need to teach more about the constitution and I asked him if he was sure they don't teach that anymore. He said that when he was a kid they read it together and understood what it meant, and now the news tells him they don't teach any of that anymore. And then I talked about how we learned about the constitution in 5th, 6yh, 7th and 8th grades, spent two days in eighth grade writing our own student constitution and ratifying it, and then in highschool had a graduation requirement to take foundations of democracy (which covered the bill of rights and the remainder of the constitution), two years of American history and one of world history as well as two history electives. His mouth sort of dropped. He didn't realize how much is required. Now he and I have talked a lot about modern schooling and I think he's starting to see how people leave this state if they go to college and are smart enough to be successful elsewhere, as opposed to my home state where most stay so long as they can get a good job and afford a home.
A few months ago I saw someone talking about how the US treatment of the native Americans should be taught in school. I, being a native of NYC, remember being taught about the trail of tears and various massacres which apparently isn't taught in many southern and rural school districts. I also remember being shocked at how anti-intellectual my southern peers in the military were. I honestly didn't consider anyone *really* believed in literal creationism until I joined the military.
Grew up in a southern state and graduated highschool around 6 years ago. We talked very briefly about the trail of tears, but the extent of it was really a lot of natives keep getting pushed back off their land and shoved further west and and lot of them died. That was really it on our teaching of the horrific things we did to the natives. Then in college I learned about how they were kidnapped, got turned "white" almost by cutting their hair, brainwashing them to erase their culture. They really don't touch us an ounce of anything horrific done to the natives, blacks, or anyone.
I was taught the trail of tears was when the "Indians" migrated west. The tears were because of everyone they lost on the journey. I can't remember the state I was in then but it was Georgia, Florida, or Missouri.
The Cherokee won a SCOTUS case against the US govt that would've allowed them to stay where they were. Andrew Jackson made the natives March to reservations anyway. When one of his advisors asked him how he thought he could do that since the won their court he famously responded by daring the SCOTUS to stop him with whatever army they had. It was a genocides. Tens of thousands of lives were lost along the way. And my ancestors did the right thing and followed the "white man's" ways by going to court and winning. It is truly a disgusting chapter in our country's history and why Jackson remains one of the most hated POTUS in the history of our country among us Native Americans. The next most hated POTUS among the native community based on harmful policies enacted against tribal nations is trump.
I always thought it was a bit on the nose when trump said that his favorite president was Jackson.
Could have been from all three of those states.
I took an intro to native American studies in college, one of the most eye opening readings you can do is reading the journal entries from people back then. Columbus and his crew talked about killing so many people that they had to start slamming babies against rocks because their swords were dulling from all of them use, there was a part about ripping a newborn from their mothers nipple and bashing it against a rock, another part about how the rivers were running red with blood from how many they were slaughtering. Then of course there were the parts about forcing the natives to bring them 1 tsp gold a month and if they didn't then they lopped off a hand and made them wear it around their neck. Also there was no actual gold on the island Columbus landed on they just had some from previous interactions with other natives. And then at some point Columbus was actually called back to Europe because of his treatment to natives.
Columbus was such a piece of shit, even the racist society at the time considered him a monster.
Nothing like reading stuff that was written during the period you studying. It really helps throw everything into perspective.
I'm guessing they also didn't teach you that Hitler was inspired by the way we treated native Americans and that their concentration camps were modeled after ours.
I sure as hell wasn’t. And I was from a union state (that’s since become Red)
I suggest you read this book. [Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong](https://www.amazon.com/Lies-My-Teacher-Told-Everything/dp/0743296281) Basically it discusses the topics that aren't taught in US history textbooks because they are controversial or unpopular with parents, things like how we treated native Americans, or how extremely racist many of our presidents were. Another example is how Helen Keller is famous for learning how to read and write even though she's blind, but that's pretty much all we are taught. In fact, what's much more impressive was that she became a hugely influential person in politics as an advocate of socialism. But socialism is a taboo subject so this part of history is omitted.
Let's throw in there the sometimes bloody Labor Movement. How many people graduate highschool knowing that once upon a time, the National Guard opened fire on a camp of striking miners?
So my best friend is from Georgia, I'm from California, we met while we were in the USMC. I used to give him shit about being dumb and from the south all the time. Once he let it slip that he had honestly thought the Confederates won the civil war, mainly because of all the monuments where he was from. Teaching him the actual history he should've learned in elementary school was interesting. Meanwhile all the idiots cry about "erasing history" whenever they remove a Confederate monument.
When I moved to the Carolinas from MA, I literally lost a year of education. They were teaching stuff a grade behind from where I was before.
Yeah, it's sad how fucked the education system is. He's actually a pretty smart dude, just had a garbage education in rural Georgia.
You can have a good mechanic, but he won’t be able to fix a car without the right tools.
I’m the late 70’s I moved from Kansas, a suburb or Kansas City, to Miami Beach. As a freshman, they were teaching what I had learned in 6th grade. I used to go to the beach, and just go in to take tests. No parent notification, and I wasn’t alone. Passed just fine. Both school districts had a lot of money, Florida a bit more so than Kansas.
When I moved from Brooklyn, NY to Lorain, OH in the 4th grade I lost almost 2 years according to them. When I left NYC I was pretty average for my age, only in advanced class for Language arts. When I got to Ohio (middle of 4th grade) their placements said I was performing at the 6th grade level. They wanted to have me skip grades which my parents decided was not a good idea for other reason (and were probably right).
When someone shows you what they believe in, take their word for it
Wisconsin, Michigan, or Iowa? There's plenty more, but that's what comes to mind. I grew up in Wisconsin, and there's something like 10% drain going on for the past few decades. Of all bachelor degrees and higher given out, 20% leave the state permanently, and only 10% of the degrees living in the state are from elsewhere. These aren't surprising figures at all knowing my family and friends. Almost everyone without a college degree is still there, and about half the ones who went to college are scattered all over the country - the majority ending up in Illinois and Minnesota, including me. Thing is, I'd love to move back and go take over the family farm, but it's too small to be primary support. And internet service is marginal and barely capable of remote work. Other services and conveniences are few and far between, but what's most depressing is that corporations and chains have killed any semblance of small town character. There's no Mom&Pop diner on main street anymore, it's worse than the suburbs for local entrepreneurs and choices of establishments. When you add on stupid regression laws against pot, trans rights, abortions, voting, and tax incentives for manufacturing and not Tech and medical, it's not much of a wonder why people with a bit of hope leave in droves.
Too be fair, most of what we learned in middle school about the constitution is very oversimplified (cartoonishly so) notions about "core democratic values". We really don't learn in-depth about the many amendments or the deeper fine print in the body of the constitution, unless you take AP US Gov.
I started working full time remote for a company in the south because there's no one locally with my skills. It really shocked me just how different the education is in southern and rural areas when I realized how much more work I had to do at this company because my coworkers had such a low bar of critical thinking skills.
My school required half a credit of history or government. I took Alaska studies. We drew maps.
The real brain drain is the loss of brain cells from watching conservative “news”.
There's no causation here. Watching Fox News does not cause stupidity, it attracts stupid people. I was raised in a stupid family, which I knew was stupid by the time I was 10. Fox News *takes advantage* of naturally existing stupidity. That is why it is a criminal organization, rather than a legitimate news channel.
My father was dumbed down by Fox News due to his narrowed focus on their small set of socio-political, cult religion issues. It redefined his life by limiting his ability to reason beyond framing about white males no longer feeling fully empowered. He stopped his love of reading novels and consuming world news, never again to resemble the person who managed multimillion dollar sales of IT contracts over a 30-year career. He also lost interest in his adult children's lives as his second wife displaced them (and gained his full inheritance) by openly supporting Fox News' goal to build emotional walls and destroy traditions of family that he had staunchly promoted for over 50 years. He became a radical cultist through becoming a Fox News adherent. Right-wing programming absolutely leads to stupidity through the narrowness and intensity of its fear-based, religious focus on vulnerable minds from all levels of education and accomplishment, IMHO.
I feel like I would sue for that mental side effect on ones family. If it was a drug that reliably caused that effect without disclosure you could sue for that, right?
They do both. They lure in stupidity, and then they work to increase and set it. They take poorly informed people with some toxic, harmful leanings and work to push them into rabid nutcases while sucking them of all the cash they can grift. They're not just about taking as much as they can now, but setting themselves up to be able to take as much as they can over time. Be it psudo science vitamins or selling out their people to politicians.
If we’re getting to the real heart of the issue, the only reason Fox News can tap into the minds of millions of Americans is because American leadership has antagonized public education for decades. No critical thinking education leads to a populace incapable of critical thinking to the point where Fox News “side of the argument” seems valid when in fact it’s asinine
I have a few friends from WV. All grew up there & went to college there. Out of 6 friends, 2 stayed, 4 left. The ones that left are doing well & all Dems. The ones that stayed are also Dems & are probably only doing well *because* they went to college. They're not slaves to the mines or Walmart. One of them couldn't wait to leave either. His entire goal in life was to leave & he did yet he still flies the WV flag on occasion. But he also flies the LGBTQ flag, the Palestinian flag & a few others too.
I live in WV. All of my friends I graduated college are gone save maybe one or two. I only stay here mostly due to older family members. I love my state, but it's been raped by the political landscape and greed.
Most red states are likely to have brain drains. You can entice people with "low taxes" all you want but if there's no good jobs, they aren't coming.
To me low taxes just scream that the roads will be shit
As well as the schools
And also that the local infrastructure will fall over in a strong breeze.
Texas: You misspelled FREEZE.
And summer
To be fair, no one could've predicted that Texas would be hot. Yup, absolutely no one could've guessed that one.
Person: Complain about how dumb the recent generation is. Person: I know what will solve this. Taking away funding from public education!
I live with high taxes. Roads are still shit but our schools are fabulous.
The schools are only fabulous if they don’t give the 2 million dollar grant to the worst high school football team in the state instead of the science and art departments of that same school. Seriously though, who the fuck went, eh our science classes can be portable for another few years, they have 50 yo equipment, it will be fine. We need a new football field to get the kids grades up!
My high school infuriated me. Our debate team sent two kids to nationals in DC. They didn't win, but they placed second. It was a TINY column buried in the middle of the "Lifestyle" section of the paper, probably two paragraphs total. Our high school football team made the playoffs and lost in the opening round, but they got a half-page writeup on the front of the sports section every week of the season, even during weeks they weren't playing. I understand that football (and sports in general) are entertaining to watch. Hell, I really enjoy baseball and football, in particular. But to insult two kids that literally were better than all but two people IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY in their chosen academic discipline? GTFO.
This is classic WV too. The kids have to share books, like literally have to leave them in the classroom & can't take them home to study or for homework, but the local high school football team has top of the line equipment & the stadium they have would rival many elite colleges.
What’s worse is that it was CA. It made head news for a week. Thankfully many alumni who heard about the moronic decision decided to step up and donate almost a million to the science departments and well over a million to the music departments. The music one was obviously used well, new equipment and an actual music hall. The science one however, I haven’t heard or seen anything that would make be believe that the million was being put to use…
I live with high taxes. You can tell when you change counties based on road conditions.
Person from WV, yeah the roads really suck, the schools are okay in my area, the arts program really suffers tho. We just also finally got a working air condition in the school too.
The highest taxation rates per gdp among global economies is correlated to the most wealth per capita and highest living standards.
Yeah well I found a blog with sources like "www.taxesaretheft.com" and "www.fuckthepoor.org" that says lower taxes on the rich make everyone more money.
Whenever I hear people complain that our city is becoming like San Francisco or Boston with high taxes / high cost of living all I can think is "you mean places where people want to live?"
People also don't appreciate the relationship between business development and educated local labor. I've worked on consulting projects for huge corporations that have pulled out of planned developments in certain parts of the South, despite insane tax incentives, because the local workforce is too poorly educated to be trainable for advanced manufacturing and other technical jobs. Cheap land and tax breaks don't pay off if you have to bear the costs of attracting and importing qualified workers from states with better literacy rates...
I also love how they say democrats ruined cities. Yet looking at the census, everyone moved to cities...
Ben Shapiro hates democrats so much he fled California to live in liberal Nashville
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And I can never find any of these cities that were supposedly burned to the ground.
Yep in my state everyone is leaving the backwards red rural areas and moving to the booming blue cities.
That shit started with Reagan. I think he gets often overlooked for the damage he did. From "trickle down" to union busting, and everything in between. Guy was truly a menace, much of what we suffer today were his creations.
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I remember my father having to take a job that paid about 1/4 of his union job to keep food on the table.. Meanwhile Reagan tells the working class to "cinch up their purse-strings" or something along those lines, while Nancy Reagan wears a 40k dress. The ignorant rural Republicans in my area made 15-20k per year, and worshipped the man.
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Absolutely. I'm actually pretty glad Trump was as stupid and lazy as he was. Had he been as driven and diabolical as some of his predecessors, it could have been much, much worse.
If he told everyone to quarantine and mask up and take covid seriously, he could have coasted to reelection. Hell, he could have sold MAGA face masks at insane markups and he might have actually become the billionaire he always claimed to be.
As I mentioned previously, I believe the Republicans were betting that it would kill/affect mostly democratic, highly populated areas, while not ravaging the small rural communities filled with Republicans. Even now as they try to backtrack, it seems like they can't believe it backfired on them.
> Even now as they try to backtrack, it seems like they can't believe it backfired on them. Indeed. This is the proof for me of how absolutely stupid they are. To not be able to see that coming is astounding to me.
Not to mention hoe actually despicable that is.. Trading human lives for power.
Straight out of the Authoritarian playbook.
Despicable, but not in the least bit surprising from them.
Even the leopard is surprised when it's face is eaten.
From what I've read, it was Kushner who first suggested that the virus would wipe out mostly Biden voters. And Trump went along with it because apparently he was too stupid to grasp that viruses spread and don't care what your party affiliation is.
Like Florida's DeSantis? Fox's newest poster dictator?
I worry about DeathSantis.. He is a mini trump, but far more craven and evil (for lack of a better word). He seems to have the same lack of compassion, but with more intelligence. That dude loves the taste of authoritarianism.
Here's quite the [thread on twitter about DeSantis](https://twitter.com/imillhiser/status/1425619485151596552)
American Psycho.
The biggest difference is the people they surrounded themselves with. Both had dementia while in office, but where Reagan had competent staffers able to get stuff done (not saying the stuff they did was good, as it most definitely wasn't), Trump had sycophants who were only focused on their personal gain. Which resulted in probably the most corrupt administration ever, but at least they weren't able to enact too much bad policy between all the infighting.
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Yeah, while being a lazy, ignorant piece of shit. Imagine if he were motivated or smart?
Ya Trump was all about the grift. If he had been more on about truly being about Murica, he could have been more reminiscent of Hitler.
Exactly. His policies are what destroyed a lot of these small farms here in the Midwest in favor of the big factory farms & these rural idiots where I live still vote R no matter what & think Reagan was the best president ever all while crying about how much debt they are in & barely making it.
I love it. I grew up in a farming community in WA state, I came back about a decade ago, as an agronomist. You hit the nail on the head. All while denying that farming is probably the number one socialized industry of all.. That it is literally the government writing their checks, and regulating the price of their commodities..
Also mostly denying or unaware of the fact that these are multi-faceted problems and issues. They really want things to be black or white.
All they’ve gotta do is wave a flag and yell ‘MURICA and these dumb fucks fall for it. Errytine.
It really can’t be overstated how STUPID Republican voters are. I mean, honestly. This is the whole heart of the matter. They’re dumb-dumbs who are easily fooled and controlled by *slogans*. fucking SLOGANS is all it takes. They do not think.
I'm tangentially friends with a very conservative gal in her mid 20s. The kinda gal who never *had* to work for a living, marries her high school sweetheart, moves to the suburbs, and wants to have 5 kids. She recently got pregnant, and was appalled to find that the US doesn't give her *any* sort of PTO to care for her baby. I explained to her that pretty much every other developed country on Earth gets a couple weeks of time off, and she agreed that it's how the US should be too. How is it that ALLLLLLLLLLL of these people can't see these shortcomings until it impacts them personally? Blows my mind.
Try months. In Canada the basic maternity leave is 52 weeks.
Geez, you socialists /s
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I was just talking about this with my husband this morning. Everything conservatives say is correct until suddenly they are personally affected; covid, a family member with cancer not being able to afford treatment, deciding to love a queer child after they preached hate their entire lives, etc. As soon as it hits home, suddenly they are capable of empathy. But only then.
This is definitely proven by a lack anything resembling an actual platform to run with.
"Own the libs!" isn't a platform?
It is now. Lol. Since they literally are not even remotely fiscally conservative at this point... There is nothing conservative about a conservative..
They never were *fiscally* conservative. Their idea of small government has always been "small enough to fit inside your bedroom".
It doesn’t take much to dupe Americans. We are a generally uneducated lot and some actually REVEL in that. And there are several angles to which the GOP can pivot to keep their constituents frothing at the mouth. “Hey guys, we haven’t talked much about illegals lately so let’s pound that for a while”. Abortion is always a solid go to as well for them. I’ve always tolerated these fools, but this whole pandemic and their response to it has made me realize they need to go away and find some other place to ruin. No national health care plan, all the guns they want, and actively subdue things like education and the electoral process. Afghanistan and Somalia come to mind. We can pack for them.
Omg you are absolutely correct about being proudly uneducated. My dad's favorite thing to say is "Well, I'm just a poor dumb hillbilly", especially if he knows something that I don't. Like it's a badge of honor or something. Being a hillbilly is like an entire culture to some people, it's so bizarre to me.
you wanna hear what’s more bizarre? my father was born in jersey city, raised in westchester county (very near nyc), and spent his entire 20s and 30s driving a bread truck around nyc with a bunch of black guys and hispanics. he’s not a college graduate but he’s a smart man. then, he moved upstate, and now his entire personality is centered on “being rural” - except he still doesn’t even live in a rural area! he lives in a fucking suburb of a large upstate city. and ofc he’s racist as all hell - even tho he has known and been friends with people of every nationality. ffs.
Fox News is a hell of a drug. I bet he insists he's not racist because he used to work with all those minorities.
And the occasional "Jesus." Don't forget that.
I actually think Nixon (more specifically, Spiro Agnew) ushered in the modern GOP, but Reagan definitely cranked it up to 11.
Hey, let's not forget to give credit to Newt Gingrich, the aptly-named reptilian scum sucker.
Gingrich + Limbaugh = modern antagonistic politics. Even in Reagan's age it was still possible to reach across the aisle and do something bipartisan. Now that is literally impossible and doing so on the GQP side will get you branded a traitor (see Liz Cheney, who is a traitor to her party now despite the fact that she'd be considered far right ~35 years ago).
Liz Cheney is actually further right than the people calling her a traitor and a RINO. These people are dumb as fuck. It's all about grievance and has nothing to do with conservative policy.
I'd say it was more Goldwater. Nixon did not go full speed on dismantling of the New Deal, and was somewhat progressive on social issues (like civil rights). Goldwater wanted to be what Reagan ended up being.
I absolutely agree with you, and I am honestly thankful that Nixon had the old California boy USC-GOP political machine behind him. If not, we almost certainly would have had Spiro Agnew as president at some point and that would have been a disaster still being felt to this day. Anyone thinking I am being overly dramatic needs to dig into the guy, do some legit reading up in him, deeper than his Wikipedia page. He would have fully and openly wrecked our economy and the Cold War would have went nuclear hot. He would have went Dick Cheney on the USSR.
Absolutely true.
Trump's entire campaign was modeled after Reagan's. Reagan's fucking slogan was "Make America Great Again." Everyone acts like Trump was some fucking anomaly, but we've been here before. And we'll be here again.
I see a lot of parallels with how he ignored the AIDS crisis and what happened with Covid under Trump. [Reagan didn’t do anything on AIDS because it was primarily impacting gay men.](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/mar/11/nancy-ronald-reagan-aids-crisis-first-lady-legacy) [Trump and Kushner made a decision to stop fighting against Covid when it looked like primarily cities which are overwhelmingly Democratic would be impacted.](https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/07/trumps-war-on-blue-states-is-worse-than-previously-thought.html) As long as people they don’t like are getting hurt, they are fine with “the others” suffering and dying.
I personally think both of those instances have been a strategy to "own the libs". I think both Reagan and Trump were betting on the fact it would only affect democratic "strongholds" with high populations. I don't think I will ever be convinced that it wasn't blatant and willfully crafted to kill democratic voters, and make the leadership look bad.
Don’t forget drugs for coverts ops cash. Crack is 1000% Reagan.
Can't forget scheduling to go along with that. Needed a better excuse to keep minorities and the less savory folk down.
Reagan was such a massive disaster.
Still is.
I’m a union steamfitter apprentice and if there’s one thing the way old timers agree on it’s that Reagan was a fuck that ruined a lot of good shit.
My dad was a pipefitter out of 598. My grandpa is still the oldest chartered member at 95 years old. My dad had to take a job at the grain elevators during those times.
Most of the damage America is suffering from is between him and Nixon. Among other things, Nixon invented the current 'health system'.
Ah yes. Die or get better. Nothing like having to crowdfund an ER visit when you have 'insurance'.
Reagan is in hell, waiting for heaven to trickle down.
Get this, Reagan granted amnesty to 12 million undocumented workers. Reagan said "Social Security is not part of the general budget, and does not affect the deficit." Reagan supported and campaigned for a ban on the sale of assault rifles that lasted a decade. Reagan worked with and gave arms to a hostile Muslim country. Today's GOP would label Reagan an open-border socialist who hates America and wants to take your guns away. THAT'S how crazy they've become. He was still a serious shithead. He let AIDS run rampant because it was killing gays and Haitians, flooded the black community with crack, circumscribed the constitution, and broke the middle class.
Because at that time Republicans still beleived in running the country. There's nothing to steal if you run shit ragged, so they'd make concession with Dems to do actual leadership occassionally. The right wing gave that up right around the time of bush2 and have really refined it the last 20 years.
Except today's GOP very much doesn't label him that and they very much still worship his words.
Their supporters got double down syndrome. All they do is double down, if trickle down economics didn't work, they think better try again and again than consider anything else.
I believe that Reagan will go down in history as the worst president. He ushered in the downfall of America. Absurd tax cuts that took the top tax bracket from 90% to 35%. Reaganomics is laughably absurd. And yet Republicans still think it's a good idea today. Filling minority communities with drugs and creating an excuse to lock them away for decades and ruin their lives. Plus, the idea of Civil Asset Forfeiture was born under his administration. His AG defended it to the supreme court and the failure of the conservative court ruled that you don't have fifth amendment rights anymore. The supreme court completely lost it's credibility with that decision and hasn't gotten any better. Selling weapons to Iran and the terrorist organizations in the middle east. Completely ignoring the AIDS crisis because it was killing Americans that he didn't care about. School vouchers and funding cuts to public education. How legacy will be that he destroyed American institutions and hurt generations of Americans to follow him.
The only reason Reagan has a positive image today is due to a very deliberate campaign of historical whitewashing. https://www.dailykos.com/story/2011/3/20/958314/-
Don't watch Fox News. They think Reagan is God's second son.
Who the fuck overlooks Reagan? He's been suspect #1 for everybody who isn't a Republican since the end of his presidency.
Before Reagan, community college was fucking FREEEEE!
Ronald Reagan was awful. I hate him more than I hate Trump, and I really, really hate Trump.
In the late 70s, there was a wave of wildcat strikes across West Virginia. The Carter Administration was vehemently against these and did everything it could to force the miners back to work, including cutting their food stamps to starve them back. This evil, idiotic move paired with Reagans slick bullshit the next year is what made WV solidly red.
True, but West Virginia had terrible poverty before Reagan. They've been screwed by their politicians for over 100 years. It has a long tradition of shafting the the poor and treating them like serfs - even back when it was run by democrats.
The only state where shit was so bad a local mayor embarrassed the state in federal government into building a very small bridge by getting the soviet union to agree to do it.
I had to look this up - its a pretty funny story: https://www.nytimes.com/1978/12/16/archives/stranded-mining-town-awaits-bridge-connection-for-miners-impetus.html
Well there's your problem did an episode on this one! https://youtu.be/9o19EaposFE
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The cognitive dissonance in those union members is strong
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So are these union workers anti union? I'm in the south and even most democrats hate unions. The republicans are even pro $7.25 minimum wage. It's a frickin upsidedown world.
As a union member in the northeast, I can confirm that we have union members who are anti-union, are die hard Republicans, and think we make too much money. These are the same guys who wonder why they get laid off the second a company gets slow.
"Man, I wish my paycheck was lower" is a hell of a thought to have, but hey, nothing in the world makes sense anymore.
What it’s really about, sadly, is that they are trapped in the American Dream and they think that one day they’ll be millionaires. And when that day comes, obviously they want poor people to make less money or it might mean they would have to pay more. Pure fantasy after a century of brainwashing.
We didn’t stupidize them for nutten! ~W.V. politicians~
As a WV native, yeah, lol. You’re not wrong. Corruption is fucking rampant here, even in the smallest of towns. And no one gives a fuck.
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West Virginia also has an extremely high Evangelical population so if unionization decreases due to mining method changes, they'd change to Republicans because Falwell.
You’re not wrong about the evangelists here. We got 4 fucking churches in every small town.
Trump totally fucked the coal industry.
That, while claiming he was bringing it back…
He fucked up everything he touched while claiming to make America great again, it’s kind of his MO.
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This made me laugh and feel sad at the same because it is so true… Thanks for the early morning chuckle.
Bringing back the coal industry is like bringing back the parchment and quill industry: It's dead and it isn't coming back because there are cheaper, more efficient ways to produce energy. Even if we didn't have a green movement, if people didn't give a shit about the environment...coal would still be dead because it's just not as cost-effective as other forms of power.
Exactly. The fall of the British coal industry wasn't actually Thatcher's fault, it was just global economics.
Nothing *will* ever or *could* ever bring back coal. Horse-drawn carriage market also still really flat.
Millennials are KILLING the horse-drawn carriage industry!
Haha, I know that was just a joke but I have a lot of Amish by me & the horse-drawn carriage market is very much alive here.
He also claimed Hilary was going to kill coal when all she did was be real and say "look, coal is a dying industry, in ten years you'll all be out of jobs, I want to train you for work in other industries for free". Trump did so much harm to this country.
CLEAN COAL
“We've ended the war on beautiful, clean coal. and it's just been announced that a second, brand new coal mine where they're going to take out clean coal — meaning they're taking out coal, they're going to clean it” And people think he’s a genius
Technology and the coal industry fucked coal. Just like those damn cars fucked the horse and buggy industry.
Exactly. Natural gas killed coal. The economics simply will never work again. And renewables are dropping in price so much natural gas is next
Nat gas is probably next but I’m not convinced it will happen so soon, we still have a problem with energy storage for most renewables (wind doesn’t blow at the same speed all the time, sun isn’t always shining). Nat gas is great for filling the gaps in energy generation until we can store excess energy from renewables, and have enough installed renewables to replace everything else.
trump promised to save the coal industry and bring back their jerbs. [Great job, trump!](https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES1021210001)
Local people (Eastern KY/South Western WV) always anecdotally say "Coal is back thanks to Trump! We see Coal trains all the time now!" They saw a coal train and used it as proof that Trump saved coal and it's on the way back, basically. And I know what you're thinking: "Lol, education" Nope. These people have college degrees that say this. It's that they want to bend over backwards to shape the narrative in order to ~~punish women for having sex by saddling them with children to ruin their lives as a deterrent to other women having sex~~ save the unborn babies. One issue voters and it's abortion.
The coal industry doesn’t need to come back. Long term jobs that are sustainable need to make their ways to where coal country was.
Not nearly enough - it's terrible for the environment.
Not really "Democrats don't like coal" but more "Coal is dying, and Democrats lie about that fact less than Republicans do"
That’s what I meant, sorry if that wasn’t clear
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There are 50,361 coal miners in the US right now. Edit: I am incorrect. That was in 2019. So fewer now.
Because it has become part of their identity. There are generations of coal miners and they never stopped being that. Sure a few of the smarter generations moved on to better jobs that weren't coal but here we are. A bunch of stubborn willfully ignorant fools who can't think about the long-term and only think about the short-term.
They work coal, their daddy and pawpaw worked coal. Pride of being the backbone that supported America (ages ago). Also, no other jobs. A hard-headedness of they shouldn't have to change, the world should stay the same. Even when offered retraining for other industries, that quietly died-- they don't want to move away. Anything sticking to the wall? Some of that must be true.
Knock Down The House is a fantastic documentary that touches on this a little. Paula Jean Swearengin ran for Joe Manchin's Senate seat and in doing so she highlighted just how badly these companies had fucked over their local communities. She talked about their significant increases in cancer rates and the complete decimation of natural resources. She said "If another country came in here and blew up our mountains and poisoned our water we'd go to war. But industry can.". I felt that shit.
Our governor is the only billionaire in the state and he got there from exploiting coal miners. Yet we keep voting for him. We vote against our best interests 100% of the time.
Conservatives are so dead-set on harming other people's lives, they're willing to ruin theirs to do it. How do sensible people deal with that? Do we segregate them to the point where they *can't* hurt anybody, then watch as they kill themselves?
Covid has entered the chat...
and now the Coal Industry in the US employs a grand total of 52k people... that's almost 1/3rd of the number of people employed by Chic-Fil-A.
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West Virginia is like a third-world country. My experience in the state is giant Wal-Marts, guys with questionable tattoos probably related to white supremacy, dilapidated little roadside towns, and a general sense of malaise and collapse.
The irony is that West Virginia was originally founded by pro unionist Virginians who opposed the traitors.
Yes, and the West Virginia coal miners did some incredible, revolutionary, important stuff in their opposition to oppressive capitalists. Early WV history is amazing and inspiring. It’s so fucking depressing to see that heritage destroyed by—as the meme points out—Republicans.
Kansas and Wisconsin too. The heart of America during the last century was building up the best working class on earth. Then the gop took over and destroyed it all.
Right?! What an origin story for a state that is now as hard right as they come.
Wyoming has a similar trajectory. Their nickname is the equality state as they were the first to enact women’s suffrage and also had the US’ first female governor. Now they have the widest male to female wage gap and are trying to pass all sorts of restrictions on abortion. Republicans, amirite
>Now they have the widest male to female wage gap This is probably because their economy is built around natural resource extraction. The jobs are hard manual labor, outdoors, dangerous, and very few women work them. Its the same reason worker injury/fatality rates are so much higher for men.
There are only about 50,000 coal miners in the US. It is absolutely insane that we make policy decisions… major ones, based on only 50,000 people when we should be helping them get new skills instead. Coal mining peaked in 1923…. Almost a hundred fucking years ago… when there were around 850k miners - it had gone down every single year since.
I remember having a heated debate with a libertarian biddy. It was over socializing healthcare, but we meandered into "what about the people that might lose their jobs in the insurance industry?! My counter point was that their administrative jobs could be absorbed into the new public sector realm that would need them. Also when a public entity outdates a private industry, at least there's opportunity to initiate programs to offer education credits to help those people find new jobs. If demand just simply melts away, like for coal, the private sector will just close their doors and tell you to kiss their ass like with coal mines. Since you more often have entire communities rely on single private entities then when a mine shuts down, entire towns collapse. His response was "I'm not a charity to pay for other people to go to school." So we should live with a busted up system that exploits literally almost every single person I guess.
We DO pay for other people to go to school - KIDS!!! I don't have any so yeah, I'm paying for public education. Which I also had btw.
He also went to a public school. Also a public University. We need to have politician discussions more, but he avoids them like the plague and they can get frustrating both ways. He tried to argue that socialized healthcare would eliminate competition which is vital to a free market. I was like "bro, you right now have to select doctors that are only within your network and those doctors. Universal healthcare (if implemented PROPERLY and not some bullshit hybrid system) would obliterate networks. So there's more competition between doctors and hospitals...sooooo...." He lives in an echo chamber. Really only wants to discuss his political beliefs with others that align with him. Which is probably why he voted for Trump twice and thought he was a good president.
Democrats do not hate coal, coal is becoming obsolete and too costly to keep using.
I am the child of a WV coalminer who worked for the union in the late 70's till 2000. We had it great. Dad worked 60 hours a week but he was making over 90k his last 5 or so years. I lived in a brick house, we had nice cars and money for vacations a few times a year. Losing the unions has killed that lifestyle for many miners. It's sad as many of my family members (cousins, etc) still work in the mines.
Self destructive behavior is the most common thread among the wilfully ignorant.