When we set out to look at far-right extremism in Upstate New York, we had a few basic questions. First, we wanted to know the status of the far-right movement here. What do people believe in? What groups and militias have been active? We found that all...
a. Coal sucks. It was never going to last forever. It’s horrible for the environment at like every stage.
b. 200k people is nothing. There are almost that many people living in my neighborhood of Brooklyn alone. I’m not keen on them having so much more political power than here.
Mining for coal again is just a non starter. There’s only so much in the ground to begin with, and a lot of people don’t want the environment to be damaged that badly.
There are things we could do as a society to make things better. Probably none of the good ideas come from the right wing. Basic income or government work programs would probably help. Letting the free market decide will just lead to people being exploited and the environment savaged.
People love to make the “empty land should vote” argument by harping that urban areas “don’t care about rural needs” but also love to ignore that anytime the rural areas are consulted the response is always basically “coal or coup” or “ban f**s or coup.”
I’m tired of these various right wing interests absolutely refusing to engage with any part of the process then crying that they’re being oppressed because they don’t get their extreme demands met, and I’m tired of people making excuses for them as they march in the streets to undo the whole country.
There’s a vast political center in the post-industrial east, northeast and midwest willing to be pursuaded. The Democrats have certainly attempted to do the right thing for the climate… sort of… but have utterly failed to consider the effects on industrial communities as the industry leaves. Then they add insult to injury by saying things like “learn to code”… but then not doing anything about the spiraling cost of education. This has been going on for decades, and the result is generations of impoverished people losing trust in the political process and falling victim to narratives of fear and hate.
Understanding this is step zero in beginning to steer this ship left again.
What a horrible, neoliberal thing to say.
It’s not just 200k people, it’s hundreds of thousands more that lost their livelihoods when the main economic driver in their area shut down.
I’m not arguing for coal (it’s 2024, why are we still using it at all?), I’m arguing against abandoning an entire population of people who made their livings off of it and its cascading economic effects.