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Comment by jwalgenbach | Hacker News Reader

So shockingly, people who have been fooled by a con artist (Trump) refuse to believe that they've been fooled.

And I get the argument that learning is difficult for some, and that union jobs are better than non-union jobs, and that it is difficult to move from an active job to one that is more sedentary. But so is losing your job in a dying industry and being unable to provide for your children, which is the alternative.

And I feel for them. I really do. They've been taken by the political equivalent of an email from a Nigerian prince. They wanted to believe so badly that they didn't check the history of the person making the promises, and ignored what facts they did get.

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Agreed. But I don't think this all falls on the current administration. US energy policy has been weak if not non-existent for as long as I can remember. Why shouldn't they believe it? No one (had the stones) to declare it dead; not part of our energy future; etc.

Furthermore, along the same lines, look at domestic oil. That is, fracking. Production has hockey stick'ed in the last 10 - 15 years. We didn't shift to renewables. We stuck with oil.

So again, why shouldn't coal believe the same? Most of the signals support their POV than otherwise.

Note: I agree 100%. Coal is f'ed. As it should be. But from the miners' POV there really isn't a clear message that say "time to give up." Clinton didn't say it. Bush didn't say it. Obama didn't say it.

The shift to fracking is US energy policy. With geopolitical goals behind it.

Gee, making the Middle East less important to the US and putting the pinch on Russia, who'd want to do that?

Yes. I understand that.

It was also to prop up the otherwise failing econony.

But most in the coal industry don't see - perhaps by choice? - the nuances.

Do you really need to tell people when there aren't any new jobs? No one is telling taxi drivers that their industry is shrinking fast due to Uber/Lyft, but they see the writing on the wall. The world is full of employment markets that dry up, and it is reasonable to look around once in a while are notice that.

Yes and no.

This isnt about jobs per say. It's about the perception that coal has a place in US energy future.

A real energy policy and real leaders would have delivered that message a long time ago. They have not. Why do you expect the miners to be any better than the highly paid and highly educated W.DC elites?

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