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In reply to the discussion: Awaiting Trump's coal comeback, miners reject retraining [View all]Hortensis
(58,785 posts)I disagree with the notion that most of those people are clueless. We were in Kentucky/WV coal country a month or so ago, and the people we chatted with weren't too stupid to know the basics about their region's major industry at all. Very much to the contrary.
But most are very conservative by tradition and some by personality and tradition. They wanted what Hillary stood there and promised -- creation of vibrant prosperous local economies that would allow them continue to live with family and friends in a very beautiful country rich with their own old culture they love and value. And to be able to raise their children to be able to stay right there as adults and share in the wealth and wellbeing of the rest of America.
They just didn't want Democrats to win and make it happen.
I've lived in heavily conservative towns for the past 30 years, most of our friends and acquaintances have of necessity always been conservatives, and I believe most analyses ignore or vastly underestimate simple spiteful us-versus-them partisanship as an explanation for their choices. I see some form of it almost every day. And in this era, when most conservative principles and mores have become dissociated from GOP political behaviors that have nothing to do with conservatism itself, the growth of hostile, aggressive, tribal partisanship to an effectively insane degree explains virtually everything. The rest is mostly just dressing it up to sound better.
They understood. They just didn't want Democrats to win and make it happen.