The Mother Jones grave/monument off of I-55 exit 44 on the north side of Mt. Olive in southern Illinois is well maintained and worth a visit if passing by.
A few important things to remember about the southern WV coalfield counties:
(1) Logan (later split into Logan and Mingo,) Boone, Wyoming, McDowell, Mercer, Raleigh, and Fayette Counties were secessionist to the bone. The coalfield counties had the largest slave populations outside of Kanawha Co. They voted for secession as part of VA, and they were incorporated into WV in 1863 against overwhelming opposition. They were dragged into WV literally kicking and screaming.
(2) Until the completion of Appalachian Corridor G in 1997, these were extremely isolated communities. To get to, say Van or Oceana, from Charleston, Beckley, or Princeton-Bluefield meant driving on a windy, narrow two-lane US Highway with a speed limit of 45 if you were lucky. If you weren't lucky, it meant an even narrower state highway that you shared with coal trucks.
(3) A lot of the turn-of-century miners were immigrants and sons of Union Army veterans who were not particularly welcome in those communities. They had the advantage of mobility, which meant that when the Mine War was over, and they found higher pay in the mines in Colorado or Montana or Idaho, they left.
(4) A lot of the later miners who formed the backbone of UMWA District 17 vamoosed during the rapid depopulation of southern WV in the late 70s and early 80s. When US Steel quit McDowell Co. and moved to Alabama, a big chunk of the population of Welch and Gary went with them.
(5) Stoking racism has been a go-to tactic in WV since before there was a WV. John Brown's ill-conceived slave revolt started (and ended) in what is now WV, and hoo, boy, how the pro-slavery scandal sheets of the time played that for effect. As statehood loomed, Secessionists regularly claimed that the Unionists intended to give white-owned land in the coalfield counties to freed slaves. The mine companies spent 50 years threatening to replace striking white workers with African-Americans.
(6) The public ed system in WV has been broken for years. In the early 90s, they were making good progress, then Joe Motherfucking Manchin sabotaged the Democratic candidate for Governor, Republican Cecil Underwood took over, and public ed money disappeared. Other than a brief comeback under Bob Wise, it's been a lot of bad news ever since.
Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of affection for that area. I spent 4 years in Mercer County as an undergrad. My best friend is the son of a Wyoming County coal miner. My roommate of two years (and close friend of 28 years) grew up in Williamson. I'm happy to say that I get to hear that peculiar southern WV accent pretty regularly since an old friend from Chapmanville moved here after his divorce.
That said, a lot of them folks ain't right. As my buddy from Chapmanville once told me, during the height of the media's opioid coverage: "All the kids who wanna make something of themselves leave as soon as they graduate. Anybody with any skills leaves. Anybody with any work ethic leaves. [Logan County] is being distilled down to its essence -- ignorant, backward, lazy, and racist."
Your last paragraph illustrates perfectly why a government that is indifferent at best to the quality of life of its citizens will inevitably create a downward spiral in many, too many, places in the country. We simply cannot leave all people everywhere to the mercy of unfettered capitalism, and anyone who says or implies we can is a jackass.
Thank you for that thoughtful and informed comment. If I ever get crosswise with the law, can I have you as my attorney?
Coal:WVa as Old South:MS. Cheeto keeps telling them that both will come back. It’s easier (albeit delusional and self-destructive) to believe him than to face the truth. Like snake-oil cures, just tell the people what they want to hear, rather than what they need to know. It goes down easier.
Remember when Hillary Clinton was going to set up schools to retrain them for solar jobs? They backed Trump because he's as racist as they are. Their sole purpose in voting is to fuck other people over, they aren't interested in improving their own lives at all.
Hopefully nobody uses this as an opportunity to cast blanket aspersions on the residents of my home state. That some are complicit in their own victimization by the GOP and coal industry doesn't change the fact they're still humans that need our help.
How do you propose to help them? Hillary Clinton had a whole jobs program planned for after her election, where they'd be retrained as electricians, solar technicians, etc..., but they preferred the life long con man from NYC who promised to "bring coal back."
I'm genuinely curious as to how you think you're going to get them to vote in their own interests. I've spent decades trying to talk to morons, and I've succeeded in turning ONE gay Republican into a Democrat. He told me it was when I said "being a gay Republican, is like being a Jewish Nazi, since you're voting for people who wish you dead."
Yeah, that's the problem, nobody has an answer on how to fix stupid. When I was a kid, the dumb people didn't vote, because they knew they were dumb. Now they all "do their own research" which means they're still dumb, but now they vote for the worst monster America has ever produced.
I *never* cast asparagus about someone just because of their region. Just their beliefs, behavior, character, hobbies, diet, taste in art, and preferences in footwear.
I'm not there now, but the first 25 years of my life were in WV. 25 years later, home still means WV even though I don't have much family up there and I'm not planning on moving back.
One of my most vocal liberal friends lives in Parkersburg. She was a Republican until shrub went into the Middle East and made such a mess of everything.
She worked for DuPont across the river in Ohio, then for Chemours when they spun it off, then Haliburton when they took over logistics, and is now considered excess baggage and looking for something, anything, to keep her afloat.
West Virginia, like a lot of other places, isn't R vs D, it's rich guys vs the rest of us, and the rich guys are winning. We were a blue state when I moved home in '93.
Also, before you say liberals will help, pay attention to how quick the commenters here are to deride poor people.
Same time I got to Athens. Gaston Caperton was the Gov. Sen. Byrd, Jay, Nicky Joe, Mollohan, and Wise were in Washington. Hechler was SoS. Our Delegate was the janitor in my dorm, Homer Ball. The only Manchin who mattered was AJ.
I don't deride poor people, I deride morons who vote against their own interests, and the rest of the country's interests. Half of the assholes in this country will be fine with a Putin style autocracy, as long as it means they get to watch trans people get killed. They wrap themselves in the American flag, while having no clue what it is that actually makes America great.
I have a friend who's a moron, although I rarely ever see her anymore, because I got extremely tired of listening to her bullshit about Trump, and how he's the greatest POTUS ever. She had her taxes raised because of Trump, her boss got long Covid and retired early, so she lost her job because of Trump, and she still worships him. If you think you can fix stupid, I'm here to tell you that you can not. I've spent decades trying to just tell morons basic facts about the national debt, and they couldn't care, it's all about their grievances that someone somewhere is getting something for free, and their racism. It's really that simple.
"Here’s an interesting tidbit for you. The 2018 West Virginia teachers’ strike, which started a new round of teacher union activism, started in the same counties as the coal wars. These are also the most pro-Trump counties in West Virginia."
I've been trying to understand idiots for roughly the past 20 years. I gave up about 2 years ago, because they keep voting to cut taxes on billionaires, so that we'll all have less Social Security and Medicare, they don't want affordable healthcare, but they do know that the liberal elites in the Democratic Party are holding them back. Sure, shitheads, whatever.
I have a neighbor who's a fairly nice guy, but probably has an IQ of 110. He's a rabid Republican, who subsists off of Social Security and a state worker's pension, and I've watched him become increasingly angry and paranoid over the past 2 decades, due to being brainwashed by Fox News, Newsmax, Limbaugh, etc... He's not interested in the truth about anything, he's just an old racist, who hates the blacks and the queers, like the rest of his "Christian" community.
Trauma is passed down through generations. And then it gets mixed with modern events. How to reconcile the history of coal mining with the present day collapse of the industry and the void of opportunity? People fought and died, gave their lives to companies, suffered in bad health. Today, what is left of all of that toil and anguish?
Imagine though if we understood and broke the paradox of a fierce people, passionate about fighting for a better life, who are now supporting the anti-union, anti-healthcare, anti-education political class. Where is Mother Jones today?
Hillary Clinton wanted to fund retraining for solar jobs in W. Va., and the jobless told her to get fucked. They preferred Trump's bullshit promise to "bring coal back." They were too stupid to notice he did nothing for them, other than reduce the cost of operating their private jets. They will vote for Trump at 80% in W. Va. and 20% will have the brains to vote for Biden.
They're not traumatized, they're morons. I met one a few years ago who told me Obama tripled the national debt, when I proved to him he didn't he switched over to healthcare. I asked him who paid for HIS healthcare, and surprise, it's other taxpayers, but he "earned" it, because he joined the military, because his white trash Kentucky family had raised him on welfare, and he couldn't stand the "takers." After inviting me into his house, he got furious when I asked him who paid for his healthcare, and told me I was a communist who should paint her front door red. Joke's on him, my door's already red.
Also, he was a member of the Tea Party AND Occupy Wall Street. In short, he's an idiot who doesn't understand anything, and I never spoke to him again. I saw him hobbling around the neighborhood with a cast on, and I was DYING to say "I guess there goes my tax dollars, paying for some lazy taker." These morons don't need to be "understood" because there's nothing to understand, they're just stupid.
I'm surrounded by morons, and I've spent YEARS explaining to them how they're getting fucked by billionaires, and fucking everyone else in the country, too. They're stupid rednecks, who hate black and brown people and queers. They are willfully ignorant. My mother is not a redneck, buy she IS willfully ignorant, and woefully misinformed. Any attempt to show her facts is met with an upraised hand and "I don't want to talk to you about politics."
It's not a "bad take," it's reality. I'm sick of fucking morons, and being told that I need to listen to them. If YOU want to listen to them, and try to talk to them, get back to me after you've spent 20 years trying to show them facts, and being met with bullshit about "Biden Crime Family, BEnGhAZi!!!!, my gunz, etc..." It's fucking exhausting.
They (many of the PAB voters) know something is wrong, but they don't identify the actual source of the wrongness. It's not the black man, or the recently arrived immigrant. It's the feudal lords. Like the PAB. As it has always been.
Thanks again Professor Loomis for another great post on labor history in this messed up country.
At least during the Great Depression, the lower and middle class knew who was fucking them. These dumbasses, who've probably never seen a Messican, blame immigrants.
Back when I was teaching US history, the boys would be aghast to learn that my mother lived in a coal company town. Her dad was paid in scrip, and it was indentured servitude at best.
Memories of Grandpa and Grandma Bacon telling me how Aliquippa PA was a company town and workers were effectively debtor slaves to the company store...until they got unionized.
J&L Steel Corporation kept any competitors out of the town until the mill was forced to sit down at the bargaining table with Great Grandpa Bacon and CIO organizers. They put a clause in the contract allowing the competition to open stores. So Montgomery Ward established a store and soon J&L got out of the company store business.
Oh during the CIO unionization drive, J&L would bring strikebreakers in from West Virginia...and guess what other organization was all-in with strikebreaking!
Did you guess...The Boy Scouts????? They were all in with strikebreaking. Which is why Grandpa and Grandma refused to let Dad join the scouts...and they helped set up a Boys and Girls Club in the town for Union folks.
My mom doesn’t like talking about those times. It comes out in random spurts; when people suggested nicely that our house overly heated, she sometimes snapped at them that it was her house, and she had never been warm enough as a little girl, and by god she would crank the heat however high she wanted.
If I were an interviewer, I would *really* push back on this. Not to simply disagree, but rather to make him explain himself. What on *earth* is so dangerous about Biden's and/or the Democratic agenda? I am genuinely at a loss.
Barr should be smart enough to know that there are people like me who are puzzled by his position. Why doesn't he explain the danger he sees, instead of just vague mutterings about 'national suicide'?
The only 'conservative' arguments in this vein that make any sense are a fear of ever-expanding taxation - that goes to funding ever-expanding governmental programs - until the free market eventually dies and we are trapped in a hellish socialist economy with no checks and balances on prices, inflation, monopolies, etc. But how close are we? What direction are we going in? How fast? What is his evidence?
Well, the failures of certain socialist economies is a real enough phenomenon (USSR, Venezuela, China during major periods). But if we are in danger of something like that, Barr and others like him need to prove it! Methodically. Using facts and math. I am sick to death of his sort of ideological alarmism.
I'm probably giving Barr too much credit here, but he may see the sort of corrupt oligarchies that flourish in putative "socialist" economies like the USSR as an inevitability of excessive government control.
Taxing the ultra wealthy, ensuring women's bodily autonomy, promoting equal rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people, tackling potentially life altering climate change, is national suicide. Huh.
The Mother Jones grave/monument off of I-55 exit 44 on the north side of Mt. Olive in southern Illinois is well maintained and worth a visit if passing by.
"Governor William Glasscock". I could not make up a more fitting moniker.
... I *really* don't think the striking teachers in WV voted for Trump.
Ta, Erik. Great summation.
John Sayles film "Matewan" should be required viewing.
Today I realized Erik Loomis is also a name familiar to me from LGM.
I'm not gonna say the streams have crossed, but ...
A few important things to remember about the southern WV coalfield counties:
(1) Logan (later split into Logan and Mingo,) Boone, Wyoming, McDowell, Mercer, Raleigh, and Fayette Counties were secessionist to the bone. The coalfield counties had the largest slave populations outside of Kanawha Co. They voted for secession as part of VA, and they were incorporated into WV in 1863 against overwhelming opposition. They were dragged into WV literally kicking and screaming.
(2) Until the completion of Appalachian Corridor G in 1997, these were extremely isolated communities. To get to, say Van or Oceana, from Charleston, Beckley, or Princeton-Bluefield meant driving on a windy, narrow two-lane US Highway with a speed limit of 45 if you were lucky. If you weren't lucky, it meant an even narrower state highway that you shared with coal trucks.
(3) A lot of the turn-of-century miners were immigrants and sons of Union Army veterans who were not particularly welcome in those communities. They had the advantage of mobility, which meant that when the Mine War was over, and they found higher pay in the mines in Colorado or Montana or Idaho, they left.
(4) A lot of the later miners who formed the backbone of UMWA District 17 vamoosed during the rapid depopulation of southern WV in the late 70s and early 80s. When US Steel quit McDowell Co. and moved to Alabama, a big chunk of the population of Welch and Gary went with them.
(5) Stoking racism has been a go-to tactic in WV since before there was a WV. John Brown's ill-conceived slave revolt started (and ended) in what is now WV, and hoo, boy, how the pro-slavery scandal sheets of the time played that for effect. As statehood loomed, Secessionists regularly claimed that the Unionists intended to give white-owned land in the coalfield counties to freed slaves. The mine companies spent 50 years threatening to replace striking white workers with African-Americans.
(6) The public ed system in WV has been broken for years. In the early 90s, they were making good progress, then Joe Motherfucking Manchin sabotaged the Democratic candidate for Governor, Republican Cecil Underwood took over, and public ed money disappeared. Other than a brief comeback under Bob Wise, it's been a lot of bad news ever since.
Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of affection for that area. I spent 4 years in Mercer County as an undergrad. My best friend is the son of a Wyoming County coal miner. My roommate of two years (and close friend of 28 years) grew up in Williamson. I'm happy to say that I get to hear that peculiar southern WV accent pretty regularly since an old friend from Chapmanville moved here after his divorce.
That said, a lot of them folks ain't right. As my buddy from Chapmanville once told me, during the height of the media's opioid coverage: "All the kids who wanna make something of themselves leave as soon as they graduate. Anybody with any skills leaves. Anybody with any work ethic leaves. [Logan County] is being distilled down to its essence -- ignorant, backward, lazy, and racist."
Excellent history! Thank you!
Your last paragraph illustrates perfectly why a government that is indifferent at best to the quality of life of its citizens will inevitably create a downward spiral in many, too many, places in the country. We simply cannot leave all people everywhere to the mercy of unfettered capitalism, and anyone who says or implies we can is a jackass.
Thank you for that thoughtful and informed comment. If I ever get crosswise with the law, can I have you as my attorney?
Coal:WVa as Old South:MS. Cheeto keeps telling them that both will come back. It’s easier (albeit delusional and self-destructive) to believe him than to face the truth. Like snake-oil cures, just tell the people what they want to hear, rather than what they need to know. It goes down easier.
Remember when Hillary Clinton was going to set up schools to retrain them for solar jobs? They backed Trump because he's as racist as they are. Their sole purpose in voting is to fuck other people over, they aren't interested in improving their own lives at all.
Hopefully nobody uses this as an opportunity to cast blanket aspersions on the residents of my home state. That some are complicit in their own victimization by the GOP and coal industry doesn't change the fact they're still humans that need our help.
How do you propose to help them? Hillary Clinton had a whole jobs program planned for after her election, where they'd be retrained as electricians, solar technicians, etc..., but they preferred the life long con man from NYC who promised to "bring coal back."
I'm genuinely curious as to how you think you're going to get them to vote in their own interests. I've spent decades trying to talk to morons, and I've succeeded in turning ONE gay Republican into a Democrat. He told me it was when I said "being a gay Republican, is like being a Jewish Nazi, since you're voting for people who wish you dead."
I don't have an answer for that.
Yeah, that's the problem, nobody has an answer on how to fix stupid. When I was a kid, the dumb people didn't vote, because they knew they were dumb. Now they all "do their own research" which means they're still dumb, but now they vote for the worst monster America has ever produced.
I *never* cast asparagus about someone just because of their region. Just their beliefs, behavior, character, hobbies, diet, taste in art, and preferences in footwear.
Good thing you don't judge them on their choices in popular music!
Absolutely and amen.
Hey, did I know that about you?
I'm not there now, but the first 25 years of my life were in WV. 25 years later, home still means WV even though I don't have much family up there and I'm not planning on moving back.
One of my most vocal liberal friends lives in Parkersburg. She was a Republican until shrub went into the Middle East and made such a mess of everything.
I know Parkersburg quite well.
She worked for DuPont across the river in Ohio, then for Chemours when they spun it off, then Haliburton when they took over logistics, and is now considered excess baggage and looking for something, anything, to keep her afloat.
West Virginia, like a lot of other places, isn't R vs D, it's rich guys vs the rest of us, and the rich guys are winning. We were a blue state when I moved home in '93.
Also, before you say liberals will help, pay attention to how quick the commenters here are to deride poor people.
Same time I got to Athens. Gaston Caperton was the Gov. Sen. Byrd, Jay, Nicky Joe, Mollohan, and Wise were in Washington. Hechler was SoS. Our Delegate was the janitor in my dorm, Homer Ball. The only Manchin who mattered was AJ.
Good times.
Now Arch Moore's daughter is a senator and his grandson is running for governor and Elliot Pritt is a Republican. It's a crazy time.
The ultimate triumph of "Nobody ever made money leaving coal in the ground," I guess.
I don't deride poor people, I deride morons who vote against their own interests, and the rest of the country's interests. Half of the assholes in this country will be fine with a Putin style autocracy, as long as it means they get to watch trans people get killed. They wrap themselves in the American flag, while having no clue what it is that actually makes America great.
I have a friend who's a moron, although I rarely ever see her anymore, because I got extremely tired of listening to her bullshit about Trump, and how he's the greatest POTUS ever. She had her taxes raised because of Trump, her boss got long Covid and retired early, so she lost her job because of Trump, and she still worships him. If you think you can fix stupid, I'm here to tell you that you can not. I've spent decades trying to just tell morons basic facts about the national debt, and they couldn't care, it's all about their grievances that someone somewhere is getting something for free, and their racism. It's really that simple.
"Here’s an interesting tidbit for you. The 2018 West Virginia teachers’ strike, which started a new round of teacher union activism, started in the same counties as the coal wars. These are also the most pro-Trump counties in West Virginia."
I've been trying to understand idiots for roughly the past 20 years. I gave up about 2 years ago, because they keep voting to cut taxes on billionaires, so that we'll all have less Social Security and Medicare, they don't want affordable healthcare, but they do know that the liberal elites in the Democratic Party are holding them back. Sure, shitheads, whatever.
they are weaned on bad faith arguments, and so at this point cannot distinguish a well-reasoned one from utter word salad, as a consequence
BINGO! You just hit the nail on the head.
I have a neighbor who's a fairly nice guy, but probably has an IQ of 110. He's a rabid Republican, who subsists off of Social Security and a state worker's pension, and I've watched him become increasingly angry and paranoid over the past 2 decades, due to being brainwashed by Fox News, Newsmax, Limbaugh, etc... He's not interested in the truth about anything, he's just an old racist, who hates the blacks and the queers, like the rest of his "Christian" community.
It's essentially mass suicide, driven by tribal resentment.
Trauma is passed down through generations. And then it gets mixed with modern events. How to reconcile the history of coal mining with the present day collapse of the industry and the void of opportunity? People fought and died, gave their lives to companies, suffered in bad health. Today, what is left of all of that toil and anguish?
Imagine though if we understood and broke the paradox of a fierce people, passionate about fighting for a better life, who are now supporting the anti-union, anti-healthcare, anti-education political class. Where is Mother Jones today?
Hillary Clinton wanted to fund retraining for solar jobs in W. Va., and the jobless told her to get fucked. They preferred Trump's bullshit promise to "bring coal back." They were too stupid to notice he did nothing for them, other than reduce the cost of operating their private jets. They will vote for Trump at 80% in W. Va. and 20% will have the brains to vote for Biden.
They're not traumatized, they're morons. I met one a few years ago who told me Obama tripled the national debt, when I proved to him he didn't he switched over to healthcare. I asked him who paid for HIS healthcare, and surprise, it's other taxpayers, but he "earned" it, because he joined the military, because his white trash Kentucky family had raised him on welfare, and he couldn't stand the "takers." After inviting me into his house, he got furious when I asked him who paid for his healthcare, and told me I was a communist who should paint her front door red. Joke's on him, my door's already red.
Also, he was a member of the Tea Party AND Occupy Wall Street. In short, he's an idiot who doesn't understand anything, and I never spoke to him again. I saw him hobbling around the neighborhood with a cast on, and I was DYING to say "I guess there goes my tax dollars, paying for some lazy taker." These morons don't need to be "understood" because there's nothing to understand, they're just stupid.
This is a bad take.
I'm surrounded by morons, and I've spent YEARS explaining to them how they're getting fucked by billionaires, and fucking everyone else in the country, too. They're stupid rednecks, who hate black and brown people and queers. They are willfully ignorant. My mother is not a redneck, buy she IS willfully ignorant, and woefully misinformed. Any attempt to show her facts is met with an upraised hand and "I don't want to talk to you about politics."
It's not a "bad take," it's reality. I'm sick of fucking morons, and being told that I need to listen to them. If YOU want to listen to them, and try to talk to them, get back to me after you've spent 20 years trying to show them facts, and being met with bullshit about "Biden Crime Family, BEnGhAZi!!!!, my gunz, etc..." It's fucking exhausting.
I'm sorry. As the product of generational poverty, I'm far too stupid to read all these words.
They (many of the PAB voters) know something is wrong, but they don't identify the actual source of the wrongness. It's not the black man, or the recently arrived immigrant. It's the feudal lords. Like the PAB. As it has always been.
Thanks again Professor Loomis for another great post on labor history in this messed up country.
At least during the Great Depression, the lower and middle class knew who was fucking them. These dumbasses, who've probably never seen a Messican, blame immigrants.
Villago and Dr. Loomis are correct.
At the very least, we could bring back the fashion of wearing colorful tunics and leggings.
OT: Once again, I have to apologize.
I said some pretty rough things yesterday.
At the very least, I should have found some better ways to say them.
Thank you.
I forgive you even though I didn't see it.
Thamnk u. :)
(everywonk gets to have a bad day now and again, birb)
(Lifts foot)
Yeees
(Chirp chirp chirp)
Thank you.
Is the paradox an example of right wing, 'I don't care until it happens to me'?
Back when I was teaching US history, the boys would be aghast to learn that my mother lived in a coal company town. Her dad was paid in scrip, and it was indentured servitude at best.
Memories of Grandpa and Grandma Bacon telling me how Aliquippa PA was a company town and workers were effectively debtor slaves to the company store...until they got unionized.
J&L Steel Corporation kept any competitors out of the town until the mill was forced to sit down at the bargaining table with Great Grandpa Bacon and CIO organizers. They put a clause in the contract allowing the competition to open stores. So Montgomery Ward established a store and soon J&L got out of the company store business.
Oh during the CIO unionization drive, J&L would bring strikebreakers in from West Virginia...and guess what other organization was all-in with strikebreaking!
Did you guess...The Boy Scouts????? They were all in with strikebreaking. Which is why Grandpa and Grandma refused to let Dad join the scouts...and they helped set up a Boys and Girls Club in the town for Union folks.
I wish I'd been smart enough to get into this with my grandmother. It seems odd to me that I got to be nearly 70 without even wondering.
My mom doesn’t like talking about those times. It comes out in random spurts; when people suggested nicely that our house overly heated, she sometimes snapped at them that it was her house, and she had never been warm enough as a little girl, and by god she would crank the heat however high she wanted.
evil baby Sinclair says what now?
𝐵𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑟 𝑤ℎ𝑜 𝑟𝑒𝑝𝑒𝑡𝑒𝑑𝑙𝑦 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑡ℎ𝑎𝑡 𝐷𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝 𝑖𝑠 𝑎 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦 (”𝐻𝑒 𝑤𝑖𝑙𝑙 𝑎𝑙𝑤𝑎𝑦𝑠 𝑝𝑢𝑡 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑔𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑓𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 ℎ𝑖𝑠 𝑜𝑤𝑛 𝑒𝑔𝑜 𝑎ℎ𝑒𝑎𝑑 𝑜𝑓 𝑒𝑣𝑒𝑟𝑦𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑒𝑙𝑠𝑒, 𝑖𝑛𝑐𝑙𝑢𝑑𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦’𝑠 𝑖𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑡𝑠)” 𝑛𝑜𝑤 𝑠𝑎𝑦𝑠 ℎ𝑒’𝑙𝑙 𝑣𝑜𝑡𝑒 𝑓𝑜𝑟 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝 𝑖𝑛 𝑁𝑜𝑣𝑒𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟:
“𝐼 𝑡ℎ𝑖𝑛𝑘 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑐𝑜𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑟𝑦, 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑒𝑎𝑙 𝑑𝑎𝑛𝑔𝑒𝑟 𝑡𝑜 𝑑𝑒𝑚𝑜𝑐𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑦…𝑖𝑠 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑔𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑣𝑒 𝑎𝑔𝑒𝑛𝑑𝑎 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝐼’𝑣𝑒 𝑠𝑎𝑖𝑑 𝑇𝑟𝑢𝑚𝑝 𝑚𝑎𝑦 𝑏𝑒 𝑝𝑙𝑎𝑦𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑅𝑢𝑠𝑠𝑖𝑎𝑛 𝑟𝑜𝑢𝑙𝑒𝑡𝑡𝑒, 𝑏𝑢𝑡 𝑐𝑜𝑛𝑡𝑖𝑛𝑢𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑜𝑓 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐵𝑖𝑑𝑒𝑛 𝑎𝑑𝑚𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑠𝑡𝑟𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 𝑖𝑠 𝑛𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛𝑎𝑙 𝑠𝑢𝑖𝑐𝑖𝑑𝑒 𝑖𝑛 𝑚𝑦 𝑜𝑝𝑖𝑛𝑖𝑜𝑛”
Fuuuuucckkkk thaaaaaat guuuuuuuyyyyyy.
Eat shit, Bill.
I support your recommendation.
Obviously the very next question should have been
“What in the fuck are you talking about?”
If I were an interviewer, I would *really* push back on this. Not to simply disagree, but rather to make him explain himself. What on *earth* is so dangerous about Biden's and/or the Democratic agenda? I am genuinely at a loss.
Barr should be smart enough to know that there are people like me who are puzzled by his position. Why doesn't he explain the danger he sees, instead of just vague mutterings about 'national suicide'?
Just enough for clips and soundbites. That's all.
Vague mutterings is all they have. They don't have specifics that people would like.
Ah yes, dangerous progressive agenda of 16 million new jobs and opposing Russian aggression.
The only 'conservative' arguments in this vein that make any sense are a fear of ever-expanding taxation - that goes to funding ever-expanding governmental programs - until the free market eventually dies and we are trapped in a hellish socialist economy with no checks and balances on prices, inflation, monopolies, etc. But how close are we? What direction are we going in? How fast? What is his evidence?
His backwards ideology is his evidence.
Whew! And here I thought he was just talking out his ass.
Well, the failures of certain socialist economies is a real enough phenomenon (USSR, Venezuela, China during major periods). But if we are in danger of something like that, Barr and others like him need to prove it! Methodically. Using facts and math. I am sick to death of his sort of ideological alarmism.
I'm probably giving Barr too much credit here, but he may see the sort of corrupt oligarchies that flourish in putative "socialist" economies like the USSR as an inevitability of excessive government control.
JUST WOW — I am so shocked you could knock me over with a feather.
/s obviously
Sad part is he thinks Trump will forgive him and give him a job.
Actually, that’s the funny part…
Trump throws everyone under the bus.
No exceptions.
Taxing the ultra wealthy, ensuring women's bodily autonomy, promoting equal rights and protections for LGBTQ+ people, tackling potentially life altering climate change, is national suicide. Huh.
Way to nullify all you had to say about a danger to democracy.
If he's a danger to democracy, that's fucking it. You can't put Biden's policy differences in the same category.
And can the media stop treating these people like they're worth a damn? Read him for filth and move on to someone with something to say.
Bill Barr and his ilk are the true threat to democracy and he knows it
Barr's traitorous taint osculation compels me to contemplate all manner of graphically ban-hammerable criticism.
So he's an imbecile.
He's a singularly self-serving swine.
That's like, your opinion, man.
Here's my opinion. You suck, Barr.
Best Interests Barr is out for himself as always.