[prolepunk]

I'm sorry I'm jumping into a political argument, I'll try my best to stay on point.

From what I read about West Virginia, those communities were collapsing anyway, and what Obama administration did, is to try and support government programs for the former coal miners to learn new trades and get some financial support.

https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?stor...

Not that it is possible to retain any of the coal jobs because they've been automated and the remaining ones are being rapidly automated.

At this point there are more jobs in solar than there are in coal industry.

https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2017/2/7/14533618...

Based on this information, in my opinion this is not even realpolitik, its lying -- as in, knowing facts and then misrepresenting and misleading people; because of any number of reasons -- be that coal lobby, or what 'feels right' for the average voter rather then what happens in reality, and I don't know how to deal with that myself because this realization makes me feel anger.