Coal miners, they got you mad at the wrong people

“I ain’t never got nowhere. And I got there by hard work,” — Woody Guthrie.

Announcing the formation of a new interest group, Friends of Miners, (FOM) whose slogan is “Our Friends are People.”

The other group, can go FOC off, and take their little bought candidates with them. The danger of being a friend of something so generic as coal is that you get lumped and there is no slack.

With Trumphialism, coal miners have been quickly rewarded for their solidarity in behalf of the candidate who wore a hard hat over fake hair and fake intentions when it comes to coal.

In just three weeks, the country’s energy policies have been turned over to our enemies in oil and gas, and our enemy’s weapon is being piped down from the North via the Keystone XL, which sounds like a SUV.

The assault on Obamacare is not only an assault on out-of-work miners having a chance of having medical insurance, but is also an assault on the only chance a miner has of winning a black lung case.

Just to make it all memorable, a decree went out that urged coal companies to destroy the creeks and headwaters that coal miners live along, and whose waters have suckled them.

It’s just like what the snail said riding on the back of the turtle: “Whee!”

Coal miners, they did this to you without debate or discussion, because you wouldn’t allow debate. They got you mad at the wrong people by saying somebody was going to take your guns, even though you bought more guns in the last eight years than they sold in World War I. They made you forget that coal has been bleeding jobs since four wars ago. It’s just that when the Joy Loader put hundreds out of work, nobody was blaming the Joy Loader on Truman.

They got you mad and printed up some nice shirts and hats and rear-window stickers for too-large trucks. They provided the noise of Ted Nugent and you became allies of the operators and mineral holders who can get out of their contracts, but you can’t.

They took Carl D. Perkins away from you and reshaped your district so that instead of Carl D. you would always have a representative who might, or might not, try to help you — but would be politically safe ignoring you.

The United Mine Workers made a fatal mistake in always being on the same side in an election. Coal miners, FOM urges you not to make that same mistake or, if you did, lie out of it.

This story was originally published February 10, 2017 at 7:49 PM with the headline "Coal miners, they got you mad at the wrong people."