Regarding globalism, coal country actually provides a good example of the failings of both factions. The Democrats were so preoccupied with "the way forward" and scoring points with their base and the clean-energy lobby that they didn't concern themselves with the economic fallout of even their rhetoric regarding the coal industry. The Republicans were so preoccupied with stopping the Democrats and placating their red-county voter base that they didn't have the heart to tell the truth about the plummeting demand for coal and the automation that would eliminate most coal jobs even without the demand reduction.
Tell that to the Chinese. They are consuming coal at an increasing rate. Even if there was no market in the U.S., The U.S. coal industry could still reap a huge profit selling their product overseas.
Both sides could have looked at how to provide support in restructuring the region, bringing in other industries and assisting with vocational training and transition, and perhaps rethinking how coal country could start making MRI machines or silicon wafers for microcomponents or plastics and composites. That would've brought in jobs for the workers, jobs for the teachers who would train them, jobs for management, shipping and logistics, transportation infrastructure, the service-sector jobs associated with industrial upsurge, and much more. But nobody was willing to look beyond the immediate - for both sides, it came down to quick and easy political points.
I again think you overstate coal's obsoleteness, but yes, that's happening in a number of rust-belt cities, restructuring them for modern economic job markets.
The white nationalists say politicians don't give a shit about rural America, and I'm inclined to agree with them. Unfortunately, they were misled into blaming 'foreigners' and their neighbors who happened to not look like them or pray like them or speak the same language. I feel terrible for the poor and working-class rural whites left high and dry by Washington, but that doesn't excuse this resurgence of objectively abhorrent ideologies.
It's not just white nationalists who are saying that.
And again, you don't have to be a white nationalist to see the damage to the nation caused by illegal immigration. And even the erosion of our culture caused by LEGAL immigrants who are either criminals, on welfare, committing terrorism, Mexican-nationalist separatists, or otherwise keeping a separate identity and not assimilating.
I'm for reducing immigration for two decades to fully assimilate the waves of immigrants already here, and to assure those here or coming in going forward, are immigrants who will assimilate and benefit the nation, not undermine or take from it.
