West Virginia

But how to get some poor white people to understand that their cycle of poverty isn't related to their white skin and some brown or black person taking their jobs - but is all about the wealthy people they vote for whose aim is to keep them poor?

They feel overlooked and Trump tells them they are being overlooked, so they feel like he understands - then Trump and the rest of the GOP go about overlooking them as usual with periodic rallies and dog whistles to keep up appearances while continuing to overlook them some more.

But because they feel like someone is listening, even though no one is, they continue to support the very people holding them down.

They hear less educated whites are dying in record numbers and all they hear is the white part. Because their grandfather wasn't educated and he made a decent living in the mines - even though he didn't, not really - but times sure did feel better back then - even though they weren't.

Poverty is a dream killer. A soul crusher - but then so is ignorance.

They're grunts in a class war - fighting for the wealthy - who define victory as keeping the grunts down.

But because the Generals tell them they are fighting for "Our way of life" - that handy "Our" making them feel included - they hear white people fighting for the "real" America and "taking back" the country - that can never truly belong to those being marginalized - where white skin meant success - except for the poor whites being kept down by the very system of inequality they help to prop up with ignorance and prejudice.

Miners were offered free education and training but many did not take advantage of it because they were waiting for a "way of life" to come back. They weren't adapting.

A species that won't adapt does die out.

The Generals in the class war understand this no matter how much they rage against evolution. But instead of educating the grunts, they tell the grunts that they are perfectly fine just the way they are - as the grunts continue to die out from ignorance and poverty and the despair that brings.

It's a cycle - a cycle intentionally perpetuated for the results it brings.

OK. I'm ranting again. Sorry. It just makes me sick that people are taken advantage of by playing on their fears and prejudices instead of lifting them up through education.