Present Day Coal Mining: Dishonoring our heritage.
Drive into the central Appalachian coalfields and you’ll see dozens of vehicles with stickers such as “Friends of Coal,” “Coal Mining our Future,” “Friends in Low Places” etc. I am not entirely sure when the change came, but sometime in the last fifteen to twenty years the ultimate goal of coal miners has gone from working to give future generations a life outside of coal, to ensuring they have no alternative.
This is the most disturbing part of Appalachia’s decline to me. Our forefather’s pride and heritage in struggling through decades of abuse from the coal industry has been forgotten. The lessons they taught us in putting needs before wants and finding happiness in simplicity have been replaced with large homes, tricked out pickup trucks and sports cars, and any number of other expensive recreational items. This awareness saddens me each time I get behind a “Friends of Coal” tag on a new Camaro or pickup truck. Many times I have wanted to approach some young coal miner whose gone well and beyond those old lessons and talk to them, but I soon remind myself that it will not help. Along with the many things lost in the past two generations, one of them has been the willingness to listen and think. I cannot fault this newest generation of coal miner though. It was how they were raised and the generation before them who let the past die.
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http://www.thethoughtfulcoalminer.com/2014/06/present-day-coal-mining-dishonoring-our.html
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The coal industry has been waging a PR war for years. They buy influence in local and state governments, write classroom curriculum, buy media air time, etc. That kind of sustained propaganda works if it goes on long enough. 
