An Old Liberal Apologize
or
On Reading News Stories about How the Liberals Missed the Feelings in the Heartland.
Here I am working in the dark like an old coal miner suffering, choking, gagging, fearing the canary’s death, or wrong survival.
In my mind: I am now like the pictures of the miners caked with execrable dust and grime, raging at what threatens and abuses me.
Rise up in defense.
!No More Mining Young Orphans! reads my crazed sign.
Chanting their phrases:
Make the clean jobs
Mine the wind,
Mine the sun,
out in field,
lab and factory.
Not choking,
Help us all
not choke and drown.
Wait, No, could it really be that the real coal miners mock the wind farm and the solar panels and those who would help them and bring the end to the dirt and the working in the dark and the filthy poison rivers? From deep in their souls they mock and scorn the old liberal who can now only confess he was wrong. Now they love the huckster and hate the school marm. “Never let her fight for us!” they declaim.
…___…
Forgive me coal miner for not understanding that when you were born, on that day when the sun didn’t shine and you picked up your shovel and went to the mine, I didn’t understand that it was what you wanted, what you would die for to die from. Silly me, I thought that baby coal miner wanted to go to school.
– H Lipke