The weekend presented us with the usual anti-Obama /EPA columns and editorials and as I've noted in a number of previous posts, they don't change very much from week to week. Rather than repeating myself every weekend, I've decided to compile a list of the recurring argument and then reference them as needed.

West Virginians are very smart!

Here is an argument that you often see in the Mike Myer political columns and the editorials: Democrats and liberals look down upon West Virginians, but we (West Virginians) are so much smarter than the rest of the nation.

The first part of this argument usually points to Obama, Democrats or liberals who, at some point, have disparaged West Virginians. Here's the example that I used a couple of weeks ago:

Once you substitute Boxer for Reid, you've read his points before: they call us (West Virginians) "lazy" and we're a bunch of "hicks" and it includes the obligatory 2008 quote from Obama that West Virginians cling to their guns or religion as well as the Jonathan Gruber quote about how Obama depended on the stupidity of the American voter.

The second part of this argument is a corollary to the first part and it argues that it is West Virginians who truly understand the problem while politicians (Democrats and Obama, obviously) and scientists are not to be trusted or believed. Not only will West Virginians not fall for the phony arguments that the "pseudo-environmentalists, ""the pseudo-intellectuals" or Democrats present, they are possessed with a rare wisdom that needs to be heard by the rest of the nation. On Saturday, Myer told us in a column titled "Tapping W.Va. Common Sense:

Give us the facts, then ask us to give you our opinions, senator. Frankly, you won't find better advisers than your neighbors - your fellow West Virginians.
You need good advice, Senator Manchin. Collectively, we can give it.

And from Saturday's editorial:

The utter madness of his strategy has been laid out in detail for those willing to analyze it.

Most people in our states have understood that for years. Our task now is to spread the word - to Michigan and Florida, South Carolina and California, Maine and Colorado and everywhere else people thought they were safe from what they were told was a "war on coal."

This strategy does more than just praise West Virginians, it suggests that its citizens' knowledge and insight are exceptional and that they have an obligation to spread "the word." But what is this "word" that they must deliver to those who have been fooled by the liberals, Democrats, and pseudo-environmentalists and the Munich-like surrender monkeys? Obviously it is the truth about climate change, the cost of electricity, Obamacare, the treaty with Iran as well everything else that the Obama administration and its enablers have created in the past six-and-a-half years.

Revisiting "Is West Virginia a Cult?"

In January of 2014, six weeks before I started this blog, the Sunday News-Register printed an excellent syndicated column by Froma Harrop in which she asked the question "Is West Virginia a Cult?" In the article, Harrop quotes WV Wesleyan professor, Eric Waggoner:

These were people who bought into the idea of "constant sacrifice as an honorable condition" and who "turned that condition into a culture of perverted, twisted pride and self-righteousness, to be celebrated and defended against outsiders."

Harrop continues:

Outsiders. Creating an aura of specialness that must be protected from outside influences is how cult leaders keep their members in check. It takes a good deal of mind control to turn mass sucker-dom into a bragging point.

The column angered Mike Myer who then wrote an opposing column featured at the top of the same page in which he called Ms. Harrop, without any explanation, a "pseudo-intellectual." Rereading both of these columns for the first time in a year-and-a-half, Myer's column is not only an example of the argument described in the first part of this post, it also fits Harrop's cult description.

When the columns were originally published I did some reading on cults and so I'll leave you with the insights of Father Dwight Longnecker who is writing about "Cults and Common Sense":

A fourth characteristic of a group that has become a cult or is behaving in a cult like manner is that there will be a persecution complex. A group of outside forces will be identified who are “the enemy”. A little fortress will be built in which all those on the inside are the “faithful ones” while all those on the outside will increasingly be demonized and feared. There will be no real effort to build bridges or get to know those on the outside. There will be no real effort to treat the outsiders as real people. Instead they are the enemy to be kept at arms’ length and against whom the faithful will usually project their fears and suspicions. At worst the enemy will have all the sins and fears and dark negativities projected on them.