The Blue Ridge Breakdown

Water, Water Everywhere... and Not a Drop to Drink (w/ Maria Russo, WV Rivers Policy Specialist)

The 2026 West Virginia legislative session is over, but the fight over water, land, and local control is far from settled. In this conversation, I’m joined by Maria Russo, policy specialist with West Virginia Rivers Coalition, for a post-mortem on what lawmakers did—and failed to do—on flood resiliency, drinking water infrastructure, above-ground storage tanks, and the growing threat posed by high-impact data centers. From southern West Virginia’s ongoing clean water crisis to the Eastern Panhandle’s battle over farmland and opaque development deals, this is a conversation about what West Virginians are being asked to sacrifice, who gets to decide, and why the state’s most precious resources still too often come second to outside profit. The Legislative Session Ends Troy Miller: All right, March 20th as we’re recording this. And so the West Virginia legislative session is officially done, which means we could have a post mortem on it. And here to talk about that, and I’ve been looking forward to this conversation for some time, is Maria Russo, who is a policy specialist with West Virginia Rivers at wvrivers.org. We had Than Hitt on back in September to talk about more of the science side of what we could expect looking forward into the legislative session. And now we can see what actually happened because I don’t know, Maria, it seems to me like the legislative session starts and everybody has some sort of idea of what bills are. You know, some of them are hopeful, some of them, many of them are awful. And then the committees and everything happens, it starts really gearing up, and it’s really easy to lose track of things unless you’re paying attention to particular pieces of legislation. So first of all, thank you for joining us on the Blue Ridge Breakdown today. Maria Russo: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. It’s nice to be here on this first day of spring. So thanks for having me. Troy Miller: It is the first day of spring. And I have to say, I know there’s nothing more you’d rather be doing on a sunny 60 degree day Friday than sitting here and recording with me virtually. Maria Russo: Yes, exactly. Troy Miller: So you’re welcome for the opportunity. And with that, what. Can you just give me kind of a summary of some of the bills that were. That were. You were watching what some of the outcomes may have been and, you know, start wherever. I also have West Virginia Rivers’ policy brief from a week or so ago here. So we’ll go. We’ll use that as a rubric if nothing else. Maria Russo’s Overview of the 2026 Session Maria Russo: Awesome. That sounds great. Yeah. So we are coming off of the 2026 legislative session. It’s always kind of like a process to figure out what just happened because everything, like you said, is moving really quickly. There’s a lot that happens, there’s a lot of conversations that happen, and sometimes we see some progress made and sometimes we see setbacks, and sometimes we see nothing at all happen on some pretty serious topics. So yeah, I feel like I’m still kind of chewing on what this session was defined by and kind of what we’re left with. I would say overall, this session was a little slower than what we’ve seen in the past. I think in past years we have seen, especially the Senate, the last few years we have seen the Senate come out of the gate and pass like 30, 40 bills, like right off the bat. And we just didn’t really see that this year. We really saw a slower ramping up of this session. So I think that can kind of tell you a little bit of the tone that we saw. And so, you know, in some ways that works in our favor with some of the issues we’re pushing for because we have a little more time to work with legislators on the front end of things when session kicks off. But sometimes it can work against us too, because we saw a lot of bills die right around crossover day, which is of course this huge day where bills that start in the House have to be over in the Senate and vice versa. So we saw a lot of, like, you know, pretty big pieces of legislation die, and we do every year, but I think there was a lot more that kind of moved slowly this year. So that was kind of surprising for me because I feel like, and don’t get me wrong, it was still fast, a lot still took place early on, but it was kind of a different tone, I think, this year in the session. So I think that’s good, like, context to start off. Troy Miller: Absolutely. Maria Russo: As far as our specific issues I’ll jump into a little bit. We went in with some pretty clear priorities at West Virginia Rivers Coalition. So we went in asking for funding in the Flood Resiliency Trust Fund. This is a fund that was formally created in 2023 after the state had created some flood plans. But there was never a real structure to make some of that happen. We have seen tremendous flooding in West Virginia over the years, and this flood fund was kind of created to, in theory, get money to communities for both proactive flood mitigation and flood response, but we have never seen any dollars put into it. So a really big priority going in was to get some funding into that fund to actually make it useful. A second big priority we had was around water infrastructure. We have kind of all heard at this point that southern West Virginia is really struggling with some of their water infrastructure. Most people do not have access to clean and safe drinking water. So we were really hoping for that to be something that crossed the line of crossover day. We also are keeping a really close eye on data centers. So coming out of last year’s legislative session, you know, we had this huge House Bill 2014 that passed that kind of set the rules of the game for data centers. This year, those rules were actually put into place. So we were following that process very closely to figure out what was in those rules, what was not in those rules, and how can we affect any change on. On them in that data center build out process. So that was a big one. Another area we had was Ohio river restoration. So there is kind of a lack of federal funding for the Ohio river area. So I live over in the Chesapeake Bay watershed region, and there’s quite a bit of funding that comes from the federal level. There’s none that goes to the Ohio River. And so we were really working with legislators to try to flag some support there, which we can get into a little bit more. And then kind of the last piece that I’ll cover is we generally have a grounding value of just clean water. So we’re constantly watching for any bills that might pop up that threaten that. And year after year, we see the Above Ground Storage Tank Act come under fire. This is a bill that passed, or this is an act that was established after the 2014 water crisis, where one of these storage tanks leaked into water and left a lot of West Virginians without safe water. And so we see it kind of under attack every year. We saw that happen again. And there were some big, big outcomes there, which I’m happy to get more into. So that’s kind of the overview of what we were looking at going into session. And I’d love to pause and just hear from you, like, what direction should we take it? What are you. What are you most interested in hearing? Water, Geography, and the Reality of West Virginia Troy Miller: I want to, I want to take the opportunity because from my background when I went to university and all this, one of the things I really realized is that economics without geography, geographic understanding is really kind of a vacuous effort, you know, and this is one of those key things, right. West Virginia is the only state that is completely in the Appalachian, Appalachian mountain range, which means that basically everywhere is floodable. Whether you’re, you know, there’s. There’s always. There’s downstream from the mountains, everywhere there are valleys and rivers. The entire state is basically bound by rivers. The Ohio river on one side, where I’m from, very dear to my heart. I’m from upstream. So not as. As dire as some of the stuff in Parkersburg and Huntington. The long term is Dow dupont repercussions of industry. And this is for listeners who aren’t necessarily in West Virginia. Better understanding. And so there’s kind of this paradox of like water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink if you’re in the coal fields, you know, like you’re constantly under threat of these. The flood resiliency that hasn’t been invested in. When I was running for office a couple years ago, I know I was one of the candidates who was boldly saying, like, climate change is happening and I hated having to go. I’m not here to discuss whether CO2 is driving it. I’m here to make sure that when are that our legislature is addressing the ways that things are changing. The fact that the atmosphere can hold 7% more moisture with every degree centigrade of warming means that these storms can bring down that much more. And in West Virginia, where some of our development has been mountaintop removal, even in places like Wheeling, you know, the Highlands is basically a big mountaintop removal project. They cut off the top of a mountain, didn’t do adequate drainage. And that’s how you ended up with the floods in Tridelphia last year. That, you know, this torrent of water coming down a hill, that can happen anywhere in West Virginia. And at the same time, our potable water resources, our groundwater resources are relatively scarce and are being threatened by these data centers. And I would actually like to get in because I think you’re one of the people who I think understands HB 2014 better than most, was really kind of on the front lines of working with, not only trying to prevent it from being passed as it was, but then making sure that the rulemaking following that did put some sort of guardrails on these things. Because basically my summary of HB 2014 was that it was a bill that didn’t set rules around data centers. It ripped apart rules that counties could have used for data centers. So I’ll toss it back to you with all of that is just kind of what I see is kind of essential background and big picture of what. What you’re working with with West Virginia Rivers. And again, it’s like there’s an abundance of water, but there’s still drought conditions in large parts of the state because the water comes down so fast, it doesn’t actually recharge the groundwater. And then there are all of these threats to the groundwater from, you know, if it. Whether it’s a data center or here, just down the road from where I’m recording this right now, the water bottling plant that they tried to, you know, is still relatively in limbo. There’s still lawsuit trying that back through. But. So the threats come from all directions, don’t they? The Data Center Fight and HB 2014 Maria Russo: Yeah, yeah. And the challenges, as we know, none of them exist alone. Right. So what you’re talking about is like, it’s all compounded challenges that we’re facing. So you’re absolutely right. Our water resources, we have abundant water resources in West Virginia, and we’re so fortunate for that. But that can change really quickly. Right. So the Potomac river is what we call a flashy river. It goes up really fast and it goes down really fast. And so that is just by nature of the state’s geography, in part. Right. Just like what you said. I saw an interesting. I was watching an interesting video about how West Virginia is the least flat state in the country. It’s not the highest mountains. Right. We don’t necessarily have the high peaks of Colorado, but it’s the least flat. And if you think about that as an area that really affects some forms of economic development, what can and cannot be placed in certain places, it really affects our water resources. Right. It affects our Internet of what we’re able to get to people or not. Right. So it’s all these compounded challenges made more difficult by these mountains that we absolutely love. Right. But it presents well. Troy Miller: They’re some of the oldest mountains on Earth that are a half a billion years old. Maria Russo: Exactly. They’re ancient, they’re beautiful. They hold so much. But I think that it presents some really interesting water challenges. And so, yeah, I feel like we were going into session with some real concerns about both water quantity and water quality. And to your point, those things are totally overlapped. Right. Like, people like to talk about those challenges separately, which is fair, but they often live together. If you’re experiencing, you know, and some places experience, experience one more than the other. But if you’re experiencing both water quantity and water quality challenges, it’s that much more difficult. Right. So I loved your quote about like water everywhere but not a drop to drink. We’re seeing that in so many places. You know, we are seeing places that have a ton of water available, but when people turn on their taps, it’s running black, it’s running brown. They’re getting burns on their skin from the water that they’re using. You know, it’s like they’re. That’s not the water that we. Troy Miller: And this is. Maria Russo: If we have these. Troy Miller: These also aren’t uniquely West Virginian. Like, these systems flow. What is it, 70% of the headwaters east of the Mississippi either start or travel through West Virginia at some point. So these are important water resources for all of our surrounding states too. Maria Russo: Totally, totally. And where some of the headwaters for the Chesapeake Bay watershed and for the Ohio river that eventually flows into the Mississippi, like, that’s pretty huge. So we talk to people a lot about that, of how we have to be stewards of this water because it ultimately flows to a ton of people in this country, you know, and just, I mean, people rely on us being good upstream neighbors so that they have what they need downstream. So that presents a really interesting kind of context, but to kind of take it there. I’m going to take it to House Bill 2014 and data centers because I feel like it’s really top of mind for people. I’m actually planning to go to a public meeting tonight about a new high impact data center that was just proposed and announced for Berkeley County. So that’s the neighboring county to where I live and I’m planning to go to that this evening. They actually had to move the venue of the meeting because they’re expecting so many people. So they moved it to the high school auditorium. This is a huge issue for people. I mean, and so, okay, just for a little context, for some level setting. So you’re right that House Bill 2014 passed in 2025. So we saw this bill that was being really pushed by the governor’s office. And what we saw is this essentially resulted in buy right development across the state with very Little regard, actually no regard needed towards any local zoning and any noise, any light complaints that people in the local community have. It’s essentially null and void. Because this said data centers are coming to West Virginia, and we’re going to put them where we need to put them in order to have economic development impact for the state. And the original bill that we saw introduced had no tax revenue going back to the local community. It was then later amended to have a portion of that tax revenue to go back to the local community. But, I mean, this was a huge, huge thing. And these data centers are also going to be accompanied by a lot of times these micro grids where they can power their own energy generation for them to use, which comes with its own challenges. So we are seeing, and also for context for people, House Bill 2014 said these facilities and microgrid and data center facilities may not be more than 2,250 acres. That’s huge. Like, can you think of a place in your life that you spend a lot of time that’s like 2,250 acres? Like, I can’t really think. You know, it’s like, that’s a lot of land. So we’re seeing that really now come into play because again, that passed in 2025. Now in 2026, they have the rulemaking process. The legislature has to say, okay, here’s the rules of the game that when a data center wants to come in, here’s what they apply to for the Department of Commerce, and here’s all the rules they need to play by in order to get approval. And unfortunately, that entire process is not transparent to the public. So the entire process is considered confidential business information, which I think on the one hand, we know confidential business information, that’s a real thing, right? Businesses are competing for some of these projects, but to have no information provided for the public and no local control and very little tax revenue that’s coming to these communities, it’s just kind of like a totally, again, like a compounded challenge. So we’ve seen this come into play. We’re now seeing it actually play out. There was some positive discussion around bipartisan water use transparency this session. We had some success in the House to try to amend the bill. We actually are, to the rules. I’m sorry, the rules package that was moving through, we did not successfully amend it in the House, but then when it went over to the Senate, we were able to get an amendment in there which I can talk about around water use and water access, but it’s still not enough. It’s not enough for what communities need to have the information in order to know what they’re actually going to be dealing with here. Troy Miller: Yeah. And for context, if I math, as you said, it was 2,250 acres. Maria Russo: Yeah. Troy Miller: That’s three and a half square miles. Maria Russo: Right. And they don’t have to be all on one parcel. So, so the, the rules just defined actually say that the parcels can be no more than four miles apart, which is also like really far. So you could have like a piece here, four miles a piece here, four miles apiece here. So then you’re seeing a tremendous amount of build out all considered under like one facility. Now they have power needs and requirements that are probably going to keep them confined to a specific area, at least at first. But I mean the footprint of these we just have and we’ve seen in other places where build out has happened. Right. We’ve seen some stories come out of Tennessee, we’ve seen some stuff come out of Virginia. These facilities are a massive footprint and they’re having really big impacts on communities. And you know, the thing I’ve been telling a lot of people as I’m lobbying in the Capitol is like, you know, a lot of legislators are really convinced that they’re not going to have that footprint. And I’m like, okay, then convince us. Give us facts that make us really know that what you’re saying is true. Because without information, without transparent information, the. I keep saying the only thing the community has to do is speculate. Because without information that’s all we can do is like try to understand what this might be. And it might not always be exactly the impact that it’s going to have, but that’s because we don’t have any other information to work with. You know. Raccoons, Real Estate, and the Limits of Speculation Troy Miller: Right. When your colleague than was on in December, I posted that interview out and made a transcript of it, shared it out and somebody was like, I don’t know, I’m unconvinced by this. You know, this isn’t helpful. What would be helpful is if you said, you know what the cost benefit analysis would be of having these. And I’m like, that’s the problem, my man. This is. We can’t know that. Sure, they could do these things in very responsible ways, very costly ways for them. That cuts into their bottom line ultimately because that’s the, that’s the trade off. You know, we have to be able to do the analysis from the business side and that’s the reality. Sure, they can do more closed water loops, they could use less water they can use less power. They could do it things in a way that it doesn’t drive up utility rates, but those are all costs that they have to then internalize. That cuts into their bottom line. And I always also emphasize, who are, who are these data centers for? I’ve seen now some of the legislators talking about how, well, if you’re seeing this video on Facebook, that’s because of data centers and all of this. And I’m like, yeah, you know, but also if your information is being collected through any number of dragnet operations, if, if the government wants to have all of your stuff, if a private corporation wants to have all of your stuff, you know, Sam Altman is now talking about, he wants AI and all of this to work like a utility where you pay a certain rate so you can use different models. Well, but all those models are based on information that they stole and then put into a data center to run these models. And so it’s Silicon Valley’s technology that’s being run for the benefit of basically exclusively Wall Street. And it’s, it’s just, it’s a very West Virginia Appalachian story because that’s how the timber industry was, that’s how the coal industry was, that’s how the natural gas industry was. There’s these outside forces, outside owners who will operate and own until it becomes unprofitable for them. And then we’ll be left with the leftovers. And there is an Onion article, and obviously the Onion is a satire newspaper, but there’s a lot of truth in satire a lot of times. And one of the things was, well, what will these data centers hold in 30 years? Answer. Raccoons. That’s the reality of what we’re looking at here. Maria Russo: Oh my gosh, I love that. Troy Miller: That’s the raccoons and a pilot agreement all the way up to it so that they don’t have to pay the taxes so they can hire the three people for that time. You know, it’s mind boggling to me because it just doesn’t, you know, people are like, do your own research. Why don’t you learn about it? And all the things that data centers actually power. And I’m like, I, I, that’s actually my concern, guys. Maria Russo: Yeah. Troy Miller: But again, goes back to this. There’s no way for the community to know how these projects are being done. And that’s by design. Maria Russo: It’s by design. We’ve seen that. Totally. A word that keeps coming to mind as you’re talking is the word unprecedented. Right. Like we keep being in These unprecedented times. And it’s absolutely exhausting. Like as a millennial, I’m like, can we have a little like just pretty unprecedented time? Like could we just have a precedent and like maybe just live in that for a little? Because it’s like these unprecedented times. I mean we saw COVID 19, right. That was unprecedented. And I would put these data center build outs in the same category of like it’s pretty unprecedented. There is no precedent set. I mean maybe the only place a precedent has been set is like in Data Center Alley in Northern Virginia. And like, wow, if you go there like it is, it’s pretty shocking what we’re seeing there. I know than who you’ve spoken about. My colleague went on a tour a few months back through Data Center Alley and just saw some of these like neighborhoods that got data centers put up as their next door neighbor and like, wow, the impacts are huge. And you know, I think you’re right about the technology is changing over time and people come to us all the time and they say they’re not going to use that much water because it’s the closed loop system. And I’m like okay, in theory that is would make sense. Right. But a couple things are wrong with a closed loop system. First is that they’re actually some of the most expensive systems to build out. So to your point, with their bottom line, we are seeing that the prices of closed loop systems are higher than if they just use water for cooling. And that’s. That’s an issue. Right. The other thing we’re seeing is that the biocides and the different chemicals that are involved with a closed loop system. Right. So they have to use more chemic to then cool the water and reuse it. And so we’re seeing some of the discharges. Some of the studies coming out around that are really kind of striking. So you know, I think the technology will continue to change and I do think we will see water at, and I’ll give an example, the Berkeley County High impact Data center that you know, I’m going to this meeting for tonight. I have heard that there are three water systems. Three water, yeah, I guess models that they’re proposing. One is very low water usage, one is very high water usage and one involves them bringing water in from elsewhere, which I, I don’t know how that would be very viable. Also I don’t know where else. Troy Miller: Gas price is right now. Maria Russo: Right. They’re not bringing that. Right. Water is one of the heaviest things to move. Right. So that’s not happening. Especially when it’s being built right by the Potomac, right by the OPEC and Creek. I mean, we are going. So that, you know, one option that they’re seeing is that they may be using gray water off of the water treatment plant that’s right near there. That would be great. We would love to see that as, as one source. Right. But again, without more information, we can’t even begin to assess the impacts that this could have because we don’t have the information we need to do that. So it’s a really big messy, and AI, Farmland, and the Future Nobody Can Guarantee Troy Miller: We also don’t know who the end users are. All these, all of these things are real estate plays ultimately. And when you’re talking about how the technology is changing rapidly, one of the things that really bugs me is being geared up as some sort of artificial intelligence Manhattan Project that we have to take on to defeat the Chinese, of course. And I have a couple of problems with it. First of all, the Manhattan Project was a publicly done project. All of the. All we did not go out and hire privatized nuclear engineers to build a private bomb that then, you know, GE got the license on and could own the bomb for the rest of forever. Okay. That’s one thing. The other thing that really bugs me is that our models are basically for AI. We basically just add more nodes and you just add another series of nodes and the thing gets smarter or more intelligent. Well, I mean, that is one way to do it. It seems to me. My understanding and I, you know, obviously I don’t have the proprietary information of how Deep SEQ runs, but my understanding is that they’re not. That is a model that doesn’t need. It doesn’t run on the same node based. Add more nodes and it gets smarter system. And the analogy I always, I keep using in terms of technological innovation is basically our AI models are like propeller planes. And we keep on adding more propellers and they go faster and they can fly higher. And it seems to me like at some point somebody is going to develop a jet engine that doesn’t need all those propellers. And all of a sudden all of these data centers are going to be made irrelevant because, you know, we’re doing. We’re all of a sudden shifting to quantum computing or something like this. I don’t know exactly how it play out, but technological innovation will proceed. And at the rate that it’s proceeding, I have every reason to believe that these data centers will house raccoons probably 30 sooner than 30 years from now. Maria Russo: Yeah. And it makes your raccoon argument. Yeah. Become that much More powerful and kind of like puts us on our heels because it’s like, well, then why are we. You know, I’m thinking about this farmland in Berkeley county that’s going to be apparently made into a data center. It’s like, it’s, it’s beautiful farmland right now. It’s cows. Troy Miller: This is some of the best farmland in the country over here in the eastern panhandle of West Virginia. Maria Russo: Absolutely gorgeous. And, you know, once it’s a data center, it will never be farmland again. And that is something that we are seeing so, so much, especially in Jefferson County, Berkeley County, Morgan county, like this eastern panhandle of West Virginia. The rest of the state, you know, is dealing with some different issues, but that’s a really huge issue we’re seeing here in the eastern Panhandle. It’s just this development and we don’t, we don’t go back from that. Right. And I guess the like part about the, you know, we’re building these data centers so you can use more data, it kind of reminds me of the plastic straw argument. Right. It’s like me using a straw at lunch is not fueling. It’s not the basis of what’s fueling climate change and, you know, energy. Oh, gosh, yeah. It’s just. It’s not your straw. It’s not your straw. It sees huge. Troy Miller: We can change every light bulb in this house and totally, totally. Maria Russo: Now, do those things help? Sure. I mean, I, I’m always. And, you know, I don’t use straws very often. I’m using glass straws or whatever, because I’m trying to, you know, have a. Have less of an impact. Personally, I try to recycle, but those ultimately aren’t the huge things that are fueling a lot of these challenges. So I’ll just say, like, to pivot us back to the legislative session, I know we went deep into a data center hole, which is easy to do as it’s so top of mind for people. But, you know, I’ll just say, I think when I look at what legislators are doing and I look at what communities are saying, because I feel like a lot of times we’re kind of a bridge between the two. I just question whether our legislators are listening to and really hearing what communities are saying, because I think if they have the community as part of the process, like zoning works because it puts certain things in certain places. Right. And then it says these other places, maybe we shouldn’t put data centers or large industrial facilities or whatever, it’s kind of a Prioritization of land. Right. That works. We’ve seen it work. I think, with wiping that off the board. I think we’re seeing a lot of communities feel like they have no power and no control. I think people often feel like the legislative session, you know, they walk away from it and they’re like, what did West Virginians get? You know, it’s like they spend a lot of time doing a lot of stuff. Over 300 bills, or right around 300 bills completed the legislation process this session. How many of those, you know, delivered clean water to southern West Virginia? In my opinion, maybe part of one of them. You know, it’s like. And even that it was a small piece of the state budget that went towards water and sewer upgrades, and it’s a portion of what is really needed around the state, and we don’t know if any portion of that will be directed to southern West Virginia. So I think we’re hearing people, you know, say the things that they need. Same with when we see these huge flooding events, right. We see. We have seen last year in southern West Virginia, and in northern West Virginia, we saw two huge flooding events that took lives, property caused, I mean, enormous challenges for weeks, months. Some communities are still recovering. Troy Miller: Absolutely. Yeah. Maria Russo: And I mean, some communities are still recovering from the 2016 floods that happened 10 years ago. You know what I mean? So it’s like communities are saying, we need more. And I don’t know, you know, that our legislators, I think sometimes they are saying, well, we need this other thing, and this is what we’re going to prioritize. And I can see that that creates a tension, and I see that. That, you know, it just. It creates a new set of challenges that we have to keep pushing against. So I feel like in our advocacy, we try to really bring those voices into the Capitol. We try to really bring those very immediate needs that people have and make sure that our legislators at least are hearing from us that that is what people want to see. Clean Water, Public Health, and What Communities Actually Need Troy Miller: Yeah. And I mean, I’m going to say these are all words from my mouth. I’m not putting them in your mouth. But, you know, last we’ve seen all this movement to ban junk food for SNAP recipients and things like this, and, okay, well, that’s great, but if they can’t turn on their tap to drink water, then you’re really just, you know, thirsting them to death. Like, a lot of the times, the Dollar General, Mountain Dew or whatever is the affordable option, and it’s not the best option, but people aren’t choosing that because they can drink, they can’t drink their water. I joked about, you know, if we really want to get legislators to start caring about above ground storage tanks, we should just fill them up with food dyes and punch a hole in one of them. And all of a sudden, you know, RFK Jr. Will descend out and we’ll, we’ll deal with the problem of Red 5 or whatever in the waterways. And, and the other thing is we, that I, I really get upset about. And again, this is my own thing, the push for tax breaks and oh, it’ll bring in businesses if we get our income tax down to zero. And I’m like, the problem is businesses don’t want to go somewhere where they have to pay for all of their flood resilience. Businesses don’t want to go somewhere where they have to buy watered bottle and mask because their employees can’t get water otherwise. And the tap water in the business is going to be poison. It’s the analogy I keep on using is like you’re, you’re the cutting taxes to zero and not addressing any of these other things is kind and expecting businesses just show up because they don’t have to pay any taxes is like expecting someone to high dive into an empty swimming pool because there’s no admission cost. Yeah, I mean nobody’s gonna do it or I mean they’ll do it once. Maria Russo: Yeah, right, right. And we have to assess that risk that comes with that. Right. So it’s like, yeah, if we open our door to data centers, they might come, but at what cost? Right. At what ultimate risk for everybody? And that, I mean this data center in Berkeley county that’s being proposed, it’s mostly proposed in the floodplain, right. In that area. There are some wetlands and some low lying areas in that, in that region. And it’s like, I would imagine that would create some serious challenges for them. We have yet to see what that would be. But because we, again, we’re with, we’re acting with very limited information, hoping to get a little more tonight. But it’s, it’s all compounded and it’s really challenging. And I tell people it’s like an onion. And we might not be able to deal with all of those layers at one time, but we have to start peeling back the layers. We have to start dealing with one or two or three of these issues and not just adding more layers to the onion of impossibility, you know, of impossible solutions. Because I think we are, at times we’re making it harder for ourselves so to we, and we saw that be a conversation at the Capitol. I mean, at a time when a huge region of the state has no clean drinking water, the last thing people want is to put more pollutants in the water. And so, I mean, we did see that as an effective conversation piece this year. We did see more legislators vote against rollbacks to the Above Ground Storage Tank act than have voted against it in the past. So that’s a win to me. Right. Because that means we’re saturating the conversation. Like we’re having an effect. In those conversations that we’re having, the bill was greatly amended so that like, the harm that would be potential to communities was greatly reduced. To me, again, that’s a win. Right. We’re now dealing with like only brine tanks, tanks that contain only brine, as opposed to tanks that could be holding crude oil and other, I mean, potentially harmful substances. So we are seeing some of that breakthrough and some of that, like, saturate the narrative. But I don’t think it’s anywhere near enough that we need it to. So I mean, my big thing is like, we got to keep pushing also. I think I’ll remind people it’s an election year. You know, we’re going to see a really new set of folks in that state House. I mean, maybe some of the same, but we know some of the people who are in the House currently are running for Senate. We know, you know, a lot of shifts are possible and so that will come with its own new challenges and opportunities next year. So I’m kind of eager to see how that all plays out. But yeah, it’s, it’s a tricky thing and I think we are in the midst of, of a pretty, pretty. We got our work cut out for us, I’ll put it that way. What We Value, and What We Fail to Measure Troy Miller: Yeah. Yeah. And you know, as you were talking about the irreplaceability of farmland, I’m thinking about, you know, in economics we call it opportunity cost. And one of the things we have a problem of is we can assign value to timber, but we can’t assign value to the trees that, you know, then help with the productivity of the trees, not eroding, not, you know, providing oxygen, providing all of the ecological benefits. That’s much harder to put a dollar sign on. And I’m going to take a moment here and it’s very timely because the Robert F. Kennedy Sr. Bobby Kennedy, the original Bobby Kennedy, the good one, in my opinion, gave a speech at the University of Kansas on March 18, 1968. And I didn’t know I was going to read from this today, but it’s incredibly timely considering it’s just a couple of days ago, the anniversary of it. And I think about this a lot, so indulge me as I read this long paragraph from it. Maria Russo: I love it. Troy Miller: He says, this is one of the great tasks of leadership for us as individuals and citizens this year. But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another task. It is to confront the poverty of satisfaction, purpose and dignity that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seem to have surrendered personal excellence and community values and in the mere accumulation of material things. Our gross national product now is over $800 billion a year. But that gross national product, if we judge the United States of America by that, that gross national product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman’s rifle and Speck’s knife and the television programs with glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or. Or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country. It measures everything, in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans. And I’d amend that last part to say, you know, all of this stuff in the legislature that’s been going on, they keep on pointing to treasuries and bonds and all of this and the value of this and that. And it can tell us everything about West Virginia except why we are proud that we are West Virginians. And I think, you know, West Virginia Rivers Coalition, with the work that you all do, I think West Virginia rivers are something that pretty much any West Virginian, you ask them what they’re proud of. One of the things is. And they have a memory of playing in the streams or playing in the rivers or rafting or whatever. And, you know, it seems to me that if we can’t prioritize our water quality and our water quantity for our people, who are 90 plus percent water, by the way, and all of the toxins that are in our water end up accumulating in us to great effect. Then, you know, in summary, what the hell are we doing here? And that’s my, that’s my aside of a rant. And, you know, I don’t want to take up too much of your time on this beautiful day. Like, you go out and enjoy the river and the water quality around Jefferson Closing Thoughts: The Voice of the Rivers Maria Russo: county to get on the river this weekend. It’s, it’s prime season for that. But, yeah, I’ll just, I will totally echo your words and say this. This is kind of my thesis thought or closing thought, which is that we cannot put a price tag on our rivers. We cannot put a price tag on our mountains and on our streams. It would be impossible because something that is so sacred, so ancient, there is no way to monetize. I mean, there’s no way to quantify how much that is worth because the, the benefits that it has for us, for all living things that, that, you know, use and exist around that, there’s no number that can be placed on that. And so I always say at the legislature, I’m like, you know, we are the voice of the rivers in this building because they cannot speak for themselves in the same way. Right? And so they speak for themselves in their own way, I’ll tell you that. But they can’t be in their lobbying for their benefit. And so that’s part of where our job comes in, is to protect these beautiful assets that we have and to make sure that that’s not just pitted against how much money we could potentially make off of them, but is also like honoring how much they do for us and how much, you know, that comes from having so many water resources, having such an abundance of water in West Virginia. So that’s definitely something I keep close to my heart. And I appreciate that quote because I think it really drives that home. Troy Miller: A half a billion years and we get here for a few dozen, you know, if we’re almost 100, if we’re lucky, who are we to, you know, spoil it for everyone for the rest of time? The hubris is unbelievable to me, but yeah, you know, it’s a tale as old as Gilgamesh at this point, too. So. Maria Russo: Amen. Troy Miller: Maria Russo, policy Specialist for West Virginia Rivers wvrivers.org you can go sign up for their email updates. Find out all sorts of all the great work they’re doing. You can donate there. And if you’re feeling generous, you can donate to me on this sub stack, too. Maria, thanks for taking the time. Maria Russo: Thank you so much for having me, Troy. I really appreciate it. Troy Miller: See you soon. This is an "AI"-assisted transcript, lightly cleaned and formatted for readability without altering the substance of the conversation. Mistakes are both machine and human, but responsibility lies with Troy. Get full access to The Blue Ridge Breakdown at blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe [https://blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

21. maalis 2026 - 42 min

The Left Lost the People. From Fayetteville to France. What Do We Want To Win?

As authoritarianism and far-right politics gain ground in the United States and across Europe and beyond, what’s clear is that this is not a uniquely American crisis. In this episode of The Blue Ridge Breakdown, I’m joined by journalist and author Cole Stangler, whose reporting spans both U.S. and French politics, to talk about: the global rise of the far right, the left’s loss of working-class support, and what lessons can be drawn across borders. From West Virginia’s labor history to France’s Yellow Vest movement, from FDR and Thomas Paine to today’s failures of neoliberal politics, this conversation asks a simple but urgent question: what do we want—and what will it take to win? Troy Miller:So as I was thinking about this intro and first, fascism being on, you know, now here in America, I was about to say, like, oh, you know, when Trump was elected, all these Americans were like, oh, I’m going to move to France and get away from the authoritarianism and the fascism. And then I thought, no, that was going on in 2015 and 16 too. So. And then I thought, actually, this has been going on since at least George W. Bush in the Iraq war. I remember Americans being like, “I’m going to flee to Europe. That’s so much better over there. They have universal healthcare, just like, it’s a better situation. And there I’ll live happily eating baguettes and drinking wine or whatever, or if you’re in Germany, eating wurst and drinking beer in the beer garden.” And it’s painfully clear to me that authoritarianism and fascism is on the rise everywhere. And Europe is no exception. It has a slightly different form across different countries in Europe. And because it’s a parliamentary system, it’s been a different kind of road to power. But let’s not kind of delude ourselves into thinking, oh, the grass is so much greener over there. So to really highlight this and talk about this, my friend Cole Stangler is joining us now. He is the author of several books, including—I’ll call it The American Mirror, because I don’t speak French and I will end up butchering the French pronunciation otherwise. His previous book is Paris Is Not Dead [https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/125644961-paris-is-not-dead]. You can find that one in English. The American Mirror [https://arenes.fr/livre/le-miroir-americain/] will create enough demand here with this program that we’ll get it published in English. He is also the host of the new program, What Do We Want? Conversations with the International Left [https://youtu.be/MXgADGJ8CDQ?si=Y0ZF6beIM2Ok42s7]. [https://youtu.be/MXgADGJ8CDQ?si=Y0ZF6beIM2Ok42s7] Cole, thanks for taking the time and joining us today. Cole Stangler:Yes, my pleasure. Thanks so much for having me, Troy. Troy Miller:Yeah, it’s an important conversation. I should say off the bat that one of the reasons we’re having this conversation is because you covered my campaign two years ago as part of your book The American Mirror. And so with that full disclosure. Okay. You were writing that book during the election, and so it’s kind of tough to see the outcome at that point, but I think there were hints of it. The first two questions, and I’m not supposed to ask compound questions, but I’m going to, are, what did you learn from the process of writing the book and how has the information changed? How has your view changed in the year and a half since, or the year and three months or so since the election and take that any way you’d like? Cole Stangler:Sure, yeah. I mean, I think maybe if I could, if I could quickly, I’ll answer the question. But I think just to respond to your intro, which I think you’re spot on, we’ve been dealing with this threat of the far right for quite some time in Europe. I’ll speak more about France, which is what I know. I’ve been living in France for almost 10 years now. It’s gone by very quickly. So we do have this, I think generally speaking, you know, the European way of life, I think is something worth defending. Maybe we can get a chance to talk about that later. I think, like it is actually, you know, advantage that we have, you know, universal and at least extremely low cost health care that’s largely provided by the state, you know, paid sick leave, et cetera, down the list. I think all that is worth defending. But I think you’re about the 2024 campaign. You’re right. We talked and I’ve known you since before that as well, Troy. I don’t know how much full disclosure you want to give, but I know Troy very, very well. But I think in 2024, when we met, as you pointed out, this was not a—you kind of see the writing on the wall. I met with people in Washington, D.C. at the time, a congresswoman, and you could already sense that Trump, or at least the Democrats, were not looking in a super good position for November of that year. But what sort of surprised me the most, I would say part of the book, The American Mirror, is that I was looking at the ways in which America can help us understand French politics and some of the transformations in Europe. And one of the trends that I think is essential, and I think, I think you talk about this as well, Troy, is that the left has lost a big chunk, not all of it, but a big chunk of the kind of working class voters that used to vote for it in the past. That’s true in the United States, that’s true in Europe. We’ve seen that with the Democratic Party. So that, to me is, I think, the ultimate question. In some ways, it’s really the only question I care about. I think it’s the one question that I’m obsessed with that I think matters, is what can the left do to win back these kind of working class voters that used to vote for it. In cities, the left does decently well, but you leave large urban areas and it’s catastrophic. And that’s true in the United States, as you know. It’s also unfortunately, increasingly true in France. And so all this to say when I was in, that was part of why I wanted to come to a state like West Virginia, someone who’s interested in the labor movement. Not without romanticizing things too much, but a little bit of romanticization is good, I think, and healthy. Right. West Virginia plays this such an important part in the history of the labor movement with the miners, the UMWA also. Right. I was in the northern part of the state where, you know, you had the, the steelworkers, you know, used to be, used to be present quite—they’re still there, but used to be more prominent, the USW. And so all this to say what I learned is that I think I’ve always thought that unions were so important for kind of providing this connection between Democrats and, let’s say the left more generally, progressives and working class people, especially outside of urban areas. The decline of unionism explains this problem so well. And so what I kind of was surprised to find on the ground is that even in some of these places, I was in the southern part of the state after we met in Mingo County and—right—the UMWA is, is, is, is right. The decline of the UMWA explains in large part the, the biggest boost in Republican vote shares there. But I think what I learned is that, you know, the, the, the, it’s not like everyone was voting for the Democrats in the first place. You know, when the UMWA was there, like it always was more divided. And so this is, you know, maybe a more kind of nuanced answer, but understanding that even when the union was there, it wasn’t as if everyone was bought into sort of, you know, supporting the union and supporting Democrats. It was still seen as sort of a kind of polarizing topic. But I’ll take the polarization over the, over the, you know, not having any left or no unions or no Democrats at all. So what does that mean? I think for us moving forward, it’s that like being realistic about, like, what does it mean if we have a more robust, stronger labor movement on the ground? Maybe it means that we don’t convince everyone, but, but it’s important to be there. And, you know, it’s better, like I said, better to have a polarized kind of situation than to not exist at all. So in some ways it shattered some of my kind of romantic illusions about kind of the golden era of the UMWA. But. But they were there, right? And the Democrats were being elected because of them in large part. So I think I’ve gone on for too long about the first. Troy Miller:No, no, no, that’s great. And what I’ll, I’ll start off by saying by adding to your full disclosure of how long we’ve known each other, because I, you know, when we were freshmen in college, I think you were the first person I met who was talking about Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas? [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What%27s_the_Matter_with_Kansas%3F_(book)] And I think that is, you know, so you’ve been wrestling with this problem for a long time, so to speak. Or, you know, not so to speak. No, for a long time. You know, we’re looking at 15 years now at least, and longer. But in any case, the question of how did Democrats lose unions? How did Democrats, you know, also is the other thing in America, I think, and I’ll add to West Virginia’s labor history, that next year marks the 150th anniversary of the nation’s first or real one of the only general strike, starting here in Martinsburg with the railroad unions. And one of those amazing things where, yeah, they tried to put down the strike, but it spread so fast that when they tried to deploy federal soldiers, the rails are all done. You know, worker solidarity gets the goods. It’s really hard to stop workers who make everything move in the country from getting what they want at that point. And I think that’s one of the things that is a difference between the left in America right now and the left in Europe. You know, there’s always these calls for general strikes. Oh, let’s just grind the American economy to a halt. But the fractured nature of labor in America and the fractured nature of society in America make that, I feel like a much harder hill to climb than in France. And one of the people kind of miss about the Gilet Jaune movement, the yellow vest movement, that those were all—you all are issued yellow vests by the government. Right. That’s something that’s— Cole Stangler:You’re supposed to have them in your car when you drive. Not everyone has them, but you’re supposed to have the yellow vests in your car in case there’s a problem on the side of the road that you put on the yellow vest to deal with maintenance issues or whatever, but you’re supposed to have one. Yeah. Troy Miller:Okay. Thank you for that clarification. Well, and that makes it very much like the red bandanas in the Southern coal fields where the miners really were buying from company stores and they were using company money to buy from the company stores, the bolts of red cloth that were available to them. And, you know, you were all of a sudden banned. Martial law was in place. Guns were taken away. People were, you know, arrested for gathering more than a few at a corner. But you can’t really shut down people just from wearing a red bandana. On a side note, I will say I think it’s very cool that Tom Morello is wearing a red bandana these days, out on tour with Bruce Springsteen. Excellent solidarity work there. Before we get too much into, like, the positive side—and I will let listeners know that there is a positive side to all of this—and that’s what Cole’s new program What Do We Want? is trying to lay out, talking to leaders in the progressive left or international left. What do you think people might miss most obviously about the rise of the far right in France? Or—and I’ll just go through the line, I mean, you have neo fascists basically running Italy now. You have neo Nazis, the AfD getting larger and larger vote shares in Germany. You have—what’s the equivalent in France? The—well, why don’t you pick up from there? Cole Stangler:Yeah. So in France, we have the National Rally, which used to be known as the National Front, which was founded by Jean Marie Le Pen in 1972. He was virulent anti Semite, and the party is now run by his daughter, Marine Le Pen, who has sort of sanitized the image. They call it de demonization. So they’ve sort of transformed the image in many ways. They would look at Trump—well, they do look at Trump—and try to actually take a distance from the Trump administration and to tell the French public, this is actually not what we want to do. There’s, I think, understanding how unpopular Trump is in France. But they’re absolutely a far right party. I think part of why I wrote the book is that I think some of these trends are similar. So talk about the rise of the far right. This is a party that used to be quite marginal when it was led by Jean Marie Le Pen. And they really just boomed since then. In the last presidential elections, their scores continue to rise. They’re projected—we’re still careful not to be too obsessed with politics, polling—but in the next presidential election in 2027, the party, the National Rally, is looking pretty solid in the polls. Whether or not Marine Le Pen herself will be candidate is another question. She has some legal troubles. People will get to that later. In any case, the party’s rising and looking pretty well positioned for 2027. But I think to draw some parallels with the United States, what do we see when we look at the far right? One is this trend that we’ve talked about a lot, I sort of alluded to it earlier, which is you have the far right that’s winning over big chunks of working class voters outside of large urban areas. And the RN—they changed their name under Marine Le Pen—the RN now, the National Rally, has done a good job of doing this for years. And to put it in very simple terms, by doing basically what we see now in the United States with the Republican Party, it’s old school nativism. It’s saying basically every single problem you have in your life is the result of immigrants. We are going to kick out immigrants and stop immigration and it’s going to improve your lives. How is it going to improve your lives? The arguments are not really clear. But this is what they promise every single issue. They will relate back to immigration, the health system, the welfare— Troy Miller:Exactly. There’s a real zero sum view of things. I mean, I think it makes sense to people, if you don’t think about it any deeper, of just like, well, there’ll be fewer people and we all have the same amount of stuff and services. And they’re not thinking about the fact that in the NHS in the UK, for instance, as people have been expelled, as they did Brexit, while the NHS is unable to meet some of the demands because so many of the orderlies, so many of the nurses, so many of the people who actually make hospitals run, who aren’t necessarily the doctors— So I just wanted to interject, to say, like, you know, at a very superficial level, it makes sense. Fewer people, same amount of stuff, we’re all better off. It’s not how it actually works. But I interrupted you, please. Cole Stangler:No, no. But I think you’re right. And so the parallels are really striking. I mean, to me now, as someone who lives in both countries, like the National Rally has been for years obsessed with this question of birthright citizenship which exists in France. France has this proud tradition of birthright citizenship, like the United States, because it’s also right of this republic founded on Enlightenment ideals, et cetera, et cetera, all that is true. France has this long tradition and the National Rally has been wanting to ban it for decades and that’s part of their platform today. So this kind of discourse, I think, appeals right to people in a—in a—and we’re simplifying a little bit—but it appeals in a context in which the left has been incapable of articulating an alternative. Or a context in which people have lost faith in the left’s ability to actually deliver. People used to vote for the Democrats. They used to vote for the Socialists or the Communists because, well, they knew that when the Socialists were in power, their lives actually improved. They got concrete things. And so they knew that when Mitterrand was elected in 1981 or when the Socialists had a majority in the 90s, that there were actually some concrete things they would get from that. And so you can’t really tell the story without looking at the decline of—or I’d say the mistakes of—the left in power. Right, in the United States, to talk about it kind of bring us more into the contemporary moment, the Obama administration and the hope that was associated with it, and ultimately the letdown. In France, we had around the same time the Socialists winning in a big majority under François Hollande, Socialist president, Socialist majority, and ultimately failing to really deliver. And so I think that’s one part of the story. Is this loss of support among part of the base that used to vote for the left that’s drifting either into not voting at all or in some cases actually voting for the far right. And the other piece of this—and maybe we can get more into it in just a moment—the other piece of it that I think sometimes people overlook honestly when they think about the far right is they forget, well, it’s actually not just sort of, I don’t know, former coal miners or an old steelworker with a MAGA hat on or a yellow vest. It’s actually like traditional conservatives who are, you know, lawyers and doctors and businessmen in France, like, you know, artisans, we say, like, you know, plumbers, used car salesmen. Like that is also the base of this far right. People that used to vote for mainstream right candidates that are now saying, you know what, all this talk about how the immigrants are screwing over the economy actually appeals to me. I kind of like this sort of edge that I’m hearing from the far right. And by the way, I would never vote for the left, and so I’ll vote for whoever is going to be able to defeat the left. So that’s the other piece of the story. It’s the mainstream right that’s radicalizing. Those are the two trends for me that we see in both countries really. Troy Miller:Well, and yeah, and in America, there’s the—I mean there’s the whole part of the story where you get Lewis Powell, who became a Supreme Court justice, writing this memo that basically told big business to get political, political to undo the New Deal, to make sure that the American economy and political body works for big business. I think generally that group was very reluctant to deal with the David Duke and the Donald Trumps. And let’s remember that David Duke was one of the early people to endorse Donald Trump. And they took a little bit of time to be like, I don’t know David Duke, I don’t want this endorsement. Maybe I don’t. But they never really pushed back that hard. So you come forward to 2024 and Elon Musk has hard radicalized. He was a darling of the Obama administration, electric cars, all of this stuff, but has become heavily radicalized, pushing just anti immigrant myths, all of the white replacement theory, all of this type of thing. And I look at the Silicon Valley business part of the world and I see that they’re very much, you know, they actually would prefer open borders. The libertarian mindset wants free immigration and the open borders and all of this because you can kind of race everyone to the bottom. You can open markets, open blah, blah, blah. But they seem to have just kind of given up on that. And I think the trade off was basically, look, we get Project 2025 and all of the business things that we want done. We want to destroy Social Security. We want to privatize Medicare. We want to destroy Medicaid. We want to make everyone have to contract SNAP or anything like this through our stuff. We want to make sure our data collection services are used on every single thing. We want to get all of these business things that have been longtime goals of the business side of the Republican Party, that sort of mainstream right. You were talking about the Mitt Romney wing of the party. And for every Mitt Romney who decries this stuff, there’s 100 people staying silent getting rich off of it. Thousand maybe. But then the trade off being that the administration will shovel money at Wall Street. Right. Oh, everyone can do a 401k matching now. Well, okay, so the government’s just shoveling money straight at Wall Street. For every dollar that you shovel at Wall Street, wow, that seems like it benefits Wall Street. And we’re going to contract all of our immigration detention. CoreCivic, GEO Group are all going to get these massive contracts. And like all of a sudden the alliance works. That was tension where like they had to use dog whistles through Nixon and Reagan and Bush and Bush. And now they can just come forward and say, look, we have the energy and the momentum of the Republican Party and you guys got to go along to get along or else we’re going to, you know, all of a sudden we’re going to make it hard for Tim Apple. Right. That’s the kind of thing. And I think one of the reasons that this is coalesced in America in this way is not only the absolute, you know, the money in politics and corporations are persons doctrine, which you talk—you talk to Congresswoman Delia Ramirez about in your first episode of What Do We Want? But also the fact that we don’t have a parliamentary system. That the, you know, there’s no coalition building that happens. You’re either Republican or Democrat. And a lot of what’s been happening in America has been the college fancy term is schismogenesis, where people are just defining their own beliefs based on the opposite of whatever Donald Trump says from the left. He wants to lower drug prices, well all of a sudden we’re big pharma fans. No, no, no. And that goes directly back to that lack of convictions, that lack of a coherent vision of what are we going to do besides defeat Trump. Which I think, again, Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016. I’m not going to say she lost because she didn’t. But she didn’t win the electoral vote, I think in large part because she wasn’t laying out a vision beyond not Trump. And they weren’t responding to the American people saying that like, okay, the Obama recovery, yeah, the numbers are up there, and yet I’m still struggling here. My wages haven’t gone up. My housing, my rent has. My wages haven’t. My health care has gone up, but my quality of care hasn’t. And then this lecturing from the neoliberal, the consultant class of the Democrats being like, your 401ks are doing better than ever. Well, yeah, if you have a 401k, that’s great. But if you lost your job to NAFTA 20 years ago and you’ve just had to retrain as a plumber or something like this, and depopulation is driving down the amount of work that you have in the northern panhandle of West Virginia, well, that 401k really isn’t doing much for you. And the Democrats come back and say it’s going great. What do you mean my grocery prices aren’t affordable? No, they totally are. Inflation has slowed. Right, this whole thing from last time. And I think there’s an easy way out of this for Democrats and for the left in general. Which is one, to tell an actual coherent story. Okay, yeah, everything probably isn’t the immigrants fault. But, you know, like the way I put it is we need to stop blaming all of the people with no monies and start actually focusing on the few people with all the monies. Right. Like maybe that’s why we don’t have health care and Social Security. And before I kind of toss it back to you because I’ve laid out, there’s no question here, it’s just I’m just going to toss it back to you to see what you think. But the other thing I’ll say is you’re talking about Democrats failing to deliver and Obama failing to deliver. Well, I remember because you wrote the piece on it about chain CPI, ways to cut Social Security. They didn’t just not do anything. They actively worked to find ways to make appealing cuts for the other side and to sell it to the American people to steal our earned benefits. Like that’s more than just not delivering. That’s actively harming. In West Virginia the greatest number of people—we have more people on Social Security than like in the workforce. That might not be true, but we have one of the highest rates of Social Security beneficiaries. From grandparents down to grandchildren, thanks to the greed of opioid pharmaceutical companies and all of that. But also one of the lowest workforce participation rates. And so you come after Social Security and find elaborate ways to cut it or just go along with the myth that it’s going broken. Like yeah, you’re going to pay consequences for that. If you’re going to bail out Wall Street and let people’s houses get foreclosed while you bail out the banks that are foreclosing their houses. Yeah, you might want to expect to pay some political consequences. The fact that Barack Obama didn’t lose in 2012 made it possible for them to not learn any lessons, in my opinion. So with that, what does that look like over the last 15 years or so in our counterpart in Europe? Cole Stangler:Yeah. Now a lot of interesting points there. I mean, think where it were to start. I mean, I think, you know, one of the big, one of the big issues that we don’t have. Right. And I think I mentioned this in the interview with the congresswoman Delia Ramirez when we spoke last week or whenever that was recently. We don’t have this issue of money in politics to the same extent. We don’t have this level of basically organized, legalized corruption. People in France are shocked when you tell them, well, now they’re kind of all aware of it with Elon Musk and the headlines that unfortunately everyone is exposed to on a regular basis here. But when you tell people that, oh, yeah, in the United States, there are effectively no limits on campaign contributions, you can do whatever you want, people are quite stunned. So it is true. We don’t have this problem of money in politics, not to the same extent. And I want to say, you know, fortunately, like, thank God we still have, you know, we have restrictions on campaign spending in France and there’s much more regulation of the political system. And so that is—that’s a good thing. So that is one important exception I want to just stress. But to get back to the Democrats, you know, and the left’s inability to articulate an alternative. Like, I think you’re right. And we see it here. I think another difference—and I’ll get to the similarity—is that France does have this historical, I would say, memory of the far right associated with the Second World War that’s quite strong. People learn about Nazism, the Second World War. They learn about the Vichy regime in France, which was the collaborationist government that was basically puppet state for Nazi Germany. They learn about how France was deporting Jews to concentration camps. And so people in France have this kind of general knowledge, I think, of the Second World War. And that was very close. Right. It’s different from the United States. France was occupied. France was participating. Right. Collaborating with Nazi Germany. And so it’s not quite to the same extent as in Germany, but there is a sort of historical memory. And I think that for a long time, you know, that has helped sort of keep a glass ceiling on the far right support. Because people are able, and rightfully so, to connect them to this really gruesome, horrific political tradition in Europe that should be part of history and not have anything to do with the present. And that discourse does work a lot. What we’ve been seeing over the last few couple decades and last few years is every election cycle and understand why they do it. The left will say, you know, you can’t vote for these people in the center. Too right. This is the party of. Right. The far right, the. Of, like Vichy. They were, you know, also defenders of the colonial atrocities in Algeria. Like, the list is long. And so all this works is to say, like, this the demonizing of the far right, without actually having that much to propose, like, has worked. That’s basically how, you know, Emmanuel Macron was elected in 2017 and how he won his reelection in 2022. Not because a majority of French people loved Macron, what he had to propose to the public. But because he was the strongest candidate against the far right. And it was him versus Le Pen. And when you’re faced with that option, well, you reluctantly, for a lot of French people, not everyone, but most, the polls show it, most of the people that voted for Macron did not love his platform. Okay. So all this to say, I think that’s a good and healthy reflex that we have in France. And I hope that doesn’t go away. This idea of you don’t vote for the far right because that’s the party of the far right in Europe in the 20th century associated with Vichy and et cetera. But at a certain point, you actually have to give people a reason to vote for you. And this is not going to continue indefinitely. And so that’s where I completely agree with you on what does the left say when the far right says your living standards are declining, people, because of all the immigrants that are coming into this country. Your housing standards are declining. The welfare system is going bankrupt. They make all these arguments. What does the left have to actually have to say to that? What does the left have to say other than, you know, kind of these abstract principles. You have to give people a reason to vote for you. And so I agree with you on the aspect of—it’s kind of a dirty word here. People don’t like using it that much. But, but populism. Right. Doing popular left wing populism. Inclusive populism. Not demonizing and scapegoating people except for maybe the ultra rich. I think it’s okay to scapegoat them. It’s good and healthy to do that. And there’s lots of great Democrats, small D in history who’ve done that. I think I know, Troy, you’re a big fan of Roosevelt and Roosevelt’s a classic, a great example of that. Someone who’s, you know, defending basic democratic values and saying, you know what, in order to achieve these values, yeah, there are the bad guys, we have to go after them and we shouldn’t be afraid to point them out. And so I think in France, we’re waiting for someone to articulate that clear kind of left populist message. And then the final point, I’ll say is to also actually have an alternative when it comes to the far right, xenophobic, nativist vision. Do you just kind of run from anything having to do with immigration. Or do you say, you know what, actually France is a country that’s founded or modern France founded on immigration. You know, millions of immigrants have left their mark for the better in this country. And actually saying, you know what, that diversity is a good thing in France. The left has been uncomfortable about articulating a clear alternative. So I would say it’s those two things. Yeah. Troy Miller:Speaking of FDR—and I’m a huge fan of Thomas Paine too—another person who recognized that like, well, I mean, if you have all of this wealth and all of this land and all of this property, then it came to you as a result of the broader society. And so you owe something back in. And then you get to Common Sense and Agrarian Justice and The Rights of Man. And these are principles. And what Paine was writing about—and folks can hear more about that from my conversations with Professor Harvey Kaye at the University of Wisconsin Green Bay—these are universal visions also. These are pluralistic visions. Thomas Paine was aware of religious plurality because he was raised in a, in a—on basically both sides of the coin in England. But the other thing is we need to be fighting for universal rights. And that’s the thing that I think when you get up to again starting with Thomas Paine—right—basically a dividend for every child born. You know, here is a certain amount of money. And when you reach the age of maturity, here is a certain amount of money so that you don’t start off in debt. I mean, the American system right now is so backwards, where you immediately become an adult and then are told, okay, what do you want to be for the rest of your life and how much debt do you want to go into in order to do that? And by the way, you’re going to be spending the first 15 years of your life then 20, 30, 40 years paying off that debt. I mean, there’s an indentured servitude to like the major lenders, Navient and all of these. But beyond that—and this is something my campaign was grounded on—most of the listeners know that, but we’re a growing audience, so I have to keep on saying this every time—the 21st Century Economic Bill of Rights. Which is grounded in FDR’s second Bill of Rights or Economic Bill of Rights. And I do have some of my campaign materials right here with me. And, you know, there’s the ten things. A right to a job that pays a living wage. A voice in the workplace. A cost free public education. Broadband internet. Complete and comprehensive health care. Decent, safe, affordable housing. A clean environment and a healthy planet. Meaningful resources at birth and a secure retirement. Sound banking and financial services. An equitable and economically fair justice system. And a right to vote and otherwise participate in public life. These are things that every person needs if they’re going to participate in the—you know, Aristotle used the term polity to describe the non corrupt form of what he saw democracy as the corrupt form of—but, you know, to be able to participate, to make the decisions as a society. Because, you know, by and large we have rejected the idea that kings or just powerful rich people should have all of the power by virtue of being powerful rich people. We have to be able to articulate that in more than just the kind of the fluffy ways that Vice President Kamala Harris did when she was campaigning. And I was a delegate. I was a delegate for the Harris Wallace campaign. And yet—which is part of the reason why I reserve the right to criticize the way the campaign went. And I just think, what if instead of taking Liz Cheney and Mark Cuban out, she had said the billionaires hate me, the corporations hate me, and I welcome their hatred. You know, which is basically what Donald Trump totally lying through his teeth for 10 years now about all the Davos crowd and the globalists are screwing—you know, it’s like I don’t know, Trump International isn’t a globalist Davos type thing. Yeah. And I mean, so what are you—you have this new podcast program out, What Do We Want? Right. I think that’s the conversation we’re having right now. What have you sort of learned so far? What are you expecting to learn through these conversations? What are you expecting to help people understand? Maybe the better way to put it. And I know you only have one out right now, and so I can’t ask you too much about the future ones. But also, why is this an important project for now? And I will say I produced the program, so I clearly agree it’s an important project also. Cole Stangler:Yeah. I mean, I think we’re at this moment of the far right’s in power in the United States. They’re gaining traction across Europe. They’re governing a few— Troy Miller:I will interrupt you just to say not just in Europe, but we see the full axis for World War II. I mean, in Japan too you see the rise of the far right and people starting to go, I don’t know about this whole arrangement over the last hundred years. Cole Stangler:But I mean, I think it’s precisely—the goal is to try to, for me, it’s like try to think about what’s the alternative? What do we actually have to offer? But in a non sectarian kind of open minded way. You know, for the first part of our discussion—and you know, I will say for most, much of the book—it’s like talking about how do we get to this place where the far right now is in power. Trying to understand it. Sympathizing with—actually with people. Hearing them out. Reporting and listening to them. I’ve been doing that a lot and that’s important. I like doing that. But now that the—and this joins back, goes back to your first question—now that the far right is actually in power and we see how dangerous and horrific that looks like. You know, to me the sort of next logical step is, well, like, what do we have to offer? What’s going to be our next alternative? And so, you know, saying you want to do left wing populism, populism like fine, that sounds fine, but what does it look like in practice? Who are you criticizing? What are you actually proposing? Is it, you know, are you talking about unions? Does that rhetoric—is that sort of out of date for certain parts of the workforce or in certain countries? So I think it’s a kind of open ended look at how do we get out of the morass that we’re in today. Under—you know—driven by this idea that I think the United States has things to learn from around the world. And actually, you know, people in Europe and France have things to learn from the United States. Because you guys are—the American left and the American labor movement—is going up against some of the worst adversaries that exist under very difficult circumstances. So I think that there are things actually that we can learn from. We in France, Europe learn from the United States. So it’s very much this idea of I think, you know, to get out of the morass we’re in, we need to start thinking more globally. Trying to take lessons. And, you know, look at concrete experiences. Because in this show we’re looking at not just people in the opposition, but people who are actually governing their countries today. And I don’t want to spoil it too much because those interviews are coming up soon. But there actually are countries where you have progressive parties in power with quite broad support. So what are they doing? Right. Like how have they figured this out, quote unquote? And so that’s another question that interests me. But sort of moving beyond the theoretical abstract. Like, you know, I’m not like that old. But the more we’re in this moment, it’s just like I don’t want to sit around and just be debating theory. It’s like what do we actually—who are the left wing parties today that are winning elections that have effective strategies? So that’s kind of the goal of the show. But I think you had another question in there maybe. Troy Miller:Let me—I mean so as soon as you started talking, I kind of wanted to segue to— Are you—having talked to people in the far right and having talked to supporters of the far right and all of this—how optimistic are you that the left can present a vision in any of these places that will appeal to people who have voted for Trump maybe three times or voted for Le Pen? Cole Stangler:So let me— Now I know what I wanted to say. I forgot. But going back to France in terms of what we have to offer. And I am optimistic. And this goes back to your point, Troy, about the kind of universal ideals. France is very good at doing that. At least we have a robust social safety net, a welfare system. And also for a long time—and to some extent still today—effective public services. That’s something that is so, so important in France. And you actually can’t understand the yellow vest movement that we were talking about without understanding the decline in public services. People have very high expectations of what the state owes them because they pay a lot of taxes and Social Security contributions into the system. And they expect high quality services in return. Whether it’s health care. Whether it’s transit. Whether it’s the education system. And what’s been happening in France is we’ve seen a gradual decline basically across the board in these programs. France used to have the famously number one ranked health care system in the world according to the WHO in I think 1999 or 2000. Now, you know, you have people having difficulty finding appointments. It’s not the same crisis as in the United States. I recognize that. And so I know people may be hearing this thinking, well, if the government can pay for it mostly can’t be that bad. Well, when you’re accustomed to a certain—you know—when you have expectations that are high, you expect them to be met. Troy Miller:Yeah, there’s an entire conversation to be had—and I’ll have to have you back and maybe we can dive into this—about the differences in expectations of what our government, what our public services can actually—how public services can serve the public. I did these debates and town halls while I was running for office. And there is a—he ended up getting elected in the 97th district—his name is Chris Anders. Very libertarian type. Was like Rand Paul, Ron Paul kind of type. And he at one point made a joke during one of the town halls of, well, I didn’t know what a government service was. And of course he has to call them government services because that government thing in America has that negative connotation. But then I heard—I didn’t know what a government service was—but then I heard somebody talking about how the bull was servicing that heifer. Now I know. And it was a room with the business group and groans all the way around the room. But man, he’s speaking to a sense. And I think this is especially true in red states in America. That like the government—really the only time you hear from your state government is when they’re wanting more money from you than you’ve paid or when they’re not doing something up to snuff. So why would you give them more money? And unless you’ve lived—and I lived for a very short time in Germany—that’s my experience outside of this. But frankly you can go straight across the river in the mountains to Virginia, to Northern Virginia, and see what happens in these towns when they actually invest in services. And like the parking garages are clean. There’s restrooms available for you. The streets aren’t littered. All of these things. But I wanted to interrupt because I think people—I think that’s part of the American disconnect. And it’s partially—we’re 50 years on from Ronald Reagan and others just being like, well, the scariest words in the English language are I’m from the government and I’m here to help. Right? And that’s completely the opposite from the type of sense that spurs the Gilet Jaune movement or any of these other strike movements and put real pushback in European countries. So I’m sorry I interrupted you, but no, I think that’s a critically important distinction to make. Cole Stangler:Totally. No, I agree. Maybe I’ll try to be brief about this. But without sounding sort of too corny. But if we’re trying to think about links between France and the United States—and we referenced it earlier. Well, you talked about Thomas Paine. Thomas Paine who spent time in France and was famously supportive of the French Revolution. The republic sort of come from, you know, similar time at the end of the 18th century. Spent time jailed in France— Troy Miller:During the Revolution because of what—you know—because of problems he had with Americans who were over there. Anyway. Yeah. People can learn about that in my conversations with Harvey Kaye. Cole Stangler:Yeah. I mean, you know, so I think like there actually is some—there’s a connection. And I think the most effective politicians do it in both countries where you’re able to connect sort of—you know—and part of it can be a little bit mythologized. But when people are able to connect these sort of founding universal Republican principles and promise with actually universal programs that actually—they actually go well together. Like having effective public services in France is in many ways realizing at least the promise that has never really been fully realized by the French Republic. And I think same thing in the United States. And that the most effective politicians can do that. I think like to go back to FDR again was really effective at doing that. So in both of our countries I think there are ways to politically make these arguments where you can actually make the argument that the best way to really uphold the universal promise of the American republic is to have actually high quality effective public services. We’re actually being more—you know—we’re so attached to the principles and promise of the country that we’re going to do this for you. And I think maybe there’s a way to sort of—in France the left does that already. But in the United States maybe that’s something that I think hopefully maybe could happen in the coming years as we’re looking for ways out of the morass. Troy Miller:I—yeah. I mean, people talk a lot about the Constitution and they skip right over the preamble. They skip over Article 1. They do Article 2 a little bit. Then they get to the Second Amendment. But we the people of the United States in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity. Like promoting the general welfare is before liberty. And I think they did that on purpose because like actually if you don’t secure the general welfare for we the people, you don’t have the liberties. And yeah, just to get to let you go here in a moment. But all of what you’re saying I think it goes back to what I tell every candidate that I talk to. It’s like what’s the story that you’re going to tell throughout your campaign? What is the story that when you have an interview or a town hall or a debate you are going to tell so thoroughly that it is left unquestioning in anybody’s mind who listens to it what your position, where you’re coming from? And that doesn’t mean having the perfect answer for every— We need to stop treating these individual issues as things that need to be addressed individually and start talking about these things in the broad universal sense. But then being able to bring it down to the concrete specifics. And I think that’s where Democrats in America—and I imagine liberals in France are like this too—are very good about talking about defeating sexism and defeating racism. And yes, we want to do those things. But how we do those things is actually critically important. And I think the universal rights in the economic Bill of Rights are those things. So Cole, before I let you go, any final thoughts? We’ll have to have you back, obviously. Cole Stangler:I think you said it all, Troy. I think I basically agree with you there at the end. So I’m not sure I have much to add to that. Troy Miller:All right. Well, the guest has been Cole Stangler. He is the author of several books including Paris Is Not Dead, available in English right now, and The American Mirror, which is not yet available in English, but will be once we get this episode out and bang down the publisher’s door. Also you can find his journalistic work all over the place. Cole, thanks so much for taking the time. And like I said, we’ll have to have you back. And we’re looking forward to that already. Cole Stangler:Yes, it was a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Troy. Get full access to The Blue Ridge Breakdown at blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe [https://blueridgebreakdown.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]

28. helmi 2026 - 47 min