The results of the 2020 U.S. Census have been released, and West Virginia has lost a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives.
It’s a disappointing, though not unsurprising, development.
And perhaps it wouldn’t have happened if our representatives — at the federal and state government levels — were doing a better job.
The Mountain State has been losing population for decades as young people flee and the old guard passes away.
West Virginia is a land of surface beauty whose economy is propped up by a dying industry dependent on harvesting finite resources, often decimating the state’s best features in the process.
It has become a place of clutching backward ideas and refusing to move forward with the rest of the world. It’s one thing to maintain old-fashioned values, like tight-knit families and good manners; it’s another to be openly hostile to change and flagrantly unwelcome to non-white, non-heterosexual, non-cisgender individuals.
We know not every community in West Virginia — and certainly not every person — is like this. But this is how we look to the rest of the country.
Look at what’s coming out of our Legislature: Trans-athlete bans (for which Gov. Justice was eviscerated on national television for admitting this isn’t even a problem in our state), anti-strike and pro-unlimited-firearm-access bills and legislation that guts harm reduction programs and needle exchanges. Those are just the ones that passed. Some truly egregious legislation was proposed last session.
Look what our elected officials are supporting — or, not supporting — on the national stage: Capito was all-in on a country-wide trans-athlete ban; Manchin is being contrary just so he can flex his political muscles; McKinley is adamantly anti-anything green energy; and Mooney and Miller supported and spread election-fraud conspiracies.
Our representatives aren’t monsters, and not everything they do is terrible. But they do spend a lot of time and energy digging their heels in and supporting actions that hold West Virginia and the nation back, even as we strain to move forward.
West Virginia is a place of contradictions. It’s a place of scenic vistas and orange-tinged, polluted water. It’s a place of warm and helpful neighbors and people with a white-knuckled grip on outdated and hateful ideologies. It’s a place of history and advancement, but also a place afraid of change. It’s a place that people want to call home and a place that is not hospitable to everyone. And it seems the worst parts of West Virginia are on display daily in the halls of the state’s and nation’s capitols, so maybe one less representative isn’t a bad thing.
For too many, the bad outweighs the good, and they leave, taking with them the momentum we need for change and the numbers we need to maintain our representation in Congress.
