Global Warming.
These two words are the proof. Here's what I mean.
The "Build Back Better" bill that the Democratic Party hierarchy, including virtually all its Congressional members and the president and vice president of the U.S. have been struggling to pass for months against the unyielding opposition of Manchin, contains the first concrete steps for the U.S. to actually do something about the global warming that is being caused primarily by the burning of fossil fuels. By in effect vetoing this proposed set of legislation before it even could come up for a vote in the Senate, Manchin is dooming everyone on earth to catastrophic climate change. More powerful and frequent destructive storms is a minor effect compared to the droughts that will eventually result in famines that will kill millions of people.
Without the U.S., the second leading cause of the problem after China, setting an example and taking on its responsibilities, it cannot persuade other nations to do likewise, and many will not.
After jerking around his party leadership, including the president of the U.S., Joe Biden, for months, in a long stalling process mislabeled "negotiations," during which time unilateral concession after unilateral concession was made to Manchin, whittling down what was originally a $6 trillion bill to $1.7 trillion spread out over 10 years, Manchin slapped Biden and the rest of the Democrats in the face by appearing without prior warning to them on the reactionary agit-propaganda "news" channel of Rupert Murdoch, Fox "News," on its Sunday political propaganda show on December 19th, to announce that he would not support the bill. (Of course it was obvious all along that he wouldn't. His long political tease finally ended. And yet the other Democrats, after a few hours of anger the next day, the Democrats were back to "negotiating" and saying they hadn't given up, that progress would be made- all the same delusional verbiate they'd been spewing for months.)
On Murdoch TV, Manchin rehashed a bunch of his well-rehearsed "concerns" and "reasons" for stonewalling the bill. (By the way, going on Fox is another indication of Manchin's reactionary nature. He could have gotten himself booked on any of the Sunday morning political propaganda shows that serve as platforms for D.C, insiders to bloviate on: on CBS, NBC, or ABC.) One of his main talking points was that he couldn't convince "the people" of West Virginia, his state, to support the bill because he couldn't "explain" it to them.
And let's be fair to Manchin: it is so very hard to explain global warming. You have to explain that burning oil and coal and natural gas releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Then you have to tell them that CO2 stays in the atmosphere and traps more heat from the sun. That heat warms up the air and water. That warming changes weather patterns, creating fiercer storms. Furthermore, it creates droughts that last for years, as happened in California. That leads to crop failures. And ice in Greenland, the north pole, and Antarctica is melting as a result, causing sea levels to rise which will eventually put coastlines and cities under water.
That is so abstruse and complex to explain! No WONDER it is apparently beyond the ken of the people of West Virginia to grasp! Why, they're just a bunch of simple country folk who only have their own common sense to rely on for understanding the world.
Thus does Manchin insult the intelligence of "his" constituents as well as the rest of us.
Joe Manchin is a smarmy, dishonest, manipulative piece of excrement. He is a humanoid, not a human.
Joe Manchin is quite literally a mass murderer. That is not hyperbole. It is literal truth.
The fact that one person, and not even the president, but just one of 100 U.S. senators, has the power to do that much damage to the world and to all of humanity, is one more indication of just how pathological, twisted, and even diabolical the U.S. power structure is. [1]
One more fact that "the" media never mentions. That $1.7 trillion spread over 10 years averages $170 billion per year. Congress just voted an annual budget for the Pentagon of $770 billion, an increase of the year before, like every year. Next year it will grow larger still. It passed with barely any notice in "the" media, and no political sturm und drang. Unlike with that bill, nobody you hear in the establishment propaganda system ever screeches that the Pentagon budget is "inflationary" or complains "how is it going to be paid for?" or insists it be "revenue neutral" and "not add to the deficit." Thus are the priorities of the corporate imperialist state thrown into sharp relief once again. The people must serve the empire. Their needs are unimportant.
"SCREW YOU, HUMAN RACE!"
1] In case you don't already know, here is the weird political arrangement that makes Manchin powerful enough to overrule the President of the United States. The Senate, as per the U.S. Constitution, has two Senators from each of the 50 states that now exist. Thus 100 Senators. Currently there are 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans in the Senate. Tie votes are broken by the vice president of the U.S. The vice president of course is currently the Democrat Kamala Harris.
But two of those nominal Democratic Senators are functionally Republican Trojan Horses inside the Democratic Senate caucus: Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who is bought by the pharmaceutical industry, and the notorious Joe Manchin.
And this body of corrupt millionaire jackals and drooling reactionaries like John Kennedy, the redbaiting Senator from Louisiana, and Ron Johnson, who defends the January 6th insurrectionists who attacked and occupied the Capitol as peaceful patriots, styles itself as "the world's greatest debating body." Unreal egomania there! (Johnson is the GOP Senator from Wisconsin, the state that gave us Senator Joe McCarthy. Kenosha, Wisconsin, is the Town From Hell that aided and abetted the murderous junior stormtrooper Kyle Rittenhouse.)
The U.S. Senate has long been an ultra-reactionary body. Part of that is their "seniority" system. So Southern racist segregationists and Senators from reactionary farm states would get repeatedly reelected and assume control of committees. Here one example of the numerous horrible consequences of this state of affairs. For decades. while thousands of African-Americans were tortured, murdered, and mutilated by mobs of white racist terrorists, these Senators blocks every attempt to pass a Federal anti-lynching law.
By the way, here's another way the U.S. Senate is truly awful. California has about 40 million people. They have 2 U.S. Senators. The approximately 20 least populous states also have about 40 million people. THOSE 40 million, most of them in small reactionary states like Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, the two Dakotas, etc., have FORTY Senators. "World's Greatest Democracy" my ass! The U.S. in this as in many other ways is profoundly ANTI-democratic!
But the populace is expected to worship this power structure and venerate its creators, the "Founding Fathers," as superhuman demigods. Even though they were elitists, many of whom "owned" human slaves as chattel, including the two main men, Washington and Jefferson, who owned hundreds of slaves. Washington was the richest man in America, by the way, a huge land speculator whose motive for rebelling against the British crown was his lust for more land. Which incidentally necessitated expulsion and genocide against the people who were already living there and whose ancestors arrived, according to the latest archeological and paleoarcheological evidence, around 30,000 or more years ago.
