To hell with Black people in Washington D.C., King Joe Manchin the First wants the rest of America -through a process that will never happen (Constitutional Amendment) — to determine if D.C. can have representation in the Senate. Everything we can possibly do to expand the voices of marginalized people in this country must first bend the knee to King Manchin’s will.
Whether His Majesty is merely trying to sustain his own power or not, his actions serve the interests of systemic racism. Much like his refusal to end the Jim Crow filibuster, or even reform it in such a way as to allow for a vote on essential voting rights, King Joe will continue to hold a gavel given to him by Black voters in Georgia, and use his newfound glory and power to suppress Black voices and Black votes.
Joe Manchin is acting to sustain white power from a position of incredible, ridiculous, undeserved and unearned privilege and authority in the Senate. He is giving the middle finger to every progressive effort we have. He is pissing on the labor and sacrifice of Georgia voters, of voters in Michigan and Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and Arizona. He is shitting on Joe Biden’s chance to make real change in this country.
At this point, his talk about bipartisanship becomes more readily seen as a fig leaf for his racist agenda. He wants to silence Black voices, to gut any effort to protect the right to vote from racist Republican attacks on our democracy. He wants to treat the violent white nationalists who tried to overthrow our democracy with more kindness and love than people of color all over this nation. He would rather empathize with Neo-Nazis than the people who gave him that gavel in the first place.
We can’t do anything. We have to simply shrug our shoulders and let him set the agenda. We have to bend the fucking knee to this ungrateful POS Joe-Lieberman wannabe. It’s maddening.
Every piece of legislation he tanks, every effort he destroys, makes it that much harder for us to keep both houses in 2022. If he hands power back to the fascists, then we’ll know he was always one of them. By then it will be too late.