So Goes Joe ...
Final Paragraphs on Joe Manchin Before History Locks in His Legacy | June18.2022
WestVirginiaVille.com cartoon | June 8, 2022 Special Edition
By Douglas John Imbrogno | Editor, WestVirginiaVille.com
The list is long of things I would rather do than write one more paragraph about what Joe Manchin will likely not do. The hope is, of course, that writing one more paragraph, publishing one more screed, posting one more damning cartoon, or making one last call to his weary office staff will be the Hundredth Monkey.
That is to say, that we will have finally gotten to that tipping-point-monkey that gets the job done. And this results in a cascade effect delivering long-awaited, urgent climate legislation, plus billions of dollars of social good invested in the state and nation Manchin purportedly represents.
Instead of just the interests of … you know … Joe.
To quote one official designation, the Hundredth Monkey Effect is “the spontaneous transference of knowledge throughout a species once a certain number of individuals has learned a new idea or action … A mind-to-mind jump. A leap in consciousness.”
The increasingly freaked-out number of us humans pushing a “leap in consciousness” on the boiling climate crisis, manifested in momentous federal legislation and concerted global action, have been frozen in our tracks repeatedly by Crossing Guard Joe. There he is again, old amiable, folksy Joe. Holding up a ‘STOP’ sign, ferrying his fossil fuel friends and carbon-spewing, coal-trading family business associates safely across the road while urgent traffic backs up and up and up …
WestVirginiaVille.com illustration | June 8, 2022 Special Edition
Here are a few things I would rather do than write more, likely futile Manchinean paragraphs:
Plant more Italian tomatoes in my deck container garden.
Binge-watch Youtube videos of actress-crush Anna Kendrick’s witty live repartee on talk shows.
Comb out the tangles in my beloved tuxedo cat’s thick fur.
Smoke a Honduran cigar on the porch as my wife resolutely seals up the house so my despicable smoke doesn’t infiltrate the house’s sanctum.
Yet here I am.
This may well be my last raft of paragraphs urging Joe-motion on climate and social legislation. After which I will cease pointing my monthly magazine’s teensy megaphone at this man Manchin, from atop my hill in a state of many hills, whose immediate interests appear to bore the man. In June, I published a special edition of WestVirginiaVille’s web feature magazine devoted to one topic: “Is Joe Manchin the Anti-Byrd?”
So, I’ve had my little say.
But. But …
It would be nice, really nice, to be surprised at the last moment by climate action. To see some pale, yet still significant version of the grand ambitions of the Biden Administration’s Build Back Better climate vision come to pass. Literally, come to pass Congress or be born out of reconciliation.
Manchin has done historic harm in gutting what might have been — especially given the sweeping aims of the multi-trillion-dollar early iterations of Build Back Better and its broad climate provisions.
FROM: “Black By God acidly sketches Joe Manchin’s life & times,” June 8, 2022 WestVirginiaVille.com Special Edition
The hour is late, indeed. Alarming headlines come tumbling one after the other now, as apocalyptic elements of the national and global climate catastrophe link and move in concert, leaping from possibility to actuality. Resulting in wrecked lives and devastated communities:
The Washington Post, June 16, 2022: “A string of climate disasters strike before summer even starts”: “The official first day of summer has not even arrived and already the country is overheated, waterlogged and suffering. Extreme weather is here early, testing the nation’s readiness and proving, once again, that overlapping climate disasters are now becoming more frequent and upending Americans’ lives.”
The Atlantic, June 15, 2022: “A Hotter, Poorer, and Less Free America: In the next few weeks, Senate Democrats could fall short — for arguably the third time in 30 years — of passing a climate deal. What will that mean for the planet and the country? While fossil fuels remain essential to today’s economy, the next stage of economic development is unmistakably decarbonized and electrified. Without the kind of robust policy support on offer in Europe or China, America’s climate-friendly companies will not be able to keep up. And so the country will fall behind.”
The Atlantic piece is by Robinson Meyer. It’s worth pausing over another story by one of climate journalism’s most level-headed and most urgent voices. He posted “We’re Headed Toward a Very American Climate Tragedy,” in December 2021, responding to the day Manchin went on Fox News and said “I can’t get there,” about the sweeping climate ambitions of the first iteration of Build Back Better. “I try to avoid despair,” wrote Myers. “But sometimes despair is the right emotion.”
Meyers continues:
“The United States is on the verge of a massive, history-rewriting failure. On Sunday, Senator Joe Manchin, the Democrats’ linchpin vote, told Fox News that he couldn’t vote for the Build Back Better Act, the vehicle for much of President Joe Biden’s legislative climate policy … If that decision holds, then Manchin has virtually sealed the planet’s fate: The world is all but guaranteed to warm by more than 1.5 degrees Celsius above its preindustrial temperature by 2040.”
Meyers envisions a future clouded with regret:
“In retrospect, what might amaze our descendants is that there were so many ways to tackle climate change through policy. The problem was amenable to progressive and conservative values; whether you believed in conquering nature or mothering it, you could find a plausible remedy to the carbon problem. But our politicians chose none of them. They opted for perhaps the worst possible path of all — they bickered while the world burned.”
P.S.
It is not just personal choice to wind down my coverage of the Joe Manchin climate and social in-action beat. He may have effectively wound down his own influence and the point of his existence, by — so far, and say it ain’t so, Joe — deep-sixing so many of the Biden Administration’s grand aims.
Consider the November mid-terms and Republicans. No, wait. No reasonable Republican Party exists any more since the wholly-owned, hostile takeover by Trumpublicanism. So, if a cabal of conscience-free Trumpublican chaos agents wins control of Congress in the November mid-terms, Manchin becomes a back-bencher. He’ll be deposed from his current unofficial status as Prime Minister of America, where he has the superpower to kill, legislatively, whatever he dislikes.
And, by extension, to kill a whole lot more in these currently still green, green hills of Earth.
I can recommend some amusing Anna Kendrick Youtube clips for Joe as he twiddles his cellphone, back there on his bench.
PS: Thanks to Jeff Seager for his editing help on this newsletter.
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