It’s a real-coals-to Newcastle situation writing one more diatribe against Senator Joe Manchin, seeing as just about everyone has something to say about the man these days — but seeing as I did I deep dive on him this past weekend, and we have news today that he has a plan to leave the Democratic Party, bombs away! In truth, after absorbing what I could of the man’s history and recent maneuvering against the Democratic Party agenda, there’s not much I have to say about the man himself that hasn’t already been said. But one detail that I’m surprised people don’t play up more is that not only does Manchin actively make money from owning companies in the coal industry, the specific focus of these businesses is on second-hand, more-toxic-than-normal coal left behind or generated following the mining of good old regular Joe Blow coal. And so I am unable to shake the idea of Manchin as a bizarro universe analogue to the Joker, who rather than falling into a pool of toxic sludge as his origin story, decided instead to sell that nasty toxic sludge, and make his fortune off the ruination and debilitation of West Virginia’s lands and people.
Manchin truly embodies a particular American mindset hardly unique to him. Writers like Jamelle Bouie have rightly dissected the senator’s worries about America becoming an “entitlement” society if the Democrats pass too many social and economic programs, with his general point being that a millionaire who dictates the writing of laws that just so happen to benefit his personal business interests, with nary a reservation about the blatant corruption this entails, seems to fit far better the idea of someone who feels “entitled” than an ordinary citizen who receives government assistance in order to afford child care, get an education, and contribute to the actual greater good of American society.
More particular to the overlords of extractive industries like oil and coal, Manchin’s sense of entitlement extends to his sense of immunity to the environmental ravages of West Virginia — ravages that are both the direct and indirect results of his commitment to coal as an energy source and money maker. From mountaintop removal that obliterates ecosystems and poisons drinking water, to the climate change-fueled rains that are drowning West Virginians out of house and hollow, commitment to coal mining and coal power plants is increasingly a literal death sentence for citizens of his state. The (also literal) rising tide besetting West Virginia casts a sinister light on the fact that Manchin lives aboard a yacht while in Washington, D.C., but whose official homeport is Charleston, as if he were a millionaire doomsday prepper ready take full advantage of the state’s soon-to-be submerged highways and byways.
Reading coverage from even just last month, before Manchin really brought the hammer down on any climate change legislation being included in the Build Back Better Act, the writing was already etched on the wall. The combination of acknowledging human-caused climate change, while proposing nonsense measures like paying coal plants to switch to natural gas, while also generally signaling that we really have to slow it down on all this saving the earth from total destruction stuff, is so nakedly self-serving, but also, crucially, delusional. There is simply no road to a habitable planet that includes the continued fetishization of fossil fuels just because they make a handful of people filthy rich. That is crazy, not the idea of getting our power from wind and solar. It also brings into focus the predatory and feudal attitude Joe Manchin has toward his own constituents, as if they deserve nothing better than to dig for coal and man the rowboats when the inevitable floods come in. Posing as their savior and protector of their way of life, he is in truth an accomplice to their doom. As others have pointed out, Joe Manchin could have gotten his voters almost anything he might have asked for, in exchange for his support of measures he might otherwise oppose — but when given the chance to be West Virginia’s version of Jesus Christ, the Easter Bunny, and Santa Claus all rolled into one, Manchin couldn’t see beyond just giving everyone another lump of coal.