WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 04: U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio kisses Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) as he arrives for President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 04, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Former Democratic Senator Joe Manchin accused Congressman Al Green and other Democrats of “disrespect” and — absurdly— “inhumanity” for standing up and pointing out Donald Trump’s over-100 lies in his State of the Union address.
This is the same on-the-take Senator Joe Manchin who refused to break a filibuster and thus blocked legislation that would have reversed Citizens United and established an absolute right to vote in America.
The same sellout-coal-baron Senator Joe Manchin who opened the door for Elon Musk to buy the election for Donald Trump and Republicans to throw around 4 million mostly-Democratic voters off voting rolls or refuse to count their votes.
Now that the big money is on the Republican side, thanks in large part to cross-my-palm-with-cash Senator Joe Manchin stabbing America in the back, the elderly yacht-dweller seems to have joined the MAGA Republicans, at least in spirit.
You know who I’m talking about: those guys who claim to represent the “real” America.
We saw them jumping up over and over again at Trump’s State of the Union Address, chanting “USA, USA, USA” when Texas Congressman Al Green tried to point out that Trump was lying to everybody.
They show up at school board and city council meetings sometimes literally wrapped in the American flag while carrying semiautomatic weapons in one hand and bibles in the other, screaming obscenities and threats at public officials.
They demand that children be exposed to measles in school and refused to vaccinate their kids, then support Republicans who are planning to destroy the Medicaid program that provides healthcare to more than 70 million Americans.
They say they love our country, but they and the world’s richest man are actively gutting our government in a way that is openly delighting Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
They forbid teachers from teaching sex education, make it illegal for teachers to mention birth control, and when girls become pregnant make it a crime to get an abortion.
They strip out of our schools’ curriculum the history of Black people being beaten at the Edmund Pettis Bridge 60 years ago today, are banning books nationwide, and are waging war against queer people for simply wanting to be who they are.
They say they love our military, but are firing thousands of workers in the Veterans Administration.
They claim to be champions for the elderly, but are actively working on a plan to privatize Social Security while they gut the Social Security administration itself.
They insist that global warming is a hoax and fight like hell to keep hundreds of billions in taxpayer subsidies flowing to the fossil fuel oligarchs, threatening violence at even a discussion of a carbon tax, electric cars, or LED light bulbs.
They celebrate an attack on our US Capitol as well as several state capitols, trying to kill Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Vice President Mike Pence, and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
They complain about the “American carnage” of our century-old infrastructure, but threaten a new civil war if politicians raise taxes on the well-off and the morbidly rich to fix it.
They assert a belief in “fiscal responsibility,” but are preparing to borrow another $5 trillion to give to their billionaire donors as tax cuts and corporate subsidies.
They demand prayer in schools and “one nation, under god” at public events, yet totally disregard Jesus’ teaching that prayer be done so quietly and privately that it’s in one’s “closet.”
Their preachers openly violate US tax law, forcing us all to pay for their public utilities like police, fire, and public roads, while defying Jesus’ teachings about separating church and state (not to mention the similar sentiments of this nation’s Founders).
They attack colleges and academics and support over a trillion dollars in student debt (which happens nowhere else on Earth) and are actively deconstructing our Department of Education while demanding tariffs against countries that technologically outpace us because they have better-educated workforces.
They claim to be “Christians” yet oppose government-supported food stamps and housing support in open defiance of Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 25:31-46 that the only way to get to heaven is to feed the hungry and care for the homeless.
They claim to believe in democracy yet push laws making it harder to vote but easier for goons to show up at polling places in militia garb to intimidate those who want to vote.
They say they’re on the side of working people but hate unions (except police unions).
They claim to be America’s best patriots.
They’re wrong, and tragically deluded.
In fact, they’re the boot-licking brigade for morbidly rich rightwing billionaires who don’t want their polluting businesses regulated or their taxes raised.
They’re gullible patsies of hustlers claiming religion inspires them while fleecing their congregations to buy a new private jet and a new mansion in Hawaii.
They’re sexually insecure men being played as marks by the NRA and the weapons industry, who tell them that by strapping AR15 prosthetic penises across their backs they seem masculine.
They’re grown-up elementary school bullies who turned to violence as children to conceal their inability to keep up in the classroom and now do the same when they don’t understand basic science.
They’re white chumps who’re convinced they’re genetically superior to everybody else and are terribly confused when they see really smart nonwhite people on TV or in politics.
They’re useful idiots of foreign autocrats and oligarchs who send millions of trolls and fake news across social media daily because a functioning American democracy is a threat to their own wealth, power, and appearance of legitimacy.
They’re dupes for billionaire media families and their TV and radio hosts who’re laughing all the way to the bank as they crank the outrage machine harder and harder to keep their suckers glued to the dial.
Genuine patriots work to heal a country, to bring out its best, to strengthen its social and political fabric and make a better nation and world for future generations.
These people are not patriots: they’ve been screwed for 44 years by Reaganomics, told it’s raining while that “trickle down” is just America’s oligarchs pissing on them, and they’re looking for someone to blame.
Trump and rightwing media have told them for years that their troubles are caused by people of color, scientists, unions, “liberals” and the “coastal elites” — and they’re believing it.
It would be tragic if these boot-lickers weren’t so wed to hate, bigotry, and violence; instead they’re a genuine threat to law-abiding Americans and the survival of our democratic republic.
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