“Lord Manchin Explained” 7–10–2022
Last time we met it was over a warm cup of consternation and an analysis of the legacy of George Mason, slave owner, and his failure to release any of his slaves via his last will and testament in an effort to protect his progeny’s economic interest in the family plantation.
As great a man as he was, George Mason could not find it within himself to break the chains that bind both master to servant and servant to master, and would ostensibly continue to demean and degrade the very soul of those who choose to participate in as unholy an institute as human bondage for nothing more than the bottom line.
Mason made his choice and left his inheritors to deal with the fallout. What lesson can be learned when dignity of the mind, spirit and body takes second fiddle to the right to be free? To control one’s bodily autonomy? As with our current dilemma of conscience regarding the right of a woman to choose if and when to have an abortion, enslavement, of all kinds, is about domination, authority and control.
According to a quote attributed to Robert Frost, and as a practical matter, freedom can be expressed as being “easy in your harness”. Yet, there are many ways in which we can deceive ourselves into believing we voluntarily consented to live a life where the vast majority of our efforts inure to the financial well-being of another.
You know the old saying, every year you work harder and harder so the boss can get his new Mercedes. But when it comes to Joe Manchin, the new car is a Lamborghini with his floating castle being a yacht, that while he is not busily, and somewhat gleefully if you ask me, threatening to pull the rug out from under our voting rights to protect an obscure Senate rule of conduct we all know and love, the filibuster that, yes you guessed was originally added to the Senate rules of procedure to defend and maintain slavery.
Yet can it be said that Joe has subjugated a discreet part of his constituents by turning them into his personal “property” for financial motives? The answer is probably no. However, there is more than one way to line one’s own pocket by use of far less obvious methods of control, exploitation and oppression, and for an old school, coal robbing baron SOB who thinks black lung disease is an acceptable risk of the trade, economic servitude is clearly the way to go.
For you see, Manchin created a workforce of coal miners to suffer the misery brought upon for generations to those who without the opportunity for a proper education and with limited economic options available, a circle of endless poverty is all but inevitable.
You lift sixteen tons and what do you get? You get to come back the next day. Manchin? He gets to plot and plan how he is going to declare your pension program a separate entity and bankrupt it, leaving you high and dry. Let’s delve a bit deeper, shall we?
Firstly, it is important to remember there is no coal market. The industry and the miners are in essence part of a socialist program to “pretend” they still have viable, profitable jobs in the world economy. They don’t and the person who benefits from this smoke and mirrors Potemkin Village? Radioactive coal-ash dumping Joe at your service, Madame. My heartfelt condolences for your loss. Now about that mortgage your husband defaulted on…
Imagine if you will an identifiable class of persons living a life of total dependence upon the good graces of a heartless, soulless, uncaring and unrepentant monster who may at any moment, if it so pleases his Lord, pull the plug without the slightest bit of remorse, except possibly for his own bottom line.
Did you know the term “redneck” was originally a name given to striking coal miners who wore red bandanas around their necks as a sign of solidarity with the union? It would be years until the “Red” designation was used in America to identify “communists”. Where have they gone Joe DiMaggio? Why, in Manchin’s back pocket next to the flask of Old Crow Whisky, of course.
As we continue to dig, we find another parallel between George Mason, generational wealth and the Lord Manchin. His daughter Heather Bresch, is a former coal baron, who decided (for a little while anyway) that being a price-gouging drug profiteer is a far better method to inflict pain and suffering upon the sick and the needy while banking $18,509,300 (that we know of) in total compensation.
Her net worth is estimated at $31.7 Million dollars, but other than raise prices on EpiPens over 400%, we don’t know what she did, other than price-gouge and feather her own nest while contributing to daddy’s political coffers, on a day-to-day basis when she was the CEO of Mylan, Inc. In fact, nobody seems to know. She retired in mid-2020.
Now, I’m not suggesting the Baroness Bresch is going to inherit any coal miners or coal mines time soon. We have a system in place these types of cultural, socio-economic beings whose livelihood and existence are tied to a location and forced to labor under the watchful eye of their lord and master. It’s called serfdom and, you guessed it, part of the middle age practice of Feudalism.
The question becomes, is serfdom a type of slavery? It is not a new concept.
“The Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the full title of which is the Supplementary Convention on the Abolition of Slavery, the Slave Trade, and Institutions and Practices Similar to Slavery, is a 1956 United Nations treaty which builds upon the 1926 Slavery Convention, which is still operative and which proposed to secure the abolition of slavery and of the slave trade, and the Forced Labour Convention of 1930, which banned forced or compulsory labour, by banning debt bondage, serfdom, child marriage, servile marriage, and child servitude.”-https://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/Supplementary_Convention_on_the_Abolition_of_Slavery
So, let’s add to the mix, regardless of what you call it, the continuation of a sociological economic servitude dependent upon the ownership/property rights of another for their livelihood, yet somehow at their own expense sound like a “deep rooted tradition” worth continuing?
Is this “Liberty?” Lord Manchin thinks so. In fact, I imagine he has his eye on this year’s new Lamborghini models. Red I hear, just like fellow plunderer Joel Osteen, I reckon.
