#kristen sinema
“Few moments illustrate so perfectly the personal and political evolution of Arizona’s junior senator. When Sinema was first becoming active in state politics as a lefty political activist—she ran as a Green Party member and as an independent before finally joining the Democratic fold—she viewed Lieberman as the embodiment of Washington sellouts. As I reported in a profile of Sinema for the magazine, Sinema even protested outside of a Lieberman campaign event when the senator was running for president in 2003. “He’s a shame to Democrats,” she told a reporter from the Hartford Courant at the time. “I don’t even know why he’s running. He seems to want to get Republicans voting for him—what kind of strategy is that?” Lieberman, she added, was “pathetic.””—
She’s despicable. Manchin is despicable. Our planet is literally burning to death. Americans are suffering in record numbers because of corporate greed and state-sanctioned police violence. Fascists are literally inches away from seizing control of the federal government.
Literally the only chance, the last chance, the best chance we have to do LITERALLY A SINGLE THING about any of this is now. If laws are not passed to address these things, it’s over.
I’m going to be fine. I’m rich and white and male in America. Nothing bad will ever happen to me because I live in a white supremecist, racist, oligarchy that privileges people like me over everyone else who isn’t richer than I am.
But people who don’t have my privilege are going to suffer. My children will suffer. If I have grandchildren, they will never know a planet that isn’t dying.
And all of this ALL OF IT is happening because of two people.
That’s it. Two people. Rich, selfish, sociopaths, who are willing to let the planet burn while they hold the door wide open for Trump and his fascists to storm in and take over the whole place.
When Manchin and Sinema completely destroy Biden’s agenda, when they finish jamming the knife as far as they can into the backs of the people who voted for them, it’s over. Forever. If it isn’t Trump in 2024, it’s someone just as bad if not worse. Women’s rights are gone. Trans rights are gone. It’s only a matter of time before they come for same sex couples. Every. Single. Thing. we have fought so hard for since before I was even born, all of it, is undone and gone.
And for what? FOR WHAT? Money? Attention? Someone explain to me like I’m five years old how these two people who are standing between Democracy and Fascism are totally cool with it.
I’m no political genius, but I can look at what Republican Fascists are doing in Texas, Georgia, Wisconsin, and Florida. I know what they want to do on a national level. There is no way Manchin and Sinema don’t know that. There is no way they don’t understand the stakes.
There’s no way every single member of the Democratic caucus doesn’t understand the stakes.
And it’s all going to fucking wither and die. For the greed, hubris, and inexplicable selfishness of two people.
I started this with a quote about Sinema, who was once a progressive activist. She called out Lieberman for what he was, and now that’s what she has become.
I sincerely hope that she wakes up at night, and can’t go back to sleep. I hope she sits there in the dark and stays awake all night, while the person she was screams at her and tells her that she’s a fucking sell out. She has betrayed and stabbed in the back everyone who worked to elect her, as well as the literal millions of Democrats in America who worked to help elect Biden and defeat Trump. But, based on everything I have seen of her, from hiding out in a bathroom to avoid constituents to flying around the fucking world for fundraisers while the entire future of America hangs by a thread, that she sleeps beautifully.
Goddamn her, goddamn him. All I can do at this point is hope that, somehow, after the Fascists take control, Sinema and Manchin are the first against the wall. In a just world, one of those Game of Thrones SHAME people would follow them around for the rest of their fucking lives.
