I found this
when searching for how to configure xorg to use the “joystick” buttons to control the mouse because as far as I can tell, Manjaro does not have a package for this like Raspbian-based distros do.
It works so much better! Pointer acceleration is sane and it is actually usable.
Still waiting for a new trackball to come, but it’s not such a big deal now. btw, I might permanently switch to Manjaro because it just seems to boot faster and is more familiar. I’m a long-time Arch user.