Post (election of) Trump Stress Disorder

I have PTSD. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago when my living situation with a family member triggered me–heart rate problems, flashbacks, high blood pressure, nightmares.

My living situation is different now, and I’ve done extensive EMDR therapy with a psychiatrist who specializes in treating this problem.

I’d been having a much higher level of anxiety in the months leading up to this election, but so was everyone else. All of my doctors report their patients having problems with this. But I still didn’t think that what was scaring me could happen.

It happened.

It has taken me a few days to admit that I’m being triggered. My heart rate is way too high, I’m having flashbacks, my blood pressure is way up, and I’m having nightmares. Today, I was listening to the news and sending an email, and suddenly I realized that I was unwell. I didn’t know if I was going to throw up or fall down. Luckily, I was able to recognize it as an anxiety attack and get through it before it was time to go to school.

Stress is, of course, a trigger, but there’s simply more to it than that.

I feel physically unsafe, both for myself and my students. I’ve lived through Bush, and while his policies scared me, I wasn’t scared of his supporters in a physical way. I am currently afraid of some of my fellow Americans–mostly because I know they don’t see me as American–only they count when they talk about Americans. I’m a race traitor, I’m a woman, I’m an ally, I’m an atheist, I’m a progressive, I’m an intellectual.

But it’s even more personal than that.

My PTSD, if I may diagnose myself, is being triggered because of long ago traumas.

Slow dissolve.

Pensacola, Fl. My mother’s apartment.

I am barely 18.

I am technically between homes, having moved my stuff out of my grandparent’s house the day before (long story). I hadn’t been living with my mother, mostly due to her abusive boyfriend, Don: racist, redneck, sexist. His son had praised Hitler in our one conversation. Don had once told me he was glad I was carrying to term, since women who got abortions should be shot. My mother, solidly pro-choice, had sat silently.

I am getting ready for bed; I’m in a T-shirt and underwear. My infant son is resting quietly.

My mother’s boyfriend appears, screaming and drunk.

“There isn’t room in her life for both of us,” he says.

And then he comes at me.

I run out the door, luring him away from my son, who is now screaming. I hide in the bushes. I pray.

The landlord comes and chases him away.

My mother makes excuses. For him. To me.

The next night, he comes over. “I’m sorry I yelled at you, but you ARE A BITCH.”

My mother wants us all to watch TV together. Don was just drunk, she explains again.

I have no car, no money, no license, no way out, until she takes me to move into my great-grandfather’s bedroom (two hours away) the next day. He had just died that morning, and decisions had been made.

I don’t want to watch TV with him; I don’t want to pretend he didn’t attack me. My mother insists. I call her sister, who tells my mother that I should be allowed to nurse and read quietly in another room.

I had never been physically attacked before.

Whenever my mother and ex-stepfather would drunkenly scream at each other, when I was younger, she would take me aside after, explaining that calling a woman a bitch was the worse thing you could say.

“Don’t ever let a man treat you this way.”

Flash forward to this boyfriend, him attacking me, and her behind him, quietly saying, “No, Don, don’t.”

This is what I flash back to. This is where the nightmares are coming from. Racist, sexist, violent, hate-filled people who don’t think there’s room enough in their country for all of us. I am physically afraid of them.

This time, my mother isn’t even saying, “No, Don, don’t.”

She voted for him.

On Facebook, I see different people excusing themselves from responsibility of what happened.

“Oh, I voted for a third party in a swing state, but it’s the fault of people who didn’t vote at all.”

There’s more than enough blame to go around here, people.

It is the fault of those who voted for Trump because they loved him.

It is the fault of those who voted for Trump even though they could see him for what he was.

It is the fault of those who said, “he says what we’re all thinking.”

It is the fault of those who said, “Oh, he doesn’t mean x; he’s just saying that for votes.”

It is the fault of Trump, who is a psychopath, in the full clinical definition of the word.

It is the fault of anyone who ever let that psychopath think he wasn’t one.

It is the fault of those who voted for third party candidates, esp. in swing states.

It is the fault of eligible voters who didn’t vote, esp. in swing states.

It is the fault of the media who gave Trump so much free air time.

It is the fault of the media who harped on the emails.

It is the fault of the media who didn’t equally harp on all of Trump’s scandals.

It is the fault of voters who listened to a single kind of media without doing any fact checking.

It is the fault of conspiracy theorists who kept spreading lies about Clinton.

It is the fault of those who spread lies about America–that crime is up, that the economy is completely down, that Sharia law governs whole cities here, etc.

It is the fault of foreign interests, esp. Russia and Wikileaks, who tried to take down one of the parties. And succeeded.

It is the fault of the voters who let them.

It is the fault of the electoral college system (and the primary system).

It is the fault of Clinton for not being perfect, for making mistakes, and not dealing with those mistakes well.

It is the fault of those who kept insisting that Clinton and Trump were equally bad, were equally dangerous for America.

It is the fault racists.

It is the fault of sexists.

It is the fault of religious bigots.

It is the fault of nationalists.

It is the fault of the homophobic.

It is the fault of the selfish.

It is the fault of the anti-science people.

It is the fault of very religious people who are so against “sharia” law, but who intend to make our laws based on their faith.

It is the fault of those who are uninformed.

It is the fault of those who don’t understand how economics work.

It is the fault of all those who don’t understand their own privilege.

It is the fault of those who don’t understand history–who don’t know that it was the extremely high tax burden on the rich that made the 1950s so awesome for (heterosexual white male) middle class people.

It is the fault of those who don’t see parallels between what is happening now and what happened in Germany, who spent the last eight years saying Obama was Hitler only to go on to elect their own demagogue, who actually is one.

It is the fault of the Republican states who have changed voter rules (and the Supreme Court who let them), making it harder to vote in all kinds of ways.

It is the fault of the first Americans, who, despite George Washington’s advice, established a two party system.

It is the fault of my family members who are continually taken in by that party to vote against their self interest.

It is the fault of other of my family members who only vote in their own self interests, and believe that everyone else on this planet, unless they’re family, should be completely on their own.

There.

It’s basically everyone’s fault.

Can we please FIX IT NOW?

I usually don’t like it when people say The Simpsons has “predicted” something. I’ve even written a blog about it.

However, I was just remembering a long ago Simpsons episode in which Bill Clinton and Bob Dole put aside their partisan differences to defeat a threat to America–a threat taking the undeserved form of presidential candidates.

And now, both of those men (and ALL living former Presidents, Republican and Democrat) are rejecting exactly the kind of man who would like to make us all build a ray gun to smite his enemies.

Don’t vote for Kang/Kodos.

Vote with Clinton & Dole!

Trump, I mean Kang & Kodos, posing as qualified politicians (and exchanging long protein strings).

Republicans like to talk about how they’re going to kick Obama out of The White House next year–it always sounds weird to me–he couldn’t/wouldn’t stay no matter how the vote turns out. They know that, right?

Naturally, I have a preference for how the vote will turn out, but no matter what, I’ll miss Obama.

He has not been a perfect president, but no one ever has.

Am I disappointed by some things? Yes–many. For example, Obama has deported more undocumented people than W did.

Conservatives should love that.

He’s actually done a lot of things that conservatives should approve of–the deficit has shrunken (it initially went up under his rule because he added our foreign wars to the official budget–under W, they didn’t count) by quite a lot. We are in better economic shape than we were in 2008. Bin Laden is dead, along with lots of other terrorist leaders.

It’s also hard for me to solely blame Obama for the failings I see. Republicans began by saying they would work to block every single thing he wanted. And they’ve succeeded in blocking many things. They have also inflamed a part of their base that now embarrasses them–the moderate conservatives I grew up with have been replaced by amazingly unreasonable people–Tea Partiers, overt racists, Palins, and Trumps. Their reactions to him are hysterical (in the older sense of the word): he’s not American; he’s not Christian; he only pretends to cry when children have been gunned down. The latest: that he’s actually on the side of the terrorists.

(I would note, of course, that the terrorists and the Democrats are at odds. We like feminism and gay people and secularism and humor, etc.–they are in fact more conservative about these things. They want to make the world “great again”–but they want to go back to the 700s instead of the 1950s.)

I grew up Republican. I have a deep sense of sadness when I watch those 70s and 80s politicians trying to retain control as the base spirals. My soul hurts when I see my family spiraling down with them.

When Obama won, my mother and I had the following exchange:

Mom: Obama is going to take our rights away as white women.

Me: Which ones?

[LOOOOOOOONG silence.]

Me: ‘Cause as a straight educated white American woman, I have more rights than the majority of the people who’ve ever lived on this planet. I have more rights than some of my friends. And I can’t think of any that Obama could actually take away.

[She changes the conversation.]

Obama has not, in his time in office, taken away my rights as a white woman.

I hope, in fact, that whoever takes the office will continue his work.

Here are a few things I’m happy about:

• I’m in a better position than I was eight years ago, financially. (Many elections ago, that’s what voters were asked to consider as the basis for their vote.)
• My disabled aunt has access to healthcare. For those who know me, you’ll know I had to take her in a couple of years ago for a while–in the South, which rejected Obamacare despite their own budget offices reporting that Obamacare would save them money, she wasn’t able to get it. She was going in and out of emergency rooms (those bills will forever be unpaid), but not getting fixed, not getting to really see a doctor, not getting prescriptions she could fill.
• I have access to more services under Obamacare. For example, my chiropractor, who is not in my insurance network, was able to recommend therapies to my insurance company–a new communication feature under the legislation. I now have a new TENS unit, a traction device, and a back brace for prolonged sitting–none of which I had to pay for–because of my chiropractor’s argument.

Do I wish we had a single payer system? Yes, but Obamacare is better than what we had before.

• Workers are being paid better and slightly more equally. Minimum wage is going up (although it still hasn’t caught up with inflation); overtime pay has been extended so more workers are eligible for it; Obama supports equal pay.
• He has proposed cutting funding for abstinence-only education, after it had been expanded by W. Every study show that it doesn’t work–rates of teenage pregnancy, rates of divorce, and rates of venereal disease are at their highest in the states that support it. Studies also show that those kids still have sex–abstinence only delays virginity loss by a bit, but raises–dramatically–the likelihood that they won’t use condoms.
• No child left behind is gone. I don’t love every part of the new education plan (to be fair, I don’t love every part of any plan that I can think of), but it’s SO much better than NCLB.
• Changes have been made to help Native Americans–our invisible and most oppressed and most victimized minority. Native women, for example, are raped at alarming rates (and that’s within a country that already has high rape rates). This legislation attempts to address this and other issues.
• We have opened relations with Cuba, which is long overdue.
• This administration has done more to support LGBTQ rights than any other. The backlash is, predictably, absurd.

Here are five things I’ll miss:

Have any other presidents talked about Finland’s music (and how it relates to good governance)?

Has any other president called himself a feminist? Obama seems to care about and respect women–and by acknowledging that he is a feminist, he also signals that “women’s issues” are human issues. Oh, and he’s against sex shaming, which is awesome, cause I’m one horny feminist, and it’s good to know my President supports me.

Has any other president included we “nonbelievers” in the list of Americans? No–most ignore us or conflate us with those who either aren’t American or who aren’t patriotic. But we nonbelievers can believe in America.

Depending on who’s elected, I’ll miss my break from having to explain the electorate to foreigners. When W was in office, I was constantly having to explain how he was our President, especially in the second term. I would usually start with “let me tell you about the South.”

Not every foreign person I know loves Obama–many are critical of the drones–but they don’t question how he exists as a leader–the basic fact of him is comprehensible.

As an American, I am deeply ashamed that Trump is the nominee of the other party–it manages to reflect badly on all of us. If he’s elected, I’ll be torn between a desire to be out of the country as much as possible and worrying about how I’ll be able to show my American face to the rest of the world.

But most of all, I’ll miss his sense of humor.

I hope his post-presidency work is just as awesome as Carter’s and Clinton’s have been.

A man who was threatening bodily harm to students and faculty at American River College was arrested this week. He was apparently going to do something today.
Over the years I taught at American River, I usually taught on Fridays. I still teach at Sacramento City college, which had a shooting a few weeks ago.
Every day that I go to work, my life is in danger.
Students and teachers face an enormous threat right now. Preschoolers are more in danger from bullets than active duty police officers.
I’m tired of hearing that things would be better if there were more guns around.
You really want my students to be armed when I catch them cheating, when I give them an F, the F that might get them disenrolled from this university? The F that sometimes means deportation? The F that means no med school?
Some might say I should carry a gun.
A. I don’t want to.
B. I have poor depth perception.
C. Most mass shootings happen so fast that I’m likely to be gunned down way before I manage to find the hopefully secured gun that would be rattling around in my backpack (so unsafe; I would probably shoot myself in the ass).
D. If I see a student with a gun, I will not assume that student is armed to protect me from a shooter. I’ll assume the student is a shooter.
By this logic, I could then shoot the student and claim fear of bodily harm, right?
I could shoot the occasional stalker student, right?

I have never felt safer in the presence of a weapon.
When I was growing up, my mother was in abusive relationships with gun owners. Was I supposed to be happy these guys–one of whom threatened to kill me if she left him–had their constitutional right to terrorize us?
The hard facts are that I have always more danger than safety from a gun in a relative’s hand or in a student’s hand or in a co-worker’s hand.

I see people post things about how we protect the President, airports, etc. with guns.
The posts never mention two things:
A. We protect the President etc. with guns carried by people with extensive gun training, with a license to carry that weapon at work–a license that can be taken away–and with clean background checks and mental health records.
If everyone who carried a gun did so under those circumstances, I’d be fine.
B. Also, that asinine post doesn’t mention whom we’re protecting people from with those regulated guns–we’re protecting the President etc. from crazy people with guns.
Telling me that guns are fine because we use them for protection but conveniently forgetting that we need law enforcement to carry them because other people are coming to shoot the rest of us is a gross oversight.
A lot of days now, when I’m walking to campus, I’m not thinking about the lesson I’m about to do, my research project, the students I mentor, that one student who seems to need extra help, or even what I’m having for dinner after class. Instead, I’m thinking about how vulnerable I am.
Today, I’ll walk across campus four times.
I hope.

I think I would have been more upset about Jon’s last show, but I lost my Jareth kitten, so I’m numb to other tragedy today. That said . . .

THE SIMPSONS: Springfield voters reject the leading candidates and embraced a write-in: Ralph Wiggum. Although no one knows for sure which political party Ralph is representing, he insists that everyone is invited to his party in the “E Pluribus Wiggum” episode of THE SIMPSONS Sunday, Jan. 6 (8:00-8:30 PM ET/PT) on FOX. (Pictured: guest voice Jon Stewart. THE SIMPSONS ª and ©2008TCFFC ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

I have seen almost every Daily Show with Jon Stewart. I started watching when Craig hosted, though due to cable issues I wasn’t as faithful to him. Over these past many years, I think there are maybe 8 episodes of TDS with Jon I haven’t seen, mostly due to overseas travel.

Jon brought something that Craig didn’t–a decidedly political focus. When I think of Craig’s show, I remember laughing, I remember his 5 questions bit, I remember Olivia Newton John not getting the 5 questions right although they just wanted her to say “grease,” and I remember Bill Murray singing some lyrics for the theme song. There’s more to remember about Jon because his show was more meaningful.

You all know what I’m going to say: More people got their news from Jon than from anywhere else. Their coverage won 7 Peabody Awards and an Orwell. The show launched the careers of some of our best comedians.

The last episode featured many, many correspondents (and his crew)–as it should. It was their show, too, and Jon made sure their voices were heard. Many have talked about how Jon made them better writers–that they learned to write for a purpose, for an audience, and with concision in mind–in addition to being funny.

Jon allowed them to play and to ridicule him. His brand of comedy was unique, in fact, because while the show was often satirical, the true satire was always in the hands of his correspondents. That is, satire plays on a level of meaning–it’s possible to misunderstand it. It depends on a naive narrator. Stephen Colbert’s show was all satire because Stephen was in character (and many did somehow miss that he was). While Jon sometimes used sarcasm for comic effect, he was sincere. He was angry at the VA, at those who fought to screw over first responders, etc. It wasn’t an act.

Those of us of a certain age will always remember Jon’s first show after 9/11 and the strength of his words.

When I teach satire, the segments of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart I use come from the correspondents, since they can’t come from the straight man that is Stewart (like this one).

Here’s what I’ll most miss. Jon’s honesty. His laugh. His using opponents’ words against them (by simply showing them saying the thing they said they didn’t say, etc.) The way he made the other side go crazy. If he were just a clown, they never would have had to mention him. But they did–they tried to take him down as if he were a serious newsman, as if he were a powerful political player.

And that made sure he was both.

(Maybe that’s why they decided to do their first debate after he was gone.)

Sometimes, when I ask my students a question like “which reading do you want to talk about first,” I get only one or two people responding. I often make a joke about democracy not working with so few votes.
The Supreme Court may grapple soon with efforts to make it harder to vote, to discourage voting. Striking down so much of the old Voting Rights Act has had some frightening consequences. In other words, deciding to trust states not to try to disenfranchise black voters has opened the door to the disenfranchisement of young, poor, and voters of color. Of course, the issue isn’t really about race anymore–if black people voted Republican, they wouldn’t be getting screwed now.
The new laws in various states controlled by Republicans are designed to ensure that Republicans can vote and that others may not be able to. Voter ID laws, getting rid of early voting, etc–these all target the urban, the poor, the young, the old, who may not have a picture ID or who may not be able to get to a polling place easily. One Texas law, which accepts a gun ID, but not a student ID, as proof of identity, could not be clearer in terms of who is encouraged to vote.
Those who support these laws say the laws are there to reduce voter fraud. When confronted with the less than 1% incidence of voter fraud, they will say that even one fraudulent ballot is worth all the trouble.
I don’t happen to share that view, because I’m offended by the idea of lots of people not being allowed to vote or having their ballots thrown out just in case there’s *an* invalid ballot.
I take this personally. When the Supreme Court stopped the absentee ballot count in the 2000 election, they stopped a count that included MY vote (I had just moved to California).
I can’t help but think of our already low voter turnout and why anyone actually interested in democracy (as opposed to oligarchy) would try to make it even lower. I think about other countries, where voting is required or where election day is a holiday or where people are automatically registered the second they become an adult. These countries don’t seem to have problems with voter fraud.
We need an updated Voting Rights Act, one that focuses not on race as the only thing officials might be taking into consideration–we need one that makes voting as popular and accessible and vibrant as it deserves to be.

I honestly didn’t think that The Supreme Court was going to go this way on the Hobby Lobby case. In what universe, after all, could my boss’s religion be imposed upon me? Why would we, who fear “the government being in our exam rooms with our doctors” allow our bosses to be there when we have our legs in the stirrups?

Nevermind that Hobby Lobby is inconsistent, allowing both male birth control and free viagra and investing in birth control products in their portfolios.

Nevermind that Hobby Lobby falls victim to the same logical fallacy that all anti-contraception/anti-abortion forces do: limiting access to birth control when access to birth control lowers abortion rates. These people hate, hate, hate abortion, but seem to hate–a) women’s access to baby-free sex, and b) logic–more.

Nevermind that, as many commentators have noted, this is only going through because the religion in question is Christianity. The Supreme Court previously denied applying the principle in question to Native American groups who wanted access to their traditional herbs in ceremonies. And, as Bill Maher noted, if this company were Muslim-owned, and they wanted the insurance plan to align with Sharia law . . .

Nevermind that the precedent set is dangerous in two ways. 1. The ruling opinion says that this is about what the employer “believes.” What if my boss believes that a woman’s body should be a temple in case she happens to get pregnant? After all,  many drugs could harm a fetus if they’re in a mother’s system. People shouldn’t conceive on depression medication or bipolar medication, after all. And, even if a woman doesn’t plan on getting pregnant, even if she’s on birth control, it can still happen. What if my employer believes even sillier things? What if he thinks my asthma medicine is an abortative? Since this is about his belief now, I guess my access to breathing is up to him.

2. This ruling can be applied widely–it’s not just about birth control. Some employers are already trying to get it to apply to their treatment of gay people, arguing that it’s against their religion to not discriminate. Decades ago, some employers argued that their religions allowed them to pay women less and to treat women differently. The Supreme Court told them no, but this newer religious freedom statute may allow it now. And, in terms of health care, some religions forbid blood transfusions, and some forbid any medication at all.

Let’s leave all that for now.

The upsetting aspect of this that isn’t being talked about enough is what the Hobby Lobby people and the majority decision said will be done about those women who do want birth control. You see, since it’s a horrible burden for Hobby Lobby to have birth control in its healthcare plan, the women or the government is supposed to figure out how to make sure women have access to a perfectly legal product that the United Nations and the WHO recognize as a basic human right.

Let’s say women should figure this out themselves. I know women who haven’t been on hormonal birth control due to its cost. (Insurance helps a lot.) An IUD can be hundreds of dollars. The pill, without any insurance, ranges from $37 to $162. Not all women, by the way, can just opt for the cheaper version. Our bodies are complicated–it often takes a long time to find the right pill. The wrong pill can cause BIG problems. And even if a woman can go with the cheaper version, sometimes $40 a month is a lot. When we think about the women who need this most–women of childbearing age on the margins–women who live (supporting themselves and often others) on or below (in the case of many undocumented women) the minimum wage–women who live on or below the poverty line–$40/month is sometimes not an option.

Let’s say the women can come up with the money. They buy and use the birth control. Where did that money come from? From their employer! Oh, no! Money from Hobby Lobby (HL) is going to birth control! It’s just instead of HL giving money to Kaiser and Kaiser giving access, HL gives the money to the woman, who gets her birth control . . .

Which brings up another problem. You see, when we receive health insurance from our employers, it’s not a gift. It’s part of our salary–part of our compensation package. We factor it in when deciding to take a job. (I moved to California because UCD, unlike schools in the South, offered healthcare to graduate student workers.) My paycheck includes information about my gross and net and also how much my organization puts into my healthcare. This month, for example, I paid $193 as my portion of insurance. UCD paid $1084.

Somewhere in all of that money is my birth control. Companies who refuse to allow birth control in their health care plans are thus not only denying women a basic human right & inserting their religion into the lives of their employees. They are also cheating their employees out of part of their pay. They are ignoring that these employees also pay into their insurance (and thus should be able to avail themselves of the whole plan). They are insuring that women who want to use birth control must pay the same amount for their insurance, but must also come up with $37-$162 (without, of course, any increase in pay to compensate for the loss in their payment package).

Unless, of course, the government subsidizes healthcare for these women, as HL and the court implied it might have to do. Now, where would that money come from? Taxes. Taxes on the woman who’s being cheated, taxes on me, who, as a “middle class” person, pays a very high tax rate. Taxes on corporations. Thus, HL would be paying for birth control again–just to the government instead of to the insurance company. Unless it, like many corporations, manages not to pay taxes.

And that’s another problem–a problem we as a country seem to be ignoring. Corporations keep shifting the burden of basic life expenses onto the rest of us.

Why, when a woman has access to insurance, should my taxes be required to grant her birth control?

Because corporations would rather I pay it. After all, we live in a world where many low-wage workers, many Walmart employees and fast food workers, have to also live on public assistance. They’re fighting a rise in the minimum wage, saying they can’t afford it.

My fellow taxpayers, they can afford it. We’re the ones who can’t. We’re the ones paying enormous taxes for “entitlements”–assistance to people who work, but who aren’t paid a living wage.

The Hobby Lobby decision is not just the furthering of the Christian-theocracy agenda in this country; it’s not just the start of a dangerous precedent; it’s the strenghtening of our corpocracy–of corporations shifting the basic burdens of payment onto everyone else.

And what do they say about this? One man I heard on NPR, who won’t be giving his female employees access to birth control, said that if the women didn’t like it, they could go work somewhere else.

Yup. And if she can’t find that job, maybe she can get some birth control through her welfare package. Problem solved.

Usually, I can understand why the other side is doing what it’s doing, even if I don’t agree.

I understand that pro-lifers put the life of a fetus above everything else, even above the fact that the outlawing of abortion has historically been correlated with higher rates of abortion. I don’t think most pro-lifers are evil (the ones who would murder for it are)–I just wish they would put their energy into assuring that women have access to good birth control and sex education and that the babies who are born are born with good health care etc., since I find it SO problematic when lifers are fine with letting babies, but not fetuses, die.

I get the fiscal libertarian view, which is: “this is my money, don’t touch it. You and your child can go die in that ditch, there, no–that’s my ditch–THAT ditch over there–the one off my property.” I do think it’s evil, but I get it.

I get why the Republican leadership are against Obamacare. It’s because they’re on the side of business. They want the insurance company to have the freedom to spend as much of their profit on their shareholders and paperwork as they want (Obama wants them to use it on patients). They want the insurance company to have the freedom to not insure me, to turn me down for procedures, to drop me when I get too expensive. They tell me they don’t want the government to get between me and my doctor–that’s the insurance company’s job!!! I get it.

But I don’t get the shut down.

The law passed.

We elected the guy. Twice.

When W got elected the second time (the first time, really), he said he had a mandate and that he was going to use it.

Republicans ignored the law and the mandate and sued, and the Supreme Court said sorry, and so here we are.

I’m trying to imagine applying this logic to my life. There’s A bill I don’t want to pay. So I don’t pay any of them. And I tell the people I owe money to that it’s what they want and that it’s for their own good. It’s for their freedom!

I think I’d get locked up. I would at least get sued and kicked out of my house and a bunch of my shit would stop working. Republicans are half complaining that national parks are closed and half crowing that only the national parks are closed (not true–lots of things are affected–but they haven’t decided on just one message here).

And I can’t get my head around it. When I hear people say we need to find a compromise with these people, I scream, “No, we don’t!” or “What compromise?”

And this is how America becomes divided.