I have very few friends anymore who are Trump supporters. That’s deliberate. Trump and his followers are generally bad for my mental health. I have enough anxiety for my entire family – I don’t need to add more on top of it. I have concerns about the ACA going away for a number of reasons, not the least of which is my son, who is on the autism spectrum, also has Crohns Disease and gets infusions of Remicaide every 8 weeks to keep it in remission. The hospital bills our insurance company $15,000 for each of those infusions. He’ll never have a “good job” that gives him health insurance and now he has a pre-existing condition. Right now he works in McDonald’s. He can stay on our insurance through age 26 and then we will see. He might be able to remain on our insurance due to his disability, but, if not, the state has an insurance pool under the ACA. If that goes away, I don’t know what we’ll do.

A friend of mine posted this yesterday:

I knew she didn’t want discussion. I usually don’t reply to posts like this on other people’s pages because it doesn’t end well. Yesterday, though, facing the confirmation of a Supreme Court judge that will likely decimate the law in this country, I was ticked. I made the comment that it wasn’t true but I didn’t think she really wanted a discussion. To my amazement, she followed up the above post with this comment:

Seriously? She claims to feel this way and yet states there is no difference between the parties?

The taxation issue galls me. I hear variations on that all the time – “taxation is theft” or “Taxation is slavery.” Well, it’s been around for thousands of years. Good luck finding a “free” country where there is no taxation. It’s amazing how people think the things they need (like roads) can be paid for with no tax money. What it usually comes down to is “I only believe the things I want should be paid for with tax dollars, everyone else’s wants and needs are inconsequential.”

The rest of it, though…

She laid out right there the entire difference between the two political Parties we have in this country while still denying there was a difference. I called her on it, as one can see, but she didn’t want a discussion as I first figured. Nope. she’s got her assumptions and has put a lid on it and isn’t going to change them.

Changing your opinion when presented with new information is hard for some people. In this day and age it shouldn’t be. I do believe some people don’t want to continue growing in their lives, that’s why they dig in their heels and deny facts when presented with new information, rather than reconsider their position. Is there any debate at this point the different world we’d have if Hillary Clinton was our President? We would not have 3 conservative judges added to to Supreme Court. A woman’s right to choose would not be in danger. We would have a Justice Department that defended the ACA. We would have a Justice Department that filed federal charges against racists when states sanctioned their actions. We wouldn’t be worried about gay marriage and gay rights being rolled back. We would be working harder on human issues and keeping religion out of the classroom.

At the same time, I think with the pandemic she would have had an uphill battle to get re-elected. I think a mask mandate would still have been made political and there would still be the conspiracy theorists and deniers, although maybe not as bad with a President who didn’t feed into the nonsense. I think shutting down people’s businesses would have an adverse effect. There would have been battles about stimuluses regardless, and unless you are going to keep supporting people they have to be able to support themselves.

“Both parties are equal” gives people an excuse not to think and to be dismissive of any argument anyone makes. Even though I vote Democrat, I know they are far from perfect and don’t mind pointing out things I don’t like. At the same time, at least I know they see people as human beings and want to give everyone the same, level playing field in life, no matter their race, gender, sexuality, or beliefs.