I’m running out of words to describe the sheer cruelty of the Trump Administration. As detailed in this piece in the Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/…the Trump administration seeks to further shred the fragile safety nets that keep so many poor people from descending into dire poverty. This includes old and disabled people, sick people and the working poor not to mention children.
It’s appalling to me that modern day Americans exhibit this degree of brutality. At the same time their seek huge tax cuts for rich people and corporations that prey on the American people they will undoubtedly condemn many of America’s most vulnerable citizens to desperate struggle.
Medicaid is an absolute godsend. Without it, nursing home care would be out of reach of countless seniors and their families. Without Medicaid, disabled people and the very ill who’ve decimated their savings will simply, I guess, go without treatment.
I’m caring for my terminally ill life partner. Cancer will drain your savings account in no time. Medicare alone can’t cover all the bills.
One month’s supply of one of his drugs costs thousands of dollars. Without Medicaid I guess he’d have to slash his wrists, or just lie down and die in terrible pain — I weep to think of it. The struggle is brutal as it is. And to think of the hunger that many old people and children confront — that I’ve confronted in my own life and wouldn’t wish on a dog — and to think that our President and his minions are deliberately setting about to harm so many people who struggle with illness, disability, or plain old lousy pay that doesn’t cover things like food, health care and rent is almost beyond endurance!
I have no doubt that many fragile elderly people would suffer terribly without skilled, compassionate care — their families — children already in their sixties and seventies and possibly infirm themselves — breaking under the weight and unable to produce or enjoy the fruits of their own long years of labor. And what of disabled people, children, what of working people who simply can’t afford basic necessities?
Some of the hardest work pays the least. When people are mocked for lacking wealth it saps our dignity, it degrades us as a people. When a president’s budget cuts education, health care, destroys scientific research, decimates education and the arts and destroys safety nets it is a deliberate attack on the people. It is a deliberate attempt to harm us.
Make no mistake — this is class warfare.
Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security are the mark of a civilized, compassionate society that truly values its citizens. As it is these programs are skimpy. But along with other regrettably slim support programs they are vastly better than nothing.
You know, I’d always taken for granted that each life has value, that each bird, tree, mouse and person on this earth has value, intrinsic value, and should be cherished and respected — but then I heard Mitt Romney’s 47% speech.
I started at that moment to question my own value. When our own leaders create budgets that reduce us merely to our supposed economic value, to our monetary worth alone, they reduce us to to a lesser and disposable status.
This should never happen in a civilized society — especially when wealth is rewarded simply for being wealth, when inherited wealth is a passport to a valued existence regardless of the intrinsic worth or accomplishment of the heir; when capital gains are worth more than labor; when a rich person is “worth” more than a poor one we have no democracy.
People have value. We are not a reflection of our hourly rate or what we produce in terms of profit for a corporation. We shouldn’t stand for this.
My mother taught me, “From each what he has to offer, to each what he needs.”
Amen.