The GOP Is Trying to Kill You

[portlander23]

The GOP Is Trying to Kill You
Kate Aronoff
In These Times

Take the Republican Party’s commitment to repeal the Affordable Care Act, which it is already making moves toward. If it succeeds, 36,000 people could die every year. Proposed cuts to Medicare and Medicaid could drive that figure up even higher, with the burden put disproportionately on poor people and people of color. The elderly would be particularly hard-hit, especially if Republicans succeed in cutting and/or privatizing Social Security.

Plenty more natural disasters could be coming down the pipeline as well. According to the World Health Organization, climate change is expected to cause approximately 250,000 additional deaths per year, worldwide, between 2030 and 2050. Already, an estimated 400,000 die per year from warming-related causes, not to mention the millions forced to flee places like Syria, where climate change related drought has exacerbated the ongoing conflict. Trump’s Cabinet picks, meanwhile, are eager to gut the Environmental Protection Agency from within and pull out of the Paris Agreement. Secretary of State hopeful and former ExxonMobil CEO Rex Tillerson is poised to open the floodgates to unprecedented levels of fossil fuel extraction. Lisa Murkowski, Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee chairman, is already plotting ways to peel back Obama-era bans on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic Oceans. As scientists have been saying for years, that’s the exact opposite of what is needed to cap warming at levels that are anything other than catastrophic.

Obviously, this list is incomplete, and doesn’t factor in potential expansions in mass incarceration, the erosion of labor protections, new wars, and—of course—the threat of nuclear annihilation (to name just a few.) But with these and other measures, it’s clear that the GOP, in no uncertain terms, is trying to kill you.

[flamingdem]

1. The Repigs think you are taking up space

on their planet. Expect to be ignored.

[NightWatcher]

2. Duh, and poor people who survive on 100% govt assistance voted them in

They are cutting their own damn throats because they've bought into decades of lies about how terrible things like education, unions, and critical thinking are.

Once you've rejected common sense and critical thinking (both are the major enemy of organized religion), you are done for. It's similar to programming the self preservation instinct out of a species. And no ark built by a 500 year old man is going to save any of them this time.

[jodymarie aimee]

4. take exception to the poor people part

Work with disabled and poor and elderly and survive on 100% assistance is not what you seem to think it is. $10grand a year on SSDI, FoodStamps of $16 a month. It is true some are stupid, but no, my people did not vote Trump.

[NightWatcher]

6. I've no fault with people on assistance

I was on it for 3 years until they kicked me off due to diseases and conditions that I still have.

That said, Red States are full of neighborhoods where everyone is on some type of assistance. Hundreds of thousands of people who depend on the government to survive voted for people who will cut their assistance.

I'm reminded of a quote from LBJ. "I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it," he said. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

These poor people think that they are going to be sticking it to someone else, but in reality they are screwing themselves.

[colsohlibgal]

3. Really

They are rabidly pro life until you are born. After that that they couldn't care less.

[Binkie The Clown]

5. So basically, the Republicans are more dangerous than terrorists, as far as body count goes. n/t