Turn on your Gaslight...

I am going to tell a story that I am not proud of but I want to illustrate a point.

Back when I was married to my ex husband, we shared an email address.  Looking back it was another way he used to manipulate our relationship.  Keep in mind, I had my own personal email that I used regularly that I am guessing he never knew about but that is not the point of my story.

My ex decided that he needed to date someone/anyone other than his wife so he joined a dating site and he used our joint email as the contact point.  He posted a photo taken in our home office.

Imagine my surprise when I received an email on our joint account from someone wanting to date him!!  Surprise on many levels...1. that someone would want to date him and 2. that he would be stupid enough to use our joint email address!

Ah but my ex was stupid like a fox.

When confronted, he told me that it wasn't him in the photo (the one taken in our home office) and that I was imagining the email from the young woman who thought he was good relationship material.  For a split second I tried to reconcile what he was telling me to what I knew to be reality.  Then my rational brain kicked in and I immediately started the process of ending my marriage. 

gas·light

ˈɡaslīt/

verb

gerund or present participle: gaslighting 

1. manipulate (someone) by psychological means into questioning their own sanity. 

"in the first episode, Karen Valentine is being gaslighted by her husband

This is happening daily in and around Washington and what is scarier is that there are millions of people that are BELIEVING the ridiculousness they are being fed.

Now a skeptic or two would tell me that all politicians lie and I won't dispute that fact but 45 campaigned on a platform of NOT being a politician, of being different.  I didn't know at the time that different actually meant WORSE.

C'mon people, wake up!! What needs to happen before 45 supporters start asking questions?  Millions of people in this country are currently being played for fools and the stakes are higher than the end of a marriage.

217

217 members of the House of Representatives voted for the AHCA otherwise known as Trumpdoesn'tcare today.  Then 45 held a victory rally at the White House and a bunch of smug, mostly white men gleefully celebrated their victory.  Assholes one and all.

For 7 years Republicans have bitched about Obamacare.  Every bad thing that has happened over that time has been blamed on Obamacare.  Hell,Republicans blamed Obamacare for the stunning defeat a few weeks ago when they didn't even bring their first draft for a vote.

For 7 years, it was easier to bitch about Obamacare that actually try and create a better program for the people Congress is sworn to serve.  Social Security was an imperfect program when it was created; changes have been made over the years.  Changes could have (and should have) been made to Obamacare.  But you have members of Congress who are much too into serving themselves and the rich folks that help get them elected and they do not remember that there are millions of people in the US that are NOT wealthy white men

So to the 217 members of the House of Representatives...

I hope you never get Non Hodgkins Lymphoma as a 47th birthday present.
I hope you, or your wife, or your sister doesn't get metastatic breast cancer in your 30s and have to worry about not seeing your/their children grow up.
I hope you never have a child born with a heart defect.
I hope you never have a child born prematurely
I hope you never get a chronic disease
I hope you never suffer a stroke and survive
I hope you never suffer a traumatic brain injury
I hope you, or your wife never has to have a C-section
I hope you never get diabetes.
I hope your daughter is never a victim of rape or domestic violence.
I hope you never get colon cancer, pancreatic cancer, brain cancer, bone cancer, throat cancer...
I hope you or your wife/duaghter/sister never gets post partum depression
I hope you never have PTSD
I hope you never never need an organ transplant
I hope you never get older


I hope you're proud of how smug and self serving you looked at the victory party at the White House today.
I hope one day you wake up and see how morally bankrupt you are
I hope you're thinking about what to say about the portion of the 24 million people you're going to dump from health insurance coverage
I hope you're not too comfortable in your seat in the House