Is your head spinning? Feel like you’re under siege, being pummeled by such a barrage of attacks that you don’t know where to turn or what to try to fend off first?
That’s what it’s felt like since Jan. 21.
Just about every program, law and policy to keep life, health, water, air, privacy (what’s left of that) is under threat.
Let me count the ways:
- Healthcare coverage. Yes, the ACA survived the GOP replace and replace debacle. That doesn’t mean the GOPers are done with trying to gut the ACA via HHS Sec. Tom Price implementing draconian regulations and .45 doing as much damage as he can with executive orders. Neither is Medicare or Medicaid out of the woods and GOPers will continue to dismantle both of those programs as much as possible.
- Enviromental protections. With a stroke of his pen, .45 waved goodbye to breathable air and unpolluted water by nullifying the Clean Power Plan, which would have closed hundreds of coal-fired power plants, halted construction of new plants, and replacing them with renewable energy sources.
- Privacy — or what’s left of it. The current White House occupant is expected to sign a bill passed by Congress that will throw out broadband-privacy rules the FCC passed last year, designed to prevent internet service providers from selling customers’ (our) personal data (such as your web-browsing history, Social Security number and information pertaining to our health and our children) to advertisers and other companies without our consent.
- Net Neutrality. Also, about to go the route of privacy.
- SCOTUS. Nominating a man to the U.S. Supreme Court who would all but put women in burkas and ensure that corpotuses have ever louder voices than The People. (No, corporations are NOT people.)
- Human rights. More than half of the American population would have even less control over and say about their reproductive decisions.(Where’s the logic in banning legal pregnancy termination, restricting healthcare coverage for contraception,
- PutinRussia. Oh the smoking guns. A new evermore appalling revelation every day. How can anyone keep up?
- And today, in Wisconsin, GOP legislators hope to pass a law that would allow guns for all, just about everywhere with:
- No Permit.
- No Background Check.
- No Training.
And would weaken rules prohibiting guns in schools, police stations, and mental health facilities.
Just how much more are these GOPers in NRA/gun nut pockets?
What’s so outrageous and maddening is that while legislat0rs and judges make and OK laws that allow this insane proliferation of guns, they exempt themselves. No guns in their office buildings, chambers, courthouses, courtrooms. That just shouldn’t be.
Just like everyone in this country should be entitled to the same healthcare coverage as the people who work for us — public servants like elected and appointed government officials — so should we all be afforded the same protection against guns.
I’ve left a lot out — just too much to try to cover.
Almost as overwhelming are all the protests, demonstrations, call to actions. You have only so much time to go to rallies, marches and meetings, to make phone calls and send emails, FAXes and postcards. (Whatever happened to the Ides of Trump, anyway?)
Call for an independent investigation into the Trump-Putin/Russia scandal.
Tell senators to vote NO on the Gorsuch Supreme Court confirmation.
Sign the petition opposing defunding Planned Parenthood, the NEA, public broadcasting, the EPA, and on and on.
How to choose?
And that doesn’t begin to cover the tsunami of emails asking for money.
Have you felt under fire, too? From what? How are you surviving?