JZ! Is also attending. You might want to coordinate.

I do want. Thanks!

Awesome, shrift & JZ! My rep is also having a healthcare town hall on Saturday, but I am not going because I have dog agility class.

They finally put up DJT's official portrait in our office today (ptuie). Even without the person who is the subject, it's a horrible portrait. He's got a godawful glower, and he's orange, and it's much more staged-looking. In fact, it looks rather cheaply photoshopped. Bleah.

I shall be walking the long way around to avoid seeing it.

Also, I want to thank everyone who offered me some ACA questions to ask. I meant to do that earlier, but work was chaotic and so was politics.

There's something that has made me uneasy about politics now. I mean aside from the obvious. It's that I get this feeling that conservative reps are, well, kinda villains. I find that really unsettling and it makes me question myself. Am I just becoming blindly partisan?

It's like every time there's an issue with assisting people it's always, let's assist less or not at all. Whenever the issue is civil rights, it's let's restrict them. Whenever it's the environment, it's let's allow more pollution. It's never, let's work out a better solution, it's always less assistance is better, expanding civil rights is bad, less restrictions on polluting is always better somehow.

I know conservatives and they aren't bad people. So why do the political conservatives always seem to be on the wrong side of history?

So why do the political conservatives always seem to be on the wrong side of history?

And why do they react with so much anger when history is discussed? My experience has seen people that were all about getting rid of the horrible restrictions on pollution that are killing our industry, except the plant next to my playground. Hatred for all 'those people', except those I happen to have worked with or family, and they are exceptions. Screw the homeless or disabled, except when it is this exception or that, generally close to home. The inability to see beyond their own backyard. eta: and of course love the guns until their loved one is shot

But, then again I have disowned many friends and family recently because I just can't deal with the hypocrisy anymore. My circle is smaller and I am building my walls. I just can't anymore.

There's also this other thing that I find baffling. There's like this fiction that the economy exists outside the framework of the government. It's sort of like, if the government didn't exist then everything would be pretty much the same only there would be no taxes. Ergo, the government only steals money from the deserving to give to the lazy. But this is obviously not the case. Take away government, and it all comes tumbling down.

So why do the political conservatives always seem to be on the wrong side of history?

Since the election, they are like freaking cartoon villains. Like, if you wrote these characters in a movie, you'd be told they're too unrealistic, because no group of politicians can be that unified in their evil.

I know that, parents and brothers aside, my entire family voted Trump. And we're from MASSACHUSETTS, which is just insanity. I have a hard time talking to them now. We were never close, but I'm done. My mother is taking the the "just don't talk politics; don't let this divide you" stance, which I admire, but I just can't. I don't need people like that in my life.

And the GOP's new level of villainy is fully ridiculous. The fact that I just moved from being represented by Ed Markey and Elizabeth Warren to a state where I have to deal with Marco Rubio makes me sad.

In completely unrelated news, I bought a single-serve coffee machine and the instructions are very clear on using the cup you are going to use to pour water into the machine (which makes sense, size-wise), but apparently I missed the day in school where we learned how to pour water from a coffee mug without spilling it all over the kitchen counter. (I lived on a ship too long. I don't know how to adult.)

Gud - people are ignorant about how things really work #1.

Some are willfully ignorant, others, just uninterested.

#2 Then there are the pie in sky or naive libertarians. We shouldn't need government because everyone should just do what is right and good.

#3 Then there are the ingrained prejucides that completely blind people. These are the "we don't need social programs, laws for equality blah blah blah" people. They THINK things are equal, may even think they are slighted more than this or that minority/protected class. These people do not buy into systemic institutional bigotry. They do not believe that years of historical inequality and prejudice has a bearing on someone's chances today.

#4 There are the capitalists/politicians first. Everything is viewed from a "what will make money" and/or "what will get/keep me elected lens". Right for them only is in terms of these factors until something affects them VERY VERY directly.

A useful Chrome browser extension for these troubled times: [link]