What have any of those acts done? For one, I'm still alive and can go on living for a long time because of the ACA. And, my family doesn't have to go bankrupt to keep me alive. Plus, the ACA made my son's Spectrum disorder (ADHD) care possible – that's how school's fund it.
We must worry about Washington. We must worry about it from dog catcher to POTUS. Because, that mess starts at the local level. The way the GOP got everything so screwed up with gerrymandering is FROM the local level. They fucked it up from the ground up.
This isn't just about DC, and never has been — as the saying goes, "all politics is local." It's not just a "political argument" either. It is a call to action. Remember, people answering a call to action is why America voted against the bully (Trump) and for the boy with the stutter (Biden). Kindness won on that day. It needs to win on the local governance levels too; and it cannot if we refuse to see the difference and act accordingly.
You say "We do more in the underground…" From where do you think local political movers rise? They rise from local enclaves. Mike Johnson, the current Speaker, rose from bookkeeper for a crisis pregnancy center to 2nd in line to the presidency. Local political movers keep advancing to higher offices and greater power – all while a third of the citizenry are looking away and ceding ground to the monsters because "both sides."
You are making the exact arguments that let the conservative agenda of cruelty seize and cling to power. While you're busy ceding leadership, the cruel are carving the heart out of communities and the nation. We accomplish nothing if we cede ground to the monsters because we won't recognize the difference of those fighting the monsters – worse if we condemn them because they're fighting.
Finally, I too am a survivor of physical, mental, and sexual abuse — as well as marginalization for being part of an immigrant family. One of my sisters is a victim of acquaintance rape, like me. Another was a victim of violent rape. The other has been a victim of sexual harassment and sexual assault. I'm sorry you had to go through that too. But, people need to know the perfidy of the GOP agenda of cruelty, to know the ignorance in which it's founded that allows these dichotomies able to continue.
Humanitarianism is people thinking outside themselves and acting for the greater good of the marginalized and the victimized. It's not telling people who try to do that to sit down and shut up. Who is served if we stop speaking? If we watch the horrors and remain silent, who benefits? Who is thrives if we don't act?
Doing nothing is still acting. It's allowing the rise of what you do not want. Silences still speaks — hell, it screams. Silence chooses. Every choice we opt out of still chooses an outcome.
BTW, I did notify readers of what would follow in that "wall of trauma." It was clearly detailed: "The Politics of Cruelty: Nothing more accurate demonstrates the GOP’s agenda of cruelty. Republican cruelty is blatant and on display in their forced-birther perspectives on rape — what follows is a minute sampling of actual statements and policy actions Republicans have made about women."
