Just in Time for Halloween, the Republicans Cornered the Market on Hell

It’s been a hell of a week for civil society, the rule of law, women, the vulnerable among us, the qualities of compassion and empathy, and any hope we might have for narrowing economic inequality. As always, the Republicans, both elected and not, jumped on their high horses, grabbed their metaphorical lances, and brought hell to their fellow citizens. 

So far, none of them has pleaded that the devil made them do it, but one does have to wonder. 

Let’s make a little list of their transgressions, shall we?

1. Our right-wing Dept. of Health and Human Services, supported by the courts (through the opinion of two Republicans judges), blocked an immigrant teenager who is currently held in a detention center, from getting a legal abortion. Instead, they made sure she had anti-abortion counseling, an ultrasound and enough legal stalling to risk that she will be forced to give birth when the deadline for an abortion passes. 
2. Trump told a grieving widow of a black soldier, “her guy” "knew what he signed up for”. He promised another grieving father $25,000 for his loss, then didn’t send the check.
3. The Congress has passed a budget “framework” that will lead to their appalling tax cut proposal, which will further increase both economic inequality and the national debt.
4. Betsy DeVos, the incompetent idealogue who runs the Dept. of Education, has gone after regulations that support students with disabilities.
5. Trump continued his full-blown attack on the ACA and the less fortunate among us who rely on it for health care coverage.

There was more …. but this, from the Republican electorate, took the cake:

"Many Trump voters who got hurricane relief in Texas aren’t sure Puerto Ricans should”, declared a headline from the Washington Post.

And why would this be? Well, it seems only some of us humans are actually deserving of help.

“Guess what? There’s a big chunk of the population that lives without electricity all the time,” Ramirez said, saying she was sharing the experiences of a friend who has family on the island. 

Hogg, 76, nodded his head in agreement: “They never had it. Never had it.” 

“They don’t live deprived, because it’s a beautiful environment,” she continued. “The weather is nice, the climate is good most of the time, so it’s different from here . . . It works there because of the climate. It wouldn’t work here.” 

About 96 percent of Puerto Rico’s electricity customers had service before Maria made landfall, according to federal data; many of the rest had no power because of Hurricane Irma two weeks earlier.

Sounds an awful lot like "Those slaves sure had it good! They had free room and board and good weather to work in!" Several voters interviewed, made sure to pledge their continued devotion to the president and their resolve to elect him again. Their opinions were clear: People, even those in the mainlaind U.S. who have recently suffered, have themselves to blame if they couldn’t afford flood insurance, had no resources to pull themselves through, or by implication, were the wrong color. When one woman suggested that Puerto Ricans should move to the mainland where there was better infrastructure, her husband countered that they should stay right where they were and “fix their own country up”.

The callousness, the denial of government’s legitimate role to help its suffering citizens, the enforcement of religious beliefs on all when others may not share them, is a stark reminder of what the last election exposed and legitimized. A significant number of our fellow citizens are unfeeling, brutal defenders of the belief that they are better than “those people”, that there is a bright line between the deserving (them) and the ones who aren’t. They are compelled to ensure that the rest of us know which side of the line we live on; their commitment to community extends only to those who live in the red zone, not the blue one. And that zone is defined not by your state but by your worthiness as a person. And a whole hell of a lot of us are not worthy.

If I believed in hell, I’d be praying hard that the whole lot of them end up there. They are sure willing to assign the rest of us to perdition, both here on earth or in some make believe world below our feet. And just like the Borg, they are doing their best to ensure that "Resistance is futile".