July 4, 2025, the Darkest Day in the Modern Era (USA)
Today, Trump's Big Beautiful Bill has formally passed both houses and will be signed into law tomorrow. To me, this will be the darkest day in our history short of the civil war. I say this because of the cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and the tax supports to what we Americans commonly know as Obama Care. Over $1 trillion will be cut from Medicaid and Medicare. Proponents claim it is aimed to cut fraud, waste and abuse; but, in the end, it will throw close to 12 million people off insurance rolls. With them losing their insurance, I fear it will mean many will end up dying. On top of this, the subsidies that paid for Obama Care insurance will end. People will find their insurance rates increase as much as 75%. I think it will cause many people to drop their insurance all together putting them and their families at great risk.
How will it affect my local area? I drive elderly people to their doctor appointments. I can see many of them losing programs they need to live. I am thinking of one couple. Both are strong Trump supporters. Anytime I pick them up, the husband tries to engage me in a political discussion. Up to now, I avoid it. His wife is severely disabled. We pick them up at least twice a week for her to go to physical therapy. I also believe they depend on SNAP food assistance. This too is being cut. How will they be able to survive? I hate to think what could happen.
There are two hospitals in my county. Four professional nursing homes. A number of family living facilities. The one hospital came close to eliminating its birthing center last year, but county residents convinced them to keep it going. The other hospital supports Washington State University and a growing elderly population because people like to retire near a university. It will likely survive, but I can see them reducing their services. The nursing homes will be severely impacted. Many nursing home residents depend on Medicaid to pay for services. What are they going to do when the funds are cut?
Tomorrow will be the beginning of a nightmare.
Up to tomorrow, I have proudly displayed my American Flag on the Fourth--We Americans do tend to go overboard on this. Tomorrow, though, I am going to keep it in the closet.
How are other Americans reacting to this?
How will it affect my local area? I drive elderly people to their doctor appointments. I can see many of them losing programs they need to live. I am thinking of one couple. Both are strong Trump supporters. Anytime I pick them up, the husband tries to engage me in a political discussion. Up to now, I avoid it. His wife is severely disabled. We pick them up at least twice a week for her to go to physical therapy. I also believe they depend on SNAP food assistance. This too is being cut. How will they be able to survive? I hate to think what could happen.
There are two hospitals in my county. Four professional nursing homes. A number of family living facilities. The one hospital came close to eliminating its birthing center last year, but county residents convinced them to keep it going. The other hospital supports Washington State University and a growing elderly population because people like to retire near a university. It will likely survive, but I can see them reducing their services. The nursing homes will be severely impacted. Many nursing home residents depend on Medicaid to pay for services. What are they going to do when the funds are cut?
Tomorrow will be the beginning of a nightmare.
Up to tomorrow, I have proudly displayed my American Flag on the Fourth--We Americans do tend to go overboard on this. Tomorrow, though, I am going to keep it in the closet.
How are other Americans reacting to this?
Comments
Practically speaking, my hope is in 1) God and 2) the court system to tie this up in red tape to the point where we can survive. Please, God...
My personal forecast is that I will have an increased amount of shitty paperwork as our vulnerable people get thrown out of various programs (why yes, this DOES happen without reason, and it takes roughly 40 hours per family to get them reinstated just because somebody somewhere was trying to reach a quota of de-enrollments when they're actually still eligible!). Guess who has to do the 40 hours? Grrrrrrrrrr.
I also forecast that those for whom we CANNOT secure re-enrollment will seek emergency help from the church--which is why we maintain a pastor's emergency fund stocked by those who feel their hearts leading them that way, and who believe the pastor will handle the money (pitifully little of it!) appropriately. Two of those who contribute do it by working extra jobs, or parts of jobs. So far it's been used to buy dentures for someone who couldn't eat well without them, and since the free/cheap dental clinic closed in the pandemic, there's been no affordable alternative for the poor. There IS a food pantry, so that's at least partially handled--but we had a man a while back who got 700 dollars in assistance monthly and was expected on that amount to handle rent of 500 monthly plus utilities (probably 300) plus food, plus all other necessities... You see why the fund is necessary. And pitifully inadequate.
Still, we can't lay down and die. So we pray. And we work on.
Vote Republican again.
Not if they are dead.
Yeah, I know. I was more commenting on the imperviousness of certain segments of the US electorate to the reality of Trump's policies. And riffing on a joke I used to hear occassionally back in Edmonton...
A: Votes Conservative again.
But to take the point in a more serious direction, I have wondered to what extent the sometimes opaque nature of the connection between Trump's cuts and their baleful effects has insulated him from criticism. If eg. a given nursing home stays open but suffers staff shortages, that might not be something that people notice in the same way that they would notice an outright closure.
My understanding is that during the DOGE cuts, Trump and Musk deliberately avoided slashing direct payments to individuals, presumably because people would feel that directly.
But surely trump told us that the dead people voted Democratic last time?
Especially if they were in Chicago.
From the POV of exploiting all this for partisan gain against the Republicans, the opposition needs to just blame all the austerity going forward on Trump directly. Most of it will be, and a good chunk of the state-level stuff will be carried out by Republican governors who agree with Trump's overall economic philosophy.
You might very well be right. Depends on how much they're eager and how much they're evil/smart. Some of my more pessimistic friends are expecting an explosion of Dem wins in the midterms and then not much in the way of the predicted disaster. Dems will then avert as much of the disaster as possible. The lack of disaster is then predicted to make people vote Red. I hope not.
I don't admire Republicans for much, but their proven ability to manipulate people to vote against their own self interest is really impressive.
I will observe that, so far, many of the maximalist disaster scenarios predicted by Democrats have failed to materialize, eg. DOGE causing plane crashes and nuclear hazards; tariffs creating Weimar 2 by early summer, Iran bombing raising the price oil etc.
But are your pessimistic friends skeptical about a forthcoming "disaster" because they think the victorious Dems of 2026 will be smart enough to prevent one, or just because a disaster like that was never gonna happen anyway?
That said, kinda like climate change, it's already happening if you're the sort to pay close attention to the small things. We've had some kids die of measles in America because of lax vaccination even under current practices. RFK says he'll make it worse. It'll get worse. Just takes time.
Though...what's 1/1000? Some will catch measles, and a few will die, predictably. It's probably not your problem, no? Just someone else's kid. And some parents can be persuaded that it's God's will when a random catastrophe happens. Nothing to be done. Easier than accepting personal responsibility.
I know this because I also grew up in the kind of place where an awful lot of people get cancer and nobody wonders why. Pray and hope and figure it's God's will.
So maybe it'll be like that. Immigrants just disappear into concentration camps and...well, they just disappear, and if they're not your people, then it's not your problem, right? Everyone looks to their own house and maybe their literal next door neighbor's. Maybe. If they suffer, they must've deserved it for some vague reason that nobody wants to think too hard about, just look down and pray.
Frogs don't really boil like the saying says they do, but I think that the metaphor does apply to human politics.
FWIW, I'm a Christian and I pray, pardon my caricaturing of some theological types. I'm not thinking of anyone here. And I'm definitely being a bit mean about it.
I was assuming that the cuts would play themselves out differently from state to state or even district to district(eg. layoffs here, total closures there), thus varying the responses of the opposition groups in the respective jurisdictions. If you're saying otherwise, I'm happy to concede that the results of the cuts may be more uniform and more ironclad than I had been foretelling.
I will observe that the aforementioned Van Orden(see my hidden text
above) seems to think it's possible to push policies at the state level that could ameliorate the impact of the OBBB in Wisconsin. Though I'll admit it's possible he knows his voters are totally doomed and is now like the arsonist's henchman trying to look like he's putting out the fire.
And apart from the religious kookery...
I can't imagine I'm the only Gen X Plusser here whose default reaction to these outbreaks is something like "Eh, what's the big deal? I got mumps, measles, rubella AND chicken pox as a kid, and the worst that happened was a week's holiday from school each time, but now it gets reported in the NEWS??"
Now, obviously, that's not the rational opinion to hold, 'cuz it's just dumb luck that I didn't end up with a fatal complication one of those times, and kids today are damned lucky to have the vaccines and it's totally illogical that anyone would wanna go back to the bad old days. But I personally never knew anyone who died of a childhood virus pre-vaccine, even though it did happen, so a lotta low-info people will find it easy to be equally whatevs about it today.
I know someone who's deaf because of measles. She's my mother's age. It was fun watching her talk to another guy I know online who was like "Yeah, measles wasn't a big deal, we all got it, hur hur hur..."
And I've read stories of people who lost children. One famous example is Roald Dahl, guy who wrote Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. You can look that one up online.
With viral infections, some people get unlucky. Polio was like that too, I've read. A lot of cases are mild, a few cases end up putting people into iron lungs or killing them outright.
Oh yeah, speaking of anecdotes...I won't get into detail but let's say I work at a facility for adults with disabilities, and let's say I have observed that you really, really, really do not want to fuck around with viral meningitis.
Measles is an ancient, extremely contagious, and very well researched virus. The odds of dying per infection are something like 1/1,000. I have this from multiple sources. It just depends on where the virus goes inside of your body. Akin to meningitis, if the infection spreads to the meninges, the space around your brain, the ensuing inflammation that your body uses to "fight" the virus will lead to terrible fever spikes and swelling that can cause permanent brain damage, sometimes brain death.
If you weren't aware that, welp, now you are.
I've spent a lot of time around disability, injury, and hurt. And I have seen sometimes the way people just paper over these things with denial and whatnot and it grieves me because it's kind of insulting to the victims and the sheer cost of taking care of them, even if it's kinda my job.
And that ties into why I don't appreciate people saying "Well, who cares if Medicaid gets cut? Why is that a catastrophe? I'm not disabled..."
Thanks for nothing, <unprintable>. You do know--or don't you?--that the large cities in the Red States tend to swing blue?
We'll have plenty of suffering here, all right, without you wishing more of it on me and mine.
Actually, I'll add a bit to that one. Cuz I got a unique little context:
Exhibit A
That's where I'm from, Cumberland environs more specifically. Maryland is a blue state. Pennsylvania is a purple state tilting red whose D Senator is the biggest embarrassment to democrats since I don't know when. West Virginia is the crankiest red state you've ever seen. We call this the "tri-state area." Politically, it's generally ignored, but it's absolutely fascinating because it exists on different political borders (Union/Confederate, Rust Belt/Coal Country, Appalachia/Midwest.) There's even a university town to stir things up, where I went to high school.
But the region of Maryland I'm from is pretty bloody red. And because of my social circles I know a lot of blue types in nearby West Virginia and Pennsylvania. And I am just not happy to throw all of my holler-lovin' friends under a bus because they have the misfortune to be surrounded by bunch of propaganda-infested "deplorables."*
Also, remember that Illinois may be a blue state, but once you get a certain amount south, it's basically Indiana's clone. And Indiana is where Mike Pence hailed from.
I understand the convenience of teams when it comes to picking sides and getting people to form lines, but at this rate we're going to be getting people killed, and I don't think the spite is improving anything.
As my prior post may indicate, I am indeed irate, but I try not to descend into straight-up hate.
* For lack of a more...polite...term.
Yeah, I agree, and the 1/1000th number sounds quite plausible, probably even familiar. Not to mention birth defects from rubella, sterility from mumps etc. There's a reason I described my default position as "not...rational".
With the attitude I'm thinking of in regards to vaccines, it's not so much that they think that only other people will get sick, but that NOBODY will get sick, because like me until probably my late 20s/early 30s, they have simply never seen or heard any substantial reporting of measles outbreaks.
(Granted, with the people who think that vaccines actually HARM us physically, they're not really apathetic, but instead they are extremely concerned, but about the wrong thing.)
But it is going to come for us all. It just comes for some people an awful lot earlier than others.
And other people are scared of the entirely wrong things for complicated reasons. The webs of rationalizations run deep. Oh, if I just had an intellectual machete to go along with that metaphorical clue bat...
This gets into the question of whether jurisdictions where the Rational Majority have prevailed are obligated to assist those living in jurisdictions where the Irrational Majority have prevailed, on the grounds that some of those people might be members of their jurisdiction's Rational Minority, who never wanted the harmful policies to begin with and thus should not have to suffer from them.
Or do we just say "Sorry, but your fellow citizens voted for those policies, and democracy means you have to go along with what the majority want"?
Part of the problem I would see is that if eg. people in Oregon are supposed to keep paying taxes on the grounds that blue-leaning Philadelphians in Pennsylvania need their help, a lot of that tax money is still gonna to the more, shall we say, rustic regions of Pennsylvania, where people consciously voted for the bad policies, but are now getting bailed out by states where most people had the foresight to reject those policies.
I assume you heard him complaining during the OBBB debate, about how it was all keeping him from his beach holiday?
Sorry, but what does "holler-lovin'" mean? Was that a spellcheck run amuck?
Ideally we will sigh and bail out those who voted wrongly simply because they are /will be human beings in need, like all of us. But if that isn’t enough to inspire compassion, maybe contemplating the fact that all states are somewhat mixed might help. If that doesn’t help, considering the state of a country even further divided by hate on both sides might… no?
Never mind. I have stuff to get on with elsewhere. Do as you like.