Social Security and Me

It was on this day in 1935 that Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Social Security Act into law.  It was a part of his New Deal, which brought sweeping changes to how federal government dealt with its citizens.  People were suffering dreadfully during the Great Depression and these programs saved many from homelessness and starvation.  My mother was just 5 years old then so, of course, I have no memory of it.  But Heather Cox Richard’s Letter From An American provides a great background on how and why Social Security came about.

I started working full time right out of high school in 1973.  I thought I’d be making an awesome check, so I was pretty taken aback when I saw how much I actually made after federal and states taxes and whatever this “FICA” was.  I wasn’t overly bothered by it, however.  I was still living at home and although I gave my parents part of my salary, I still had a lot left over for myself.  When I lived on my own, though, I did grumble a bit.  I was young; what did I need Social Security for?

I learned over the years that I am ever so grateful for it.  By paying into Social Security, I was guaranteed at least a small monthly income when I retired.  Over the years, I learned that it was beneficial in so many other ways.

My first husband died in 2001 when he was only 40.  Our three kids were 14, 12 and 9 at the time.  Suddenly, half our income was gone and so was our health care coverage.  I was working as a freelance interpreter and while I had taxes and FICA withdrawn, I had no other benefits.  Social Security pays a ridiculous, almost insulting, sum of $255 to a surviving spouse.  I learned, though, that the money Rich had put into Social Security would be available to support our dependent children until they were 18.

What a relief!  I could continue to keep our home and get whatever the kids needed:  food, clothes, school supplies and expenses, and—most important of all—health care coverage.  If not for survivors’ benefits from Social Security, I shudder to think what would have happened to us.

I became disabled and unable to work.  I applied for disability benefits and was awarded on my second attempt.  Again, without that benefit, I don’t know what would have happened trying to survive with just the kids’ benefits.  They were aging out of them too.  I was too young to retire so SSD was a life saver for me.

Those benefits came because I’d contributed hard earned money into the Social Security account.

For some stupid reason, Repubs and now Rethugs/GQP have always viewed Social Security as an “entitlement” program.  No, it is NOT an entitlement program.  That fund, which is constantly raided by the Repubs, comes from money contributed by workers all over this country.  It is OUR money.

Now the Rethugs and GQP are making noise about gutting Social Security if they get control of Congress again.  That can’t stand.

Too many seniors support them, and I cannot for the life of me understand why.  Part of it, I know, is because of denial.  “That’ll never happen,” they say.  Well, we thought Roe v. Wade couldn’t be overturned and it was.  We didn’t think the Civil Rights Act would be gutted and it has.  Nothing is impossible with the GQP/Rethug legislators and Supreme Court.

My mind is boggled because these seniors were activists and protesters in the ‘60s and ‘70s.  Well, I know not all were but many were.  Now they all seem to be on the front porch, rocking in their chairs, and placidly watching the world go by.  It’s really past time for seniors to speak up and say forcefully, “Hands off our social security!”

I am retired now.  I don’t want the hassle of having to beg for my money from Congress every year.  Even if Ted and I are “grandfathered” in when the Thugs take away Social Security, there are still my adult children and growing grandchildren to worry about.  I will fight the Thugs every step of the way and hope and pray other seniors wake TF up and get involved.

 

White "Christian" Nationalists

Yesterday I read an article by CNN called “An ‘Imposter Christianity Is Threatening American Democracy.” https://www.cnn.com/2022/07/24/us/white-christian-nationalism-blake-cec/index.html I was very upset by it because white “Christian” Nationalists are hijacking and abusing what it means to be a Christian.  To be Christian, it means one follows the teachings of Jesus Christ. 

These white “Christian” Nationalists do NOT follow his teachings.  They are more obsessed with the Old Testament and Revelation.  The Old Testament is important in that it gives us a history of the Jewish people, the Ten Commandments, and points in many verses to the coming of Jesus.  People who are not Christian believe that a Savior will come someday.  Christians believe that Jesus will come again. Faux Christian Nationalists think Jesus will return as a general leading their violent army,

Meanwhile, what are Jesus’ teachings that we’re supposed to live by if we are really Christian?  To love God foremost but to also love our neighbors as we love ourselves.  There are no ifs, ands or buts when it comes to the color of our skins, our sexual preferences or gender identities, our poverty or homelessness, or physical/mental challenges.  So: by loving one another, we have empathy toward each other.  We care for each other.  Translate that to universal health care, adequate housing, feeding hungry people, looking after the sick/elderly and so on.

But these white “Christian” nationalists don’t believe in those things and actively campaign against anything that would provide assistance to anyone in need – who isn’t a White Anglo Saxon Protestant (WASP).  There’s been a lot of admiration for one of the dictators they admire, Viktor Orban in Hungary that doesn’t want to “mix blood”.  These faux Christians in this country would like to get rid of anyone of color to make the US a white-only country.  After that, they’d probably work on getting rid of Catholics and Jewish people too.  The insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6^th were made up of a large number of these fake Christians and they almost succeeded in their coup attempt.

They’re suffering from some major incorrect beliefs.  Chief among them is that they believe America is a Christian nation.  They think the Founding Fathers were evangelicals and that God intended a special role for America.  Where did they get that idea?  Some who wrote the Constitution were Christian, it’s true, but they weren’t evangelicals.  Many of the Founding Fathers were NOT Christian.  There’s no mention of the Bible or the Ten Commandments in the Constitution.  Maybe these white nationalists need to sit down and read it.  Better yet, they need some real history lessons about America.

The article says that the Jesus white Christian nationalists follow is from Revelation.  I am not as familiar with Revelation because I don’t like it.  It has a violent, warrior Jesus, much like the bloodthirsty insurrectionists we saw at the Capitol.  If we get to the point where we have an angry Jesus striking out against people, I’ll bet it will be against everyone who hurt children, allowed people to starve or die from lack of health care.  Here’s another point: they believe it’s okay for them to commit mayhem and violence but God forbid if another minority group did it.

Some of these people believe God handed us the 2^nd Amendment.  I swear, these people need to take history lessons.  God did not hand down the 2^nd Amendment.  That was just to preserve a militia in case of attack.  The 2^nd Amendment was written when guns were muskets.  Now these people think it covers AR-15s and other mass killing weapons.  If SCOTUS wants to follow the Constitution as it was originally written, they’d better reconsider their pro-mass killing weapons stances.

Faux Christians think a “Real American” is a WASP and no one is entitled to the same rights.  I am totally shaking my head in disgust and shame.  It’s 2022 and there are actual people who believe that shit, that it’s “us” and “them” (non-WASPs).  No wonder Jesus will be pissed when he returns.  What a perversion of his teaching.

What made me angriest was reading that ministers are becoming afraid to redirect their congregations and rethink what Jesus’ teachings actually mean.  Ministers are afraid to speak the truth?  They worry how their congregants might react?  In these days of people’s lives being threatened and reputations vilified by the right-wing extremists, politicians, faux Christians and other white supremacist terrorist, it’s no wonder a minister might be afraid.  But then why have a church or a minister if not to be saying and doing the right thing?

I am a Christian and I am white but I am not a faux “white Christian” nationalist.  I don’t believe in that shit.  The article mentioned a book I am going to check out to read:  Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation by Kristin Kobes Du Mez.  I would rather know what I’m dealing with than to have it sprung on me unawares.  Maybe everyone should read it.

Plan F

I’ve done a little more reflecting after watching these first 8 hearings.  During Watergate, there was a comic strip I followed avidly called “Doonesbury”.  I see that it might still be running although I thought Gary Trudeau had stopped it some years back.  Anyway, he had a radical character named Mark who worked as a deejay.  One day, referring to Nixon’s complicit Attorney General John Mitchell, Mark cried into the radio mike: “Guilty, guilty, guilty!”

That’s all I can think about with tRump.  He knew he’d lost the election.  He was told over and over and over ad nauseam and repeatedly by his sane legal team (not the “Clown Car”), aides and family that he’d lost the election.  Either he is so deranged he actually didn’t believe it or he just didn’t care.  His goal was just to have his second term.  I think that’s what it is, especially in view of the new information I’m reading about the subversive plans he and his cult had for Term 2.

It's a chilling plan and, apparently, it’s not dead.   I read about this plan in my Axios newsletter the other day.  https://www.axios.com/2022/07/22/trump-2025-radical-plan-second-term?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=newsletter_axiospm&stream=top More about this plan in a minute.

TFG had a game plan he followed to overturn the election.  He started to spread the Big Lie amongst his cultish worshippers and had his various lawyers file over sixty lawsuits alleging fraud but without any proof.  As his court cases were thrown out by judges one by one, he was already starting on his Plan B:  pressure state officials in swing states to recount, review and throw the vote to tRump.  He smeared election workers just doing their jobs to amp up the pressure.  It didn’t look like B was working so before he gave up on it, he and his Clown Car was already work on C and D.

Plan C was pressuring Vice President Pence to thwart the official vote count in the Senate and throw the election to tRump.

And, when that failed, Plan D: set his bloodthirsty treasonous and violent followers on Pence and the Capital.

Then he maliciously sat his fat ass down in the Oval Dining Room to gleefully watch the coup attempt on Fox News.  Everyone begged him to DO something to stop the violence.  He refused.  He didn’t call for his mob to stop.  He didn’t call any agency to help stop the bloodshed and control the insurrectionists.  All he did was watch TV, probably licking his lips with anticipation at Mike Pence maybe getting hanged, calling his best Clown bud Rudy Giuliani, and, oh yeah, various senators hiding from the mob to urge them to continue delaying the counting of the votes.

He didn’t want to tell them to stop.  He LIKED what they were doing.  He thought they weren’t doing anything wrong because their violence was in order to force an illegal second (longer?) tRump term.  He had to be strong-armed into issuing two weak tweets to the insurrectionists to “keep peaceful.”  When he finally did ask them to go home, he nauseatingly added “We love you.  You’re special.”  Ugh.  I wanted to puke when I saw that video on January 6^th.  The hearing on Thursday showed raw footage of his reluctance to follow script, condemn the violence, or even admit the election was over.

Not only is he guilty, guilty, guilty, he is also evil, evil, evil.

He’s not sorry.  I believe his soul is defective or dead.  He has absolutely no remorse for the terror and destruction he set on the Capitol that day.  He has no sorrow or regret for the people who died (a protestor and several police officers, including those who later committed suicide).  He doesn’t care that he put so many lives in danger and that he encouraged our Capitol to be invaded and desecrated.

He only cares that he still and always will have lost the 2020 election.

I suppose there are a few “trusted” allies he hasn’t thrown under the bus yet and they’re involved with him in this new order they’re putting together.  It’s centered on one of his Executive Orders from 2020 called Plan F.  When President Biden took office, he reversed it and I’m glad he did because it’s evil.  If trump became President again, he could reinstate it.

Plan F would basically decimate federal employees who might influence policy by placing them in this category where they could be easily lose their protections by being transferred.  They could be fired easily too.  Who would replace them?  Well, TFG’s pals are creating databases of people considered “loyal” to tRumpism.  All those senior federal employees considered Plan F would be replaced by TFG’s supporters.  Not just in some agencies.  All of them.  This is very bone chilling when you think about it.

Quoting the article: “…Unions and Democrats would be expected to immediately fight a Schedule F order. But Trump’s advisers like their chances in a judicial system now dominated at its highest levels by conservatives.

Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who chairs the subcommittee that oversees the federal civil service, is among a small group of lawmakers who never stopped worrying about Schedule F, even after Biden rescinded the order. Connolly has been so alarmed that he attached an amendment to this year’s defense bill to prevent a future president from resurrecting Schedule F. The House passed Connolly’s amendment but Republicans hope to block it in the Senate. …”

Yeah.  Just in case any of us missed it.