"We Told You So, But You Wouldn't Listen"

My wife has a close friend who served some time in the military after graduating from high school, prior to going to college.  Her time entitled her to veteran's medical benefits, which have come in handy for her on more than one occasion.  She is fortunate to live in a community where the V.A. has a clinic and which is about 65 miles from the closest V.A. hospital.  I wouldn't trade the private insurance, paid for mostly by my employers, that I've used most of my life, which gives me a measure of freedom she does not have, but she earned those benefits, for the time that she served, and is entitled to them.  

And yes, I mean entitled.  I have been listening to Republicans lie about Democrats, using the plight of veterans in this country as an issue, claiming that Democrats want to flood Ukraine with money and resources but don't want to take care of our own poor veterans.  And yet, the record shows that every benefit that has either been added to, or expanded, to veteran's services, especially in mental health and in healthcare services, is the result of an initiative of a Democratic political administration during a Democratic controlled Congress.  

And my wife's friend is a perfect example of that.  

At times when our conversation turned to some expanded or new benefit she was getting from the VA, my wife has not failed to include in the conversation the need to note which Presidential administration was responsible for it.  She'd get some response back, like "I don't always vote based on what I get from the VA," or some statement downplaying the achievement, like "It's the leadership of the VA, not the politicians who are doing this," but it was brought to her attention.  

And in fact, as she has been through a couple of health crises over the past several years, my wife encouraged her to stay in touch with her appointed rep at the VA, and take advantage of everything they had to offer her.  We're not trying to score political points, we're trying to find ways to help her and her husband, who has his own health issues, and make things easier for them.  So they've been through the roller coaster, the first time Trump was elected, when the uncertainty regarding veteran's benefits led to cutbacks in many of the services and helps she was receiving, and then through seeing many of those things restored while Biden was in office.  We got to the point where she'd say, "yeah, yeah, I know, Biden did this."  

Well, it was the truth.  

Nothing prior to now has compared with the shutdown that has happened over the past couple of months.  And this is just the beginning.  They don't know yet what else may become a thing of the past due to the government saving money becoming a higher priority than providing benefits to those who served our country.  

I saw the shocked and surprised look come over my wife's face earlier this past week when, after talking to her friend on the phone, she disclosed that her friend had said to her, "I sure regret voting for Trump," and "you were right."  

That was an admission nine years in the making.  

But Is It Too Late Now?  

The chaos that we have experienced in politics throughout all of the 21st century is part of deliberate planning by the Republican party, when they saw the end of the "Reagan revolution" and realized that a more liberal political era was upon them.  The safeguards of the Constitution in its balance of powers, a non-partisan Supreme Court and judiciary, and government based on the principles of compromise, under the authority of the people, have been systematically undermined.  I don't think the founding fathers were so confident in humans always doing the right thing to be naive, but I'm sure they hoped their idealism, and the security that it helped to produce, would prevent the worst abuses of government from occurring.  

They didn't imagine greedy billionaires controlling 99% of the money supply, or judges who cared more about their own ability to profiteer from their service than in administering justice.  They never imagined rabid radical media hounds like Rush Limbaugh, browbeating and encouraging Republican members of Congress to step away from negotiation and compromise, and make the government fail if they did not get their way.  And I don't think they envisioned an American society in which the only value placed on anything would be monetary value, and the obligation of the government to protect its citizens would be measured by cost factors. 

That leaves an awful lot that must be done to undo the damage of a demagogue getting into power, like Trump.  The devil couldn't have picked a more evil, corrupt, immoral, dishonest, deceitful, inhumane person to destroy the United States.  And for those who believe in that sort of thing, maybe he did.