Scared yet?

Just the beginning...

After the shocking realization that Donald Trump would become our next President, what appears to be MORE than half of the country became stricken with fear. When we all started imagining the terrifying implications of a Trump White House in conjunction with a Republican majority in Congress, many possibilities began to take hold of our hearts with an icy grip.

Well, already, almost two months before the reality-television star and former Wrestlemania headliner takes office, some of our worst fears have reared their ugly heads. Aside from the obviously, most terrifying appointment of white-supremacist, Steve Bannon as “chief-strategist”, just this week we have seen some more specific examples of what the impending Trump administration will look like.

Trump’s recent preferred choice to lead the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, Seema Verma has made her positions known through her work with several state governments in dealing with Obama’s Affordable Care Act. One of her most egregious proposals is in the process of being confirmed and would be confirmed if she were to take on the position Trump plans to bestow upon her. The plan she has put forth in Kentucky would force the poorest citizens looking to receive health insurance through her revision of the ACA to participate in unpaid “work activity.” Those low-income folks who would not be able to pay the fees incurred due to their use of the healthcare system in Kentucky, would be forced to pay off their debt through community service work. While some may see this as a reasonable measure to ensure that fees are paid by those who cannot outright afford to pay off their medical bills, many of us may see it as being terrifyingly reminiscent of the sort of indentured servitude seen after the abolition of slavery. The recently “freed” slaves would work for their “former” owners until such time that they had paid off the “debt” they apparently owed their masters for housing and feeding them and their children while they were slaves. Obviously, the masters were reluctant to give up their workers, so these supposedly temporary periods of indentured servitude lasted indefinitely, probably for the remainder of the “freed’ slaves life. So why would this be any different today under such a “work activity” program?

To apply this kind of standard to health care, which many of us see as a human right, is beyond appalling. 

Some of us may remember the huge step that President Obama took in Criminal Justice reform this past August. Under Obama’s urging, the Department of Justice announced that as the contracts for each of the privately owned prisons reached their end, the DoJ would decline to renew those contracts in an effort to reduce the countries usage of such for-profit institutions. This was a massive win for Criminal Justice reform, as these prisons represented some of the worst examples of our disastrous Criminal Justice system. Immediately after the results of Novembers election became clear, the stock in Corrections Corporation of America, the largest private prison corporation in the US, rose by forty three percent. This was no coincidence. This was due to Trumps comments on the campaign trail: 

“I do think we can do a lot of privatizations and private prisons. It seems to work a lot better.” 

If by “a lot better” he means that they perpetuate our countries epidemic of mass incarceration and human rights abuses in prisons, then yeah, they’re “a lot better.”

With Trumps incredibly disturbing pick of the famously racist Jeff Sessions as Attorney General, this is only the beginning of the sort of policies we might see in the coming years.

Just today, the almost adorably uninformed, moronic and sleepy Dr. Ben Carson was appointed Housing Secretary, tasked with leading the Department for Housing and Urban Development. This is such a delicate and nuanced position that whoever would be in charge of this department aught to be well versed in the forces that impact poverty and what would be needed to combat such forces. Instead of someone who would fit those qualifications, we get Ben Carson, who has no experience in any government office whatsoever, never mind any sort of ability to grasp nuance or compassion. Trump himself criticized Ben Carson for having a “pathological temper.” 

So, as expected, right off the bat there are quite a few things to worry about... and we’ve only just begun. To quote Ta-Nehisi Coates: 

“This is not despair. These are the preferences of the universe itself: verbs over nouns, actions over states, struggle over hope. The birth of a better world is not ultimately up to you, though I know, each day, there are grown men and women who tell you otherwise. The world needs saving precisely because of the actions of these same men and women.” 

And if these decisions are not enough to get you involved, I don’t know what will be.