I've written before about my parents. They live in Wisconsin, where I grew up, and my mother is now retired from teaching. My father is a retired engineer who now has several chronic medical problems that would keep him from buying insurance on the open market.
Recently, my mother was diagnosed with breast cancer. Luckily, though, they both have Medicare. And my mother has her pension.
The latter item was making me very worried yesterday so I called to ask them if that pension was in the stock market, and if so, perhaps they should rethink that. I braced myself for an onslaught of blatant denial and "screw you, I got mine" and boy, did I get it.
My father answered the phone, and he is, for all practical purposes, a Tea Partier. My goal was to try and avoid any kind of partisan dialogue and just keep it to an investment safety conversation.
Honestly, I didn't succeed. Because he kept repeating that "the market always goes down and comes up" and "it'll be fine." "You need the money, you don't have time for it to recover, if it ever does". "Nah, it won't happen." I kept trying to impress on him the seriousness of the situation and finally I said, "these people will default. You need to get out."
Well -- apparently I opened up the gates of Hell because I got a spitting hate/laugh about my use of the term "these people." Which said to me loud and clear that he considered himself one of "those people." I said, "they are crazy, they are going to crash the economy and you need to be prepared, you depend on the money you have." He said, "well, thanks for the input but I don't think so."
He gave the phone to my mother and by then I was infuriated. I was infuriated that my parents depend on Medicare, vote for Walker (yes, my mother was on Walker's side as a teacher), have looked at an Explanation of Benefits letter and commented "well, it's super lucky we don't have to pay for breast cancer treatment" and simultaneously blast Obamacare. I had to talk myself down off a ledge to try and repeat what I had said to my mother, and she said she would think about it.
How do we possibly have a chance when my very educated parents simply can't see that train coming? It is roaring down the track at everyone, headlamp blazing, and they are convinced the light is an angel bringing rainbows and song to all. Is it the result of propaganda? Self-delusion?
No one will be happier than I if I'm overreacting. But I don't think so. If you think about it, threatening a government shut down over healthcare makes no sense. When a relationship between two things is purported to exist but the coupling makes no sense, it's because one of those two things is not the real issue. I believe that they want Obama impeached, and they're willing to default to do it. I believe the endgame is to smear and discredit Obama because he dared win re-election. They know he won't let the entire country slide into default so he will do something extraordinary. But in the meantime the economy will crash, and people like my parents, who seem to believe that TPs are on their side for some reason, will probably continue to blame Obama for the misery.
I work in a setting that provides safety net services and I could likely lose my job if we default and Medicare payments are stopped. We can't afford to live on my husband's salary. But hey, it's more important to not call out certain people because, well, that's just liberal elitist nonsense.
I feel like it is like a contagious mental illness at this point, and I don't think anything except loss of Medicare and other governmental services will ever get through to people that support "these people."