Sometimes, I forget that major projects take a long time. I've been working on a book about disability and it turned into the hardest of all slogs. 40 pages took me a couple of weeks and I know that I repeated myself too much in that short span. It seems that I was trying to avoid offering advice that was too specific to me forgetting that personal anecdotes might be the best thing I have to offer. It was going slow already when bad things started happening one after another.
First off, we had a couple weeks of drenching rain. Rain equals pain and it feels oppressive. There was a sudden shift from rain to cold with the additional unpleasantness involved and then I hit the misery jackpot. Somehow, the pain doc's office and I combined to cost me eight days of extreme symptom spikes. There was no sleep to be had and the lack of sleep just collapsed all of my other defenses. By the end, I twitched for days straight even if you don't count the car ride to the pain doc at the end. The very end was its own sort of awful with all four limbs, my neck, my back, my stomach and I lost much control of my arms and legs. It was exciting to walk around the doctor's office while my knees refused to do what they were supposed to do. My cane was just as ineffective since I couldn't depend on my arm to stay still.
Just as I was starting to recover from that disaster on Tuesday morning, Election Day happened. For some reason I hope I'll never understand, most people stayed home and did not vote. I am not sure if the voter suppression campaigns worked or if people were just too lazy. While the majority stayed home, a minority of eligible voters joined the right wing in a suicide pact. With all the problems going on in the world, the majority of those who voted chose candidates who have devoted themselves to making things worse. This isn't all partisan complaining because President Obama is seeking to complete "Free Trade Agreements" that will benefit no one but the very rich. Without Senate Democrats blocking the Trans-Pacific Partnership, it will pass easily since the President is not the liberal that some accuse him of being.
Our few industries with strong management/labor cooperation will be exposed to tactics like "dumping" which is defined as selling products on the global market at below cost. Nations like China and South Korea can afford to absorb the losses in their government back or government owned industries while our domestic industries have no such backing. They cannot even count on a Republican Congress to pass punitive tariffs.
Maybe you hate labor unions. The "Fouled-Up" Trade Agreements will hurt all American consumers as the profits of multinational corporations will be protected over consumer rights. For example, the US Food and Drug Administration made a rule requiring all meat sold in US grocery stores to have labels telling you where the animal was raised, where it was slaughtered and where it was packaged. Without labeling practices like these, our FDA will be rendered meaningless. Mexican and Canadian meat-packers appealed to global trade organizations claiming that country of origin labeling would hurt their profits. Why did they believe Americans would buy meat based on local origin despite the price advantages enjoyed by multinational companies? All things being equal, food bought closer to home is higher quality regardless of origin. It may travel safely but it does not travel well. Of course, all else is not equal and even our under funded FDA makes local mass market food safer than what is made in other nations.
The only things that will get done under this next Congress will be bad things. There is the Foul Trade Agreement and then there is the Keystone XL pipeline which will make some of the world's dirtiest oil profitable. With climate change denier James Inhofe chairing the Senate's most powerful environmental committee, those of us who care about the environment might remember the days of "Drill, baby. Drill!" fondly. The profits from the Canadian tar sands oil that will not be sold on American markets will stay in Canada. I like our neighbors to the north but this is absurd. We're risking horrific spills from a company cited by the Canadian government for poor manufacturing practices and we will gain nothing in the best case scenario. The worst case scenario will poison water used by millions, unleash fires that will be made worse by the accelerated climate change.
Right now, you're probably asking me why my pain blog has been overrun by politics. The reason is that my nation's suicide pact is very stressful for me. So long as I remain in Delaware, I'll escape the worst of it personally. Hope for a better world is one of those things I cling to that keep me alive. I have been holding out hope that some agency out there would help me with some of my specific problems. Since I can't walk to the dumpster, I had hopes of the Federal Government restoring aid to the states. I had some slight hope that my state or local government would provide me with some assistance in getting curbside trash pickup which would save me from eventual unpleasantness even if you include nothing unforeseen. I would have liked to get mail delivered to my door as well.
Thank you, Republican voters. Thanks to you, there is a good chance that I will die in a fire someday. Every single one of you has hurt me individually along with your attack on the nation as a whole. Some of you will be very rich at the expense of hurting millions. The rest of you will have to suffer through the fall of society with me. You're right that this election probably won't lead to the death of the government but we've lost yet another chance to make things right. Thanks a lot. The good news is that I can swim.
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