Frustrated

This is why I very rarely discuss politics IRL.

It seems the tone of discourse has become, "If you disagree with me, you are a wrong, unprincipled, hateful person. And probably stupid as well."

If someone questions whether birth control should be 100% paid for, they are branded anti-woman. If someone suggests that just MAYBE Catholic institutions should not be required to pay for birth control for employees, because it's against their religious teachings, that person gets branded anti-birth-control and it's said of them that they want to BAN birth control.

It's argument by hysteria and I'm sick of it.

My argument on the whole health-care-paying-for-birth-control-and-the-like issue stems more from the fact that we are probably 10 years away from being in Greece's financial situation - do we REALLY want to keep down that path, or do we want to do something now that might prevent it? Health care is only part of it - many other things will have to be cut. Things that are painful to most of us. I think I've said before I'd be grudgingly okay with means-tested Social Security for my generation (which means I probably wouldn't get any, but then again, will I get any Social Security if things continue as they are now?) if it meant that the people who really NEED it in the future have a better shot at getting it.

But the nuances of argument get lost in "you wanna push Granny off the cliff!"

The thing is, I don't think we can keep spending money as a government the way we are now. If you're deeply in debt as an individual, do you keep spending? (Wait....don't answer that).

Say I was deeply in debt as an individual...say I had some huge expenses. Say, the water line to my house broke and needed to be replaced (as it did, recently). How do I pay for it? Well, I take the money I had saved up and spend it on that. Then I curtail my discretionary spending - not eating out at restaurants, not buying books, etc. - until I've saved back up what I spent. Yeah, it sucks. But it's better than having the water line break and having to take out a loan (and go through the approval process for same) BEFORE I could fix it.

I think as a nation we need to take that attitude more with our governmental projects - not just assume that somehow the money will magically appear in the future, 'cos it won't.

But I'm really REALLY really REALLY disgusted with the "you're just an ugly antifeminist" attitude that people are taking with anyone who dares question whether our government should be paying for birth control for everyone....