Nuclear winter affects everyone. 
Read this, about the disaster that Trump just picked to head the EPA:
As does global warming.
The president’s power is in running the government agencies. There will be no research on climate change for four years. Education policy will be to strip public schools of their funding. Corporations will be given the green light to fuck over consumers and the environment. Union busting will accelerate. The minimum wage will disappear.
But for some people, it’s all the price they’re willing to pay for being able to play with their guns. Sad.
The President is just the capstone in a huge pyramid of executive power. Moving beyond a President’s personal actions, he influences conditions in the country by appointing hundreds of government officials (either directly or indirectly when those officials are chosen by the people the President himself chose).
ACA is not something you buy or don’t. It is a set of laws that affect everyone. Perhaps most importantly, it ended the practice of denying insurance based on preexisting conditions. It also ended the practice of lifetime caps, which means we no longer need to worry about a long-term illness or serious injury using up our lifetime’s allotment of health insurance. These are changes that affect everyone, and probably wouldn’t have happened under McCain.
These specific parts of the ACA are popular enough that even Trump wants to keep them. The problem is, if we get rid of the Individual Mandate (i.e. penalty for not having insurance), without changing the rule on preexisting conditions, then people will wait till they get sick and THEN buy health insurance. I’m not sure how Trump would deal with that problem.
To be fair, a lot of the suffering and problems post-Katrina were as much or more the fault of the incompetent or corrupt New Orleans and Louisiana governments as it was FEMA’s fault.
That’s not to say FEMA did it right, but they’re not solely to blame by a long chalk.
I think you are suffering from the fallacy of the excluded middle here. It’s true that the President won’t personally come to your house and pay your bills, help your children with their homework, and work out your problems with your spouse. Nor will he personally talk your boss into firing you, set your house on fire, and sell your kids drugs.
Listening to a lot of the Trump voters on the news, I think a lot of them were disappointed that Obama didn’t do a lot of things that, frankly, the President has nothing to do with. If your life was shitty under Bush, it probably was shitty under Obama and would be shitty under either Trump or Clinton. (And if you were a self-actualized billionaire with a successful marriage under one president, you probably will be under the next president.)
But you’ve already described three ways in which the president had or could have had an enormous impact on your life. Your friends died in Iraq. How much more of a personal impact do you want? Maybe it would have happened under Gore as well. Maybe. I don’t think so. Septimus gave a very detailed explanation for why not, but even if Gore would have taken us into Iraq, do you think he would have done everything the same there? And if it was bad intel, who could have fixed that problem before it led to war? The president, that’s who.
Your 401(k) got wiped out. Of course, Obama isn’t going to hand you the money, but he did fix the economy such that if you’d left the money there instead of cashing out, you’d have it all back. Maybe another president would have done more, and boosted the economy so much that you’d have gotten a better job afterwards instead of living paycheck to paycheck. Or maybe they’d have done the wrong thing and tanked the economy even more. And of course, who caused the crash in the first place? It’s not directly Bush’s fault, but deregulation of the banking industry is something that presidents get some say in. How can you live through what you went through and think presidents and politics don’t matter?
And Obamacare. You can’t afford it, but didn’t have to pay a penalty. Is that just the natural order of things? Would another president have made it more affordable or gotten single payer? Would another president have made you pay the penalty? It’s true the president isn’t a dictator and has to work with congress. And in this case it turned out to be a wash for you. Maybe no president could have gotten much more through congress, but it surely could have been much better or much worse. If anything, all this shows is that we should care far more than we do about who is in congress, not that we should care less about the president.
That’s really good information, and that’s why I’m here asking. Thank you for the perspective. I didn’t know that and I’m guessing my Army friend didn’t either.
The abortion thing I do care about. My wife, if she ever does get pregnant, will have something like a 75% chance of an entopic pregnancy. I didn’t know about this either. That’s good to know. That’s kinda fucked up. One of my exgirlfriends mothers from years ago had an entopic pregnancy and she couldn’t get the d and c because it was Texas and the first doc refused. They had to take her to Parkland and she almost died. She had to have a full hysto and it ruined the chance for another child.
I am starting to care now, totally. I just don’t know a lot and that’s why I’m here asking. I have a hard time with understanding things unless they are directly laud out. I used to think I was really smart at everything, but really I’m just smart at the things that I do for a living and the older I get the more I realize I don’t really have opinions founded on a lot of facts so I try not to have them in the first place. That probably sounds dumb but I would rather know what’s up before I say anything. Know I’m learning. Most people I know freaked out about Trump but they didn’t have any explanation really why other than “he’s a jackass” which I could agree.
One proposal I’ve seen discussed is going to a voucher system. People would be given vouchers and could use them to purchase the private insurance plan of their choice.
I think this is a bad idea. The money for all those vouchers will obviously be coming from taxes. So we’d have a health care system that would be funded by tax dollars but all those dollars would pass through the hands of insurance companies so they could collect a share before paying for any health services. And the government would be paying for all this while having no control over how the money is spent.
I think it would be more sensible to cut out the middlemen. Have the government collect those tax dollars and pay them to health care providers directly. You’d need less money because there wouldn’t be the expense of insurance companies. And the government would have better control of how the money is being spent because it would be the one writing the checks.
See I was under the impression that he was going to ax the marketplacen part of it. My mom has hit the lifetime limit and her medical isn’t coveted anymore through my Dad’s work. She has had congestive heart failure since 1998 or so so she went over the lifetime limit already. This hasn’t been canceled? My brother sends her money from time to time to cover her doctor visit she has each month with the Cardiologist. She gets charged $275 each checkup, they don’t cover the visits.
It sounds more and more like your personal life has been directly and immediately influenced by things the president does far more than the average non-military person. How do you not see this? Because the president didn’t come to the hospital and tell the doctor whether to operate it doesn’t count? Or is it because when Obama eliminated lifetime caps it somehow didn’t cover your mother (presumably because she already lost her policy)? Do you really think your mother’s healthcare will be the same under Trump that it would be under Clinton? The fact that you might not have enough information to know which one will be better, and so choose not to express an opinion is one thing. Most people’s opinions on politics are based on insufficient or plain bad information, and it’s good that you are aware enough not to fall into that. But that’s not the same as saying ti doesn’t matter who is president.
Think about all the Supreme Court decisions that affect our lives. Black people declared to be non-citizens (1857) until superseded by the 14th Amendment. “Separate but equal” racial discrimination approved by the Supreme Court (1896) and then later banned (1954). Abortion made legal. Interracial marriage legalized everywhere in the US. Gay sex (“sodomy”) made legal everywhere, and later, same-sex marriage made legal everywhere. Miranda rights. Etc, etc.
Now think about the fact that Supreme Court justices are lifetime appointments, made by the President. Cases that get to the Supreme Court today get judged by one justice appointed by Reagan, one by H. Bush, 2 by Clinton, 2 by W Bush, and 2 by Obama. That’s how long-lasting and powerful a President’s influence is.
People can explain this or that policy outcome, which is all well and good, but it doesn’t quite get to the root of the issue.
In the ancestral environment politics mattered a great deal since rates of violence were high and if a faction was against your interests you might get a club to the back of your skull, versus swinging the club at someone else’s skull. So there’s good reasons for humans to be emotional when it comes to tribalism and other groups taking power. But nowadays the factions are so abstract that people will apply these instincts not just to someone who lives on the other side of the country who they’ll never meet, but things like consumer brand loyalty, e.g. Apple vs. Microsoft, sports, video game console wars, or identity movements over silly things like what kind of food you eat.
I remember a study from years ago that showed that the men of the losing side of a presidential election or world series suffered a big drop in testosterone.
Maybe, but the Conservatives’ main objection to “Obamacare” has been the Individual Mandate - i.e. their insistence that the government shouldn’t be able to force them to buy something.
Yes. The Affordable Care Act forbids annual and lifetime limits on health insurance benefits. Also, the Marketplace health plans are not allowed to discriminate based on preexisting conditions.
Setting premiums based on gender and age is still allowed, but your mother should be able to get a health insurance from the Marketplace at the same price as any other woman of her age. Has she tried?
I would say that for the vast vast VAST majority of Americans, who is President, or which party holds the office is not a huge impact. There is a certain privilege at work in that. Some here have commented that the choice of President might (just might) impact their ability to purchase certain ammunition - well, bully for you, if that’s all you have to worry about then you are doing OK.
Whereas, outside of the vast vast VAST majority of Americans, there are those whose lives might (just might) be very directly impacted. If your skin isn’t white, if you were not born within the borders of the 50 states, if you are not what the kids like to call cisgendered, or even if you are female, there is the likelihood that you will have a different set of experiences depending on who won this last election.
Broadening the scope, everyone is impacted by what happens to the economy, the environment, and potentially conflicts.
So, while most reactions to who is POTUS are frankly about abstract principles, there are concrete impacts for many. As they say, check your privilege.
Lets see.
During some of the most impressionable years of our lives we go into classrooms where the heads of the presidents are plastered high up on the wall. We tell origin stories for several of them and recount their mythic boyhood deeds year after year. We stand up and recite indoctrinating slogans day after day.
We build grand monuments to the presidents. We carve their visages into mountains. Every year, we celebrate them.
Americans are taught that the tides of prosperity ebb and flow according to presidential deeds. Their utterances have become law almost as they issued from their throats. They have defeated powerful evil nations. They have the power to destroy the world, but do not because they are good and wise.
In other words, Americans have deep psychological issues when it comes to their view on government because of their upbringing.
Here’s one that’s near and dear to my heart: So called “tort reform.” A president who is willing to sign laws that will reduce your ability to seek justice if you are injured by someone else is a very real danger to all of us. This could take the form of mandatory arbitration instead of a jury trial, or caps on the amount a jury can award in “non economic” damages (pain and suffering). They can also make it harder to file suit against medical device manufacturers or insurance companies (or anyone, really). I have met a lot of injured people who supported tort reform in the abstract but learned to late how important our civil justice system is.
Obama was better for guns than anyone else I know. he made the NRa relevant after a long period of irrelevance. He legalized CCW of firearms in national parks. He made it normal to stock thousands of rounds in your closet, you know, just in case.
.50 cal is very useful for large wild hogs. and even then you want a few friends with .308 rifles and shotguns standing around in case you piss it off.
OK, let me take one issue: health care. Three pieces: Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare. Republicans want to privatize Medicare, cut and block-grant Medicaid, and repeal and kinda sorta replace Obamacare.
Each one of these changes either will or may directly affect my life if they come to pass. Here’s why:
Medicaid first. My wife’s 92 year old grandmother is in a nursing home. You know who pays the bills? Mostly Medicaid. They get what income she has (Social Security and a military survivor’s pension), and they pay the rest. If Medicaid gets a big cut and gets block-granted to the states, will that continue? Probably, since she’s already covered, but who knows?
My wife’s 71 year old mother might be next; unlike Grandma, her mind’s still sharp, but her body’s in almost as bad shape as Grandma’s. There’s no telling how much longer she’ll be able to live without assistance on hand. Again, if bad shit happens to Medicaid, will she be covered? Maybe. It’s one thing to expect post-cut-and-block-grant Medicaid to cover those already on it, but it may only have enough money to cover a limited number of new patients each year. So when she needs to move into a facility of some sort, there may be money to cover her, or there may not be.
Medicare next. They promise that people like me, approaching Medicare eligibility age, would still get in under the wire with Medicare-as-is. So far, so good. My 52 year old wife? Almost certainly not. When she turns 65, she’ll have to buy insurance on the private market, if there still is one, and the government will partly finance that through ‘premium support.’ Despite being much younger than me, she’s in far worse shape. The insurance is going to be expensive, and we can only hope that premium support will make much of a dent.
Finally, Obamacare. Even if Medicare survives as is, they really want to whack Obamacare. I’m hoping to retire in about 5 years, but I’ll be on Medicare, so my health insurance is OK. If my wife wants to retire not too long after I do, we knew until a month ago that she could get insured through Obamacare. We don’t know that anymore. She may have to work for the next 13 years just to remain covered through work, rather than retire in 5-7 years.
And that’s just one family, and one issue. And my wife and I are in the top 10% economically, so we’re in much better shape than most people are to weather literal and metaphorical storms. If this election can make this much difference in our lives - so secure, just one month ago - I shudder to think of its effect on those who aren’t nearly as well situated.