We live in a world where people cheer and sneer at disabled protesters being dragged away by police after camping out in a Colorado senator’s office for two days, begging to keep their Medicaid.
The repugnant affair was captured on Facebook Live Thursday evening, capping a two-day camp-in protest at Sen. Cory Gardner’s Denver office. The protesters, chanting, “I’d rather go to jail than die without Medicaid,” were demanding assurance from Gardner he would vote against the latest GOP Senate pitch to kill and re-create Obamacare.
If you’ve ever wondered what it would look like for police to have to drag a roomful of handicapped people off to jail, click here on Carrie Ann Lucas’ Facebook page and see for yourself.
You might think there are just endless layers of wrong there, and that we’re lucky such things are isolated events.
But earlier in the day, the president of the United States — tired of hearing morning TV personalities taunt him for his penchant for lying, bravado and ineptitude — “fought back” with stinging tweets, as his White House staff later inelegantly put it. President Donald Trump tweeted that morning cable-TV yackster Mika Brzezinski was crazy, stupid and “bleeding badly from a face-lift.”
While almost the whole world booed Trump right off of Thursday, his mighty minions marched on, saying that Trump was just defending his honor, as expected. They insist that Americans want him to not wimp out when TV wags have fun at his expense.
@TotallyBiased tweeted: “(Trump has) seen more hate than any President in history. He’s a human being fighting back. And we love it.”
Being dead wrong aside, it’s little wonder that later in the day, the minions would strike out when a group of seriously disadvantaged people in Denver would not wimp out and fight back the only way they can.
“Nothing like exploiting disabled people to make a point, I always say,” tweeted @RichardDaleT, a regular local troll on Twitter.
“Democrats just want to cause a panic so they can use the disabled for a photo op. It’s just politics for them, nothing more,” tweeted @cbiemiller, another troll.
And this: “Nobody cares about your contrived political theater. This is quintessential #fakenews,” tweeted @gjathanas. “Nobody.”
I care. I think most of my fellow Coloradans care, too.
First, these people may well be Democrats or not, but they’re real people who have very real disabilities and their lives depend on Medicaid, not figuratively, literally.
And while some have tried to reassure them that they’re not at risk of losing benefits no matter what Congress does with Obamacare and Medicaid, those reassurances are coming from people like Trump campaigner Kellyanne Conway. I wouldn’t trust Conway to tell me the weather.
I would sure hope that if Congress decides to hack away at Medicaid that they at least make sure people like these protesters are still covered. However, the decisions are being made by officials who think poor people should just get jobs to solve all their problems. They think that deliciously fat tax cuts for the very, very rich are the moral equivalent of providing health care for the very, very poor.
They think that handicapped people protesting for days and then being dragged off by cops is just political theater.
Of course it’s theater. Of course these protesters did this for attention. They honestly want America to know that tax cuts for the rich to curb Medicaid affects real people with real problems. These are those people, bound by wildly expensive wheel-chairs, drugs, treatments and other encumbrances. They don’t want to die, and they have no way to prevent that other than allowing the rest of us to pay for their care.
Why is that so wrong? When did America become a country filled with selfish, greedy jerks who flagrantly preach the importance of being good Christians and force it down everyone’s throats, all the while forgetting the most critical Christian traits — mercy, compassion and charity?
These handicapped people just wanted Gardner to promise them he would vote against a bill that clearly puts Medicaid, and their very lives, at risk. Gardner’s track record so far is that of a party loyalist. He’s so far tried to please Trump while trying at the same time to distance himself from America’s onerous commander in chief. So no one expected Gardner to rise to occasion of putting this cause before his party standing at any and all costs.
And to Gardner’s credit, he let these handicapped protesters have their way in his office for two days, asking police to let them stay, and even having his staff take care of them.
But wouldn’t it have just been easier to meet with them, even if he had to Skype in, and explain in detail why they were wrong about the Republican plan for Medicaid cuts? Or maybe tell them, toughies for you, we just can’t afford such generosities anymore.
Instead, the cops came to end it Thursday night. Kudos to the Denver Police. They handled the arrests while providing as much dignity as they could safely muster in a small room crowded with wheel-chairs, handicapped people and way too much junk food and coffee.
Cops shouldn’t have to do that — and they shouldn’t have done it. These people are handicapped. They don’t warrant extra sympathy, but they deserve extra respect and extra help.
Would it have set a bad precedent to give in to a group of protesters and stop to talk to them? Yes. But what better bad precedent to set than to show some mercy, kindness and respect to a group of people who depend on all of us to go out of our way for them, so they can try and provide the same life for themselves that we take for granted?
If that makes me a loser, instead of being a fighter, or if makes me a pawn of the Democrats, I’m OK with it. I’m in good company.
Follow @EditorDavePerry on Twitter and Facebook or reach him at 303-750-7555 or dperry@AuroraSentinel.com