I was having dinner with some friends when the conversation turned to something that bothered me. One of my dinner companions, whom I know is a Trump supporter, showed us an email that they received from their daughter, who in turn has a daughter with disabilities. It was a pretty nasty email blaming her mother, the Trump supporter, for all the cuts that Trump's Beautiful Big Bill will cause. The mother, of course, was insulted, and so would I have been if I had gotten an email like that, but the mother's reaction was that you don’t talk politics. I was taken aback by both the email and the mother's reaction. The daughter should never have sent the email, but the mother's reaction that you don’t talk about politics is also wrong. The fact people feel they don’t have to be accountable for the damage a candidate they voted for does seem to be like the voter just burying their head in the sand and not looking at what is happening right in front of them. My take on it is that the daughter is really afraid for her Developmentally Disabled daughter's future,  my friend's granddaughter, and is upset that a grandmother would vote against the interests of the granddaughter. I am sure the grandmother doesn’t see it that way. I always remember we are dealing with a political party that has separated families. We have a political party that has put children into cages. We have a political party that locks people away into concentration camps like the one in El Salvador or, closer to home, the Everglades Detention Center, surrounded by alligators and pythons. We have an administration that has deported people by mistake because they do not believe in due process. I have no faith in this administration, even wanting to think of the welfare of our special needs children and adults.

I am surprised when anyone with a Developmentally Disabled child votes for most republicans, let alone Trump. I would have thought Trump mocking the Disabled Reporter would have been a deal killer, and I am surprised that it wasn’t. Being a former Republican voter, I know conservatives have always hated many of our social programs. Welfare was a program that many conservatives in the 60s, 70s, and the 80s that many thought discouraged people from working. People on welfare were considered lazy. That stigma has lasted in social programs to this day. When we hear of people on Medicaid, we still think of people who are still too lazy to work. We hear that people are just too lazy to get a better job.  In most cases, that just isn’t true. 51 percent of all Medicaid spending is on the elderly or the disabled. Cuts to programs like Medicaid are going to affect not only the recipients of Medicaid but also much of the nation. If I were a person with a child with disabilities, I would be very scared of the work requirements to receive Medicaid. I know this man who is developmentally disabled, and he worked in the galley at Great Lakes Naval Base through Goodwill Industries for 23 years. All through his adult life, he worked but still got Medicaid. He just retired last year at the age of 65. I wonder what will happen with programs like that in the future, and how much different they will become with this anti-social program that is the Republican Party.

Our Seniors and the disabled are going to be the ones who suffer the most from the cuts that are happening. If I were a parent of a disabled child, I would be very concerned about my child and their future. To me, the future of my grandchildren is the most driving force behind my voting decisions and who I vote for. If you are going to cut programs for the elderly and the disabled while giving billionaires tax cuts, I am not going to vote for you. I could understand how a person who has a Downs Syndrome child could feel betrayed by anyone that voted for the Republican because I do feel that Republicans don’t care about our special needs children. I worry that they look at them as a type of low-cost labor that could help replace the migrants they are putting in concentration camps. You can say that I am out of line but we are talking about a Political Party that separated immigrants’ children from their parents. We are talking about a Political Party that has shipped people to detention camps in El Salvidor. We are talking about a Political Party that in the middle of the Everglades and then laugh about if one escaped, they would be eaten by alligators and pythons. We are talking about a Political Party that has turned its back on science and medical research. This is not a Political Party that values life. I could see then using our Developmentally Disabled adults in ways that would not have been imagined ten years ago.

People have the right to vote for anyone that they want to. What I think is necessary is that they take responsibility for their vote. To many people have stated, “That was not what I voted for” because what is happening is exactly what they voted for.