ouch

This is a hard thing to write.

I am hurting a lot right now. Yesterday morning, my mom called me in hysterical tears. She is "so afraid" of what's going to happen now. She is afraid of the coming of "Socialism," and she's worried about their explosion of taxes. She told me that she and my stepdad are considering moving their money offshore and moving overseas. She told me that "we will live to regret" the outcome of this election (and I managed not to reply "does that mean we'll survive Bush?").

First, if they have so much income, why is she always moping over how broke they are and how she just doesn't know how they're going to afford to survive? Second, she told me she would read Obama's platform and listen to his policy speeches. She obviously hasn't, since she keeps going on and on about how we don't know what we're getting. Third, she, rather obviously, only watched Fox news for the entire election season. And fourth, she showed very plainly that she doesn't give a rat's ass about her grandchildren's future. Or mine.

When I pointed out that we have no health insurance, she told me that we shouldn't have three vehicles.

pesimst's truck is paid off. The gas mileage on it sucks, but we can't afford to take on another car payment, and his work hours require that I have transportation of my own. So we're stuck with it for now. His motorcycle and my car payment together are quite small. He has the bike to help with the mileage issue for his truck. The insurance on all three for 6 months is less than one month of insurance premiums. So, if we had no cars, we STILL wouldn't have enough to pay for insurance. By about $4000 a year. Really.

And that doesn't take into account that the benefit caps out at $500 more than it costs a year. So it doesn't pay for itself. At all.

The only place we could cut nearly that much out of the budget is by selling the house and living in a cardboard box. Seriously. The premiums are just over $100 less a month than our house payment.

The problem is that his work pays nothing toward insurance. Not one penny. It's "cheaper" because of its "group policy" status, but it's still miles out of reach. That's not right.

And yet she considers US irresponsible for not having insurance. The insurance company and my husband's employer are absolved of guilt, because to require coporate responsibility would be "Socialism." And she's in favor of the bailout (so am I, and for the same reaons, but she doesn't see the double standard).

As long as she gets what she feels is owed to her, the rest of the country can fuck off, apparently. And she doesn't trust Obama because he's biracial. Seriously, she has more bigotry over that than anyone of any single race. Huh?

Her other problem with Obama? In his speech, he said he would be President to gays and straights. And tolerance will make God mad. "He's not finished with America yet!" she scramed into the phone.

Oh, and we're going to be attacked. We're not safe now. The infidels will be allowed to attack us, because Obama is a wuss and God won't protect us anymore. Because of the gays. And because we let just any damn religion into government.

I have never heard her spout such hate and vitriol. I didn't know that woman, and I don't want to know her. I wanted to just hang up the phone, keep my children away from her and never speak to her again.

I feel bereft today. It's like I lost my mother. I knew she could be close-minded and backwards. I knew she had some simmering racism in her heart. I knew she found homosexuality repugnant. But to hear it boil over, to be told I'm wrong for being the fair, open-minded, tolerant person that SHE raised me to be, it was too much. The woman who I have always credited with one major thing, intentionally raising me to be more tolerant than herself, is gone. In one show of ugliness, she has pushed me so far away that I can't ever get back to her. I don't even want to...