Shit Republicans Say

I wanna calmly say, "Why do you feel this way?" but tonight I realized I cannot do it. I can't stop, breathe, and do that zen thing I plan whenever Replican Friend is not around.

I'm at the Supermarket with Republican. The sucky cooked chickens are up to 6.99. Child says, "Everything is so expensive." Republican blithely waves a hand and says, "Oh, no, it's not. It's all free." 

I know her well enough to already know what she's hinting at, but I have to ask. We have the same argument we have every time she makes a blanket prejudice-sounding statement.

Is she jealous of everyone who doesn't have to kill themselves punching a clock, because it's so much easier to sit home "doing nothing" with kids all day?  What is it? She is convinced "Everyone plays the system."

This makes no sense, because when she was married to Lazy Ex-Husband and he was just a layabout loser who wanted to stay home and do drugs all day she was not eligible for more than ten bucks in food-stamps. The welfare office said to "get a job." 

She says to me she didn't take advantage because "What am I gonna buy with ten bucks?"

Am I the only one who can see the fault in this logic?

So, if she couldn't take advantage...how is everyone else taking advantage, then? 

I say, "Lemme get this straight: You and your drunk-ass husband were twenty-five and both able-bodied. The government rejected you for welfare, but you think everyone on welfare is climbing through some loophole?"

"Yes."

"How."

"They know how to play the system. They have kids. I know tons of people playing the system." 

(Republican could not get pregnant, but she did try to with both drunk ass husbands.)

"They have kids to get welfare? Who? Name one person you personally know."

She thinks, really, really hard. And then harder still. "Terry!" she finally says, triumphantly. "And she abused her foster child. She treated her like Cinderella."

I didn't ask her what happened when she reported the abuse. 

If she didn't, that would make her an accessory. On the other hand, Republican knows nothing about childrearing, so anything she says has to be taken with a grain of salt. In one breath she has simultaneously accused me of terrifying my child whilst I am allowing said child walk all over me.

She actually knows somebody whose spouse got laid off, then got sick, and then died. The government gave this person no cash money but  they got food-stamps and also unusable health insurance for this couple's child (which the government then took back out of the tax refund the couple filed, making the refund a nice even zero.)

Thinking maybe she forgot, I mention "I was on Welfare for two years. I am eligible for Welfare now, but don't utilize it. If you could even manage to get to the available doctors (after jumping through fifteen hoops of fire, make a right at China, keep on straight until night and then boys you're on your own) they are half-blind quacky back-alley pill pushers, anyway, so what's the point? I'm trying to NOT get sick. I'm more likely to get sicker getting there on one of the sixteen festival-of-germ-buses I'd have to take. Plus, I tend to get lost easily. It's just not worth it. 

"Well, not YOU," She clarifies.

Why does this rub me the wrong way? 

I feel like it would be the same as if she railed about "spics" at work but then said to the one Puerto Rican she liked, "Oh not YOU," it would be the same thing. She says it would never happen because she doesn't like ANY of the Puerto Ricans.

I said well if you said, "nigger, nigger, nigger" in front of your black friend-she interrupts, "I wouldn't do that. I work with a lot of black people."

I am stumped as to how to explain why I'm upset. I tell her she's racist, but that's not the right word (although she IS, and I can't stand that shit, either)..."Classist!" I come up with. She agrees. 

I am too kind to point out that she works at fucking Walmart.

When I tell her, finally getting pissy, that I think she is really mad at Lazy-Ex-Husband, and maybe she should see a shrink to work through it. She admits she is mad at him, and mad even more because he is on disability. He is disabled. He worked in a Godawful factory with no windows for fifteen years and then had a nervous breakdown. He paid into disability. "That's what YOU say," she says. 

I don't say, "should they take him out back and shoot him?" but I think it. I'm afraid she will say yes. You don't even want to know her views on the death penalty.

She attempts to drag me into her bitterness, pointing out My Irresponsible Cousins already spent the inheritance from Generous Uncle that was "mine." I said it was not mine. She said it was. I said had he died sooner it would have been, but I'd rather he lived longer and who gives a shit about the money? He was my favorite uncle, and my friend, too.

She says, "it makes you mad they blew through that money so quick." I said it does make me mad, because it was STUPID to waste it, not because it was "mine." They could both be set for life right now. ANY time somebody is stupid I feel agitated.

She says, "They are on Welfare" and I say, "I don't think they are." I just want to shake her because she keeps changing the subject.

They both have kids, and they both work. It's possible even so they may not be able to afford  the cost of living but guess what? I do not concern myself with the measly nothing someone might be getting from the government. I know, personally, Welfare isn't cash money and food seems to be at a surplus, anyway. Everybody is as fat as a house, and it's no skin off my teeth if someone else bites into "my" food supply. Who gives a flaming fuck? I am not of the opinion any little thing anyone else has somehow should have been mine.

Doesn't the government have something worked out with the farms...cash for cows? I don't know, what is government cheese? I just don't feel like food-stamps are really costing taxpayers a bunch of money since money has never been used for food when the government is paying. It used to be that stigmatizing monopoly looking money, and then it was something that looks like a credit card.

I guess because I pointed out that my income is below the poverty level, Republican pointed out that I could get an additional job. Most Beloved Child can speak and sounds somewhat reasonable for hours at a time, but not reasonable enough to be left the fuck alone all summer. It's a child, not a mother-fucking parakeet or something. What the fuck is wrong with this woman? That's it. I had to come upstairs and guzzle all the rest of the Sangria and now I'm drunk-typing, spewing "fuck" all over the place.