THE DIVIDE IN AMERICA COMES DOWN TO WHICH OF THESE IMAGES UPSETS YOU MORE

Here's an image:



Caption for this image:

Stephanie Woodward, of Rochester, NY, who has spina bifida and uses a wheelchair, is removed from a sit-in at Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s office as she and other disability rights advocates protest proposed funding caps to Medicaid, Thursday, June 22, 2017, on Capitol Hill in Washington. CREDIT: AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin

Here's another image:



That's from ad made by the Congressional Leadership Fund for Karen Handel, the Republican who just won a special election for a House seat in Georgia. It shows a man with long braids praising the candidate Handel defeated, Jon Ossoff, in San Francisco.

I'm told that Andrea Mitchell of NBC News thinks images like the first one are so disturbing they may doom the GOP health care bill:

MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell described the scene of disabled protesters being carried out by Capitol police in front of Mitch McConnell's office as "brutal" images for the Republican party....

Mitchell said, ... "We had people being carried out by Capitol police, clearly they are under orders to clear the hallways. It is not their fault, but this is what they're being told by House leadership and Senate leadership to do." ...

"This is clearly outside of senator Mitch McConnell's offices. A brutal image for Republicans and supporters of this bill, frankly," Andrea remarked.

Here's a clip:



And in case you missed it when I included it in an earlier post, here's that Karen Handel ad:



Mitchell thinks it's self-evident that most Americans will be disturbed by the sight of forced removals of handicapped protestors worried about whether they'll be able to afford health care. But if you're a Republican in America, the campaign ad upsets you more. It's full of people you think are trying to do you harm -- by raising your taxes, weakening America's defenses, and allowing Democrats to have any power whatsoever.

The fate of those disabled protestors won't shock Republicans' consciences. The protestors, after all, are effectively in league with Mr. Braids and all his friends who want to impose "California values" on the Real America. At best, a certain number of Republicans will conclude that you can't really feel contempt for the protestors, because they've just fallen for delusion spread by Braids and his ilk, in this case the delusion that health care is a right and should be partially paid for through taxes (which are confiscatory by definition) rather than by individuals, their families, their neighbors, and their churches.

Oh, sure, that'll work. As Charlie Pierce writes:

Let me put it in measurements that are particularly of interest to me. By 2050, it is estimated that there will be 16 million people in the United States with Alzheimer's Disease. Right now, in 2017 dollars, the estimated costs of treating and caring for AD patients is $236 billion dollars. Of that, $154 billion is picked up by Medicare and Medicaid. Tell me now how that gap is made up by a plan that virtually eliminates Medicaid entirely by the time we get to 2025. Churches? Families? Winning the Lotto?

Republicans's response to Pierce would be "Yes, that's precisely how it should be done." They might add that if you can't cobble together the money needed, you must have been deemed undeserving by a righteous God. And that's that.

This is America now. I don't think we can bridge this gap. And even if those of us who are more upset at the protest outnumber the Republicans, they vote more consistently than we do. So that's where we stand.