Yeah, I am upset.

A good (conservative) friend recently wrote that his conservative friends claim it’s impossible to talk to a liberal with the liberal getting upset, yelling, etc.

And I keep reading on the internet that when Obama took over, the right wing didn’t scream, cry, complain or throw things.

So I just really, really wanted to answer this.  I know my friends on the left already have said it better than I can, and my uber-conservative friends will continue to think I’m an unrealistic, spoiled snowflake blah blah blah. But I wanted to say it anyway.

Here’s why I find myself cursing a lot more and crying a lot more.

First, to say the right wing accepted Obama gracefully is so offensively not true it hardly deserves acknowledgment. But I will respond, anyway.

They made up stuff about his birthplace and his religion.

They announced before the inauguration that they would not cooperate with Obama in any way. And they did not.

They have called him corrupt, with no evidence, no hints, no nothing to back it up.

They refuse to accept the fact that he saved the auto industry; that he stabilized the banking system; and that he ushered in 75 consecutive months of employment growth.

(Oh, right. Those were made up figures.  It’s only in the 76th month of growth that it’s real figures.)

And they can’t accept that if growth was slower than they thought it should be it was because a) when he took over, our economy hadn’t been in such bad shape since the Depression; and b) the Republicans refused to go along with a more aggressive stimulus package, despite the advice of most respected economists.

They made horrible comments about the president’s wife, comments that should not be said about anyone, but totally deny the wisdom, grace and fun she brought to the White House.

Ugh, it’s so absurd.

Yes, people shouldn’t break stuff and throw stuff when they demonstrate. But that’s what happens when young people get mobilized. There’s always a tiny percentage of kids there to see what they can get away with.  Considering the hundreds of thousands of people who have been out on the street, we have a darn good record of peaceful demonstrations.

But more to the point, here’s why we may be more upset than the right was eight years ago.

That’s because lives are at stake. Many lives. Of real, already-born people.

When Obama took office, people worried that their taxes might increase, or that they wouldn’t have such easy access to guns.  I don’t think they worried that his administration would cause people to die.

But that’s what it’s looking like to us under the new regime. The trade off? Some people get lower taxes and corporations get fewer regulations. We get sicker and die earlier.

It looks to me like:

People will sicken and die faster if they don’t have health care coverage.

People will sicken and die if we pull back on air and water quality regulations. Think smog. Think asthma. Think Love Canal. Think about what industry gets away with when no one is watching.

People will sicken and die if there’s a roll back of health and safety regulations. They’ve already tossed the coal workers out with the coal dust. (Have you read that black lung cases are growing in number while at the same time the industry is refusing to give retired employees the health benefits promised to them?) So who’s next to be sacrificed?

People will sicken and die if they make good their threat of cracking down on legal marijuana. Do you know that a recent study found that opiate abuse is 25 percent lower in states where pot use is legal?

Who knows what will happen to undocumented workers who are returned to their countries of origin — which they fled to escape hunger, poverty and violence. Can we expect them to  fare any better when they return?  What are their lives worth?

And what happens to the children left behind here with one parent?  Family values. Right.

And, oh yeah. I get that people already are dying in wars in which we are involved.  But the likelihood of more international chaos is so much greater under our current president than under the previous one. President Obama thought things through. Maybe he didn’t make always make great decisions, if, indeed, anybody knows what a good decision would be with respect to the Middle East.

But already, we have seen the results of applying the new president’s Twitter-length attention span to military planning. I just heard about what really occurred during the recent raid in Yemen, where we never should have been in the first place. That action was disastrous in every conceivable way.

More of our young men and women are going to die in wars. Their civilians and a lot of little kids will die from bombs, starvation, increased disease.  And, oh yeah, don’t think you can come here just because your home town has been destroyed in some war that has nothing to do with you. Sorry kid, try Jordan.

Without even getting into the inconceivable losses that can face us by refusing to acknowledge, let alone try to slow, global warming, there are another couple deaths that can’t be overlooked.

One is the death of a functioning government, built slowly, carefully and after much struggle and debate over the last 240 years.

The other is our collective faith in our democratic traditions.

And they wonder why we’re upset.