‘This is a death sentence for me’: Florida Republican women say they will switch parties after DeSantis approves alimony law

Like I get the intent of alimony, but to me it seems quite a bit outdated when most working households have both adults having their own careers.

I don't think you do. If both people have the same level of income, there's no alimony. Alimony is meant to allow someone who has been a house spouse for years (decades) to think about divorce, so they are not trapped by finances.

How easy do you think it is to get a job after working part time (or not working) for 20 years? Older with no recent experience is not going to get you any jobs.

Yeah, I’m conflicted on this one, absolutely hate DeSantis, but this doesn’t sound bad. There’s a lot of laws/policies that unfairly punish one group over another in divorces, custody, and child support. The pendulum on that front swung too far from one end of the spectrum to the other and needs to be equalized.

Have to agree. It's a relic of a much different time. With more women in the workforce and marriage rates dropping, being a divorcee no longer carries the stigma that it once did.

I'm okay with familial support being weighted to whomever has primary custody of any children.

And if there was a major discrepancy in net worth, like the Bezos fiasco, it seems fair to split things up more evenly.

It's a very touchy subject. I don't want to be even remotely associated with the "men's rights" shitstorm. But I would like to see more of these antiquated, gender-based laws get modernized.

Get a prenuptial agreement or don't marry a woman with no moral respect for anyone but herself. (Yes there are exceptions to this.) But I've seen too many men and women choose partners that are obviously terrible human beings, then go full surprised when that person ruined their lives. I have a friend that is still paying for her ex-husbands life style. I feel bad but all of her friends and family told her not to marry that guy but she doubled down and is on the hook until he marries again.

Okay so let me offer some context here to shed light on a few things you said. Please know that the Venn diagram between me and DeSantis is razor thin, and the only thing (I think) we have in common is that we are carbon-based life forms. I also see some common sense items in what was described in the article, but I have my larger misgivings, which I'll explain much further below.

Why alimony is important and necessary
Here's why alimony is important for the rest of an ex-spouse's life. I want to be clear that I believe a spouse of any gender should have access to alimony, but the most traditional situation is a woman who forfeited having a career outside of the home to be a mother and homemaker, while a man furthered his career for - let's just say - a long enough time that once the divorce occurs, it's too late for the woman to reasonably start a career and expect to rise to the same level the man is at in his career at time of divorce. Let's use an arbitrary number like 20 years for my example. Let's assume these two people met and married no later than 25 years old for the sake of my example, as well. Alimony is not relevant for couples married for very short periods (less than 5 years), nor is it relevant if both spouses worked full-time jobs.

So in my example here, both people are about 40-45 years old. Retirement age is going to vary by industry, but roughly let's say 65 years old. By this point, the man has paid into either a 401k, pension, a Roth IRA, or some other retirement financial tool for 20+ years as well as a federal retirement program, usually Social Security. One of the stipulations of paying into these financial tools is that you have to have a job in which you're submitting W-2/I-9 documentation. A stipulation of receiving the money you paid into Social Security in specific, is that you have to make enough dollar-amount SS contributions that amount to a little more than 10 years of working a W-2/I-9 kind of job/career. And to boot, the amount of SS you get paid after retiring is based on your highest earning 35 years of your lifetime of work.

So when a woman has skipped college, not worked outside the home, hasn't gained job skills, etc. etc. for 20 years, she is now coming back to the job market with zero tools and equipment to get into a career (though obviously could enter the workforce through a paycheck-to-paycheck poverty wages kind of job), has no Social Security credits for a retirement that is just about as far away for her as it is for her ex-spouse, and has no savings or other financial resources because she was a homemaker and didn't earn money as her compensation for her labor. She is also now going into new situations at a time in life in which we have all lost neuroplasticity and may find it difficult to learn new things or go back to college. And we should also be realistic about the subtle/legal ways in which older people are discriminated against in the hiring process.

This is why alimony exists. It helps to make up for the opportunity-cost in an adult's older career years and for lack of retirement security. When the members of the First Wives Association and other ex-spouses seek lifetime alimony, it's because they either will never have access to their own Social Security benefits, or will have access to extremely scant benefits whenever they do retire.

Permanent alimony is a relic from when women stayed home and cooked and cleaned. It prevented them from being kicked to the curb without two pennies to rub together.

Now that women are more independent and have joined the work force I think they should be responsible for their own backup plan

So NOW they’re worried about “family values”

I am not from the US but I always interept it as, "Fellow American, I see these politicians are putting policies in place that are making your life hard, they don't affect me as I've put things in place to avoid what happened to you from happening to me so I will support these people who continue to do things to affect groups of people as I've done well enough for myself thus far".

Until of course the same politicians do something that affects them personally and then their tune changes to, "Why would they do this to me? I've always supported them!"

LGBTQ Republicans and Black Republicans really baffle me.

It's only a problem when it affects them

Here's the difference between today's conservatives/Republicans and liberals/Democrats that I think will explain a lot of the whole, "how can they consistently vote against their own interests‽":

As a liberal I saw this article and immediately started asking questions (in my head). I wanted to know the far-reaching effects, unintended consequences, etc. I went to the comments to see some different perspectives--knowing full well there could be some total Nazis commenting as well. Fundamentally, I don't trust politicians statements about things like this. Whether it's a Democrat or a Republican... I want the truth (especially in regards to just who is pushing for any given legislation and what their motives are).

Conservatives/Republicans don't do that. They'll turn to their trusted sources to form their opinions. If their trusted sources are actually trustworthy and weren't pushing some agenda that method would be totally fine. In fact, it used to be totally fine! For a very long time there weren't outrage machines in mass media that exist solely to manipulate people (and we now have one mass media company who was forced to admit under oath that's exactly what they do).

The conservative way of trusting authorities makes a lot of sense! The only problem with it is of course, "who can you trust?" The propagandist's goal is then to convince these people to only trust their messaging. There's a number of ways to manipulate people into this situation such as always being first with your message (humans are hard-wired to trust the first message more than later messages that say something different) and always having rage-inducing reasons as to why any given thing is happening along with scapegoats to blame. This creates something like a hard psychological shell around their version of the message.

The next phase to really lock-in trust of your (completely untrustworthy) authority is conspiracies: Any alternative ideas or messaging must be from "others" who always have an evil agenda. People with power... Come up with boogeymen who may or may not be related to your messaging but have names that most people will recognize but know nothing about. Especially if these people have nothing at all to do with any of it (it makes them more sinister; supposedly inserting their tentacles into other people's lives without good reason).

Now that you've got people to trust you and your messaging you can make them hate whoever you want and by extension, vote however you want. When bad things happen to these people they'll blame your chosen boogeymen (e.g. immigrants, minorities, a particular political party, etc) and certainly not the very people who put them in this position in the first place because they're the saviors; the ones fighting the boogeymen.

Remember that mass media--especially television "news"--is never going to be informative enough to give people all of the information related to any given topic. In fact, the best they will ever do is to give a tiny little slice of the information. A slice, that if chosen properly, can utterly and completely mislead someone to a conclusion that is equally as utterly and completely incorrect.

When you look at the statistics it should become exceedingly clear why Republican women vote the way they do: They put their trust in the wrong sources. Over and over again.

It's always the same story: "How could they do this to me‽ I trusted them!"

When a liberal justice or Democratic politician does something liberals don't like the response from that side of the political isle is always the same as well, "WTF! They're a liar!"

The difference is subtle but it's very important. The liberal/Democrat formed a conclusion based on promises and prior behavior. The opinion of the liberal/Democrat of any given politician or party is based on how they act and what they're claiming to believe in rather than an inherent trust in the individual. The person or party is almost never the authority.

The Democratic party is always infighting. They're very rarely ever 100% in agreement about anything. Because everyone is skeptical and wants to know basically everything that will result from every action. Positions shift and change often because new information could change everything. This makes it difficult to form consensus on anything that hasn't been researched to hell and back.

This is why Democratic primaries are full of politicians referencing statistics and outcomes and Republican primaries are full of politicians making anecdotes and trying to prove that they're on the right side.

When a Republican is voting against their interests it's simply because they trust the authority of the party. Because they truly believe that they're more trustworthy than any alternative. This is also why hypocrisy doesn't really exist in the minds of conservatives/Republicans: The party (and its leaders) are inherently trusted and if they need to change their position it's pretty much always viewed as a mere tactical posture, "for the greater good."

Define a 'right'.

but I didn’t think the face eating leopard party would eat my face!

BuT nOw iT aFFecTs Meeeeee. So now it’s different!!1!

Expecting right wingers to care about anyone but themselves is like asking a fish to fly. There's a few that can kinda do it briefly, many more that try, but in the end it's just obviously impossible for them.

I found one?

The problem with that is you’re framing it as something the left opposes. When pandering to the right the correct play is to frame it as something the right supports.

Hoping oil companies ruin the earth's climate faster so I can see the shithole state of Florida flood over and sink into the ocean within my lifetime.

Seems pretty reasonable to me. Not sure why this has such a bad reception. Guess people just don't like Desantis.