Supplied military aid and weapons used in the war in Gaza, helping turn tax dollars into bombs, rubble, and civilian casualties.
Maintained a military budget so vast that nobody can fully account for it, while schools, roads, and public services scrape by.
Funded military bases, deployments, and preparations for future wars that always seem to be just around the corner.
Sent weapons and military assistance to foreign governments whose human rights records I would condemn in almost any other context.
Subsidized profitable fossil fuel companies while paying for the consequences of climate disasters.
Helped finance tax policies designed to further enrich people who already possess more wealth than entire cities.
Sustained a political system where billionaires, lobbyists, and corporate donors enjoy influence unavailable to ordinary citizens.
Paid private contractors handsomely to perform government functions that somehow cost more and work worse.
Spent millions proving government doesn't work by putting people in charge who are determined to make sure it doesn't.
Funded endless commissions, hearings, investigations, studies, and press conferences that produced headlines instead of solutions.
Helped bankroll a deportation apparatus requiring agents, detention centers, surveillance systems, lawyers, flights, and contractors on an industrial scale.
Paid for immigration raids that turned schools, workplaces, churches, and neighborhoods into places of fear.
Financed the detention of asylum seekers and undocumented immigrants in facilities repeatedly criticized by human rights advocates.
Supported politicians who built careers by portraying immigrants as a greater threat than corruption, poverty, or corporate fraud.
Funded lawmakers who devoted extraordinary amounts of time and money to regulating the lives of transgender Americans.
Supported state and federal efforts to restrict abortion access while calling it freedom.
Helped transform LGBTQ Americans, immigrants, religious minorities, and other vulnerable groups into political campaign props.
Paid government employees and contractors to search for diversity programs, pronouns, books, and academic courses deemed ideologically suspicious.
Funded investigations into universities accused of producing graduates who ask inconvenient questions.
Supported surveillance programs that collected enormous amounts of information while offering remarkably little transparency.
Expanded prisons and detention facilities while underfunding the housing, education, addiction treatment, and mental health programs that could reduce the need for them.
Propped up a healthcare system that spends more than nearly any nation on earth while leaving millions unable to afford basic care.
Spent billions on weapons systems and defense contracts while public schools struggled to hire teachers and repair buildings.
Maintained a government capable of finding unlimited money for war, enforcement, and punishment but endless excuses when the subject is healthcare, housing, or hunger.
Attached my name, however indirectly, to policies and actions I would almost certainly denounce if another country were doing them.
Of course, I didn't personally choose any of these things. Neither did you.
But every payday, every purchase, at every turn, the government takes its cut. Then it spends that money on wars, raids, detentions, political vendettas, and entire bureaucracies devoted to making vulnerable people's lives harder—things we'd never choose to fund if the decision were ours.
The hardest part isn't paying the taxes.
It's living with the purchases.
Ask your Republican politicians, family members, friends, neighbors, and acquaintances a simple question:
Is this what you want your tax dollars paying for?