Hello, hello! How’s everyone doing this lovely Wednesday? I’m feeling very ranty. Well, it’s Monday as I’m writing this, so hopefully I’m feeling better on Wednesday, but I doubt it. Why am I angry, you ask? (I know you didn’t ask, but let’s pretend you did). The current administration. Why else? I mean… you saw what RFK Jr. said about Autistic kids, right? Sure, he tried to frame it as caring because he’s going to figure out the causes of Autism and fix everything. By September. My dude… how much of your brain did that worm eat? Low blow. I know. I’m trying my best to be civil here. Anyway! In case you missed it, these are the exact words he said regarding children with Autism:

“These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted.”

If this is what the administration thinks about Autistic people, it’s what they think about all disabled people. It’s what they even think of you two, Hot Wheels (Abbott) and Musk. You’re not special to them. But I digress. This statement that RFK Jr. made is nothing new or original. It’s part of the ableism that’s so deeply ingrained in our society that people openly agree with this bullshit. If you’re not capable of being worked to death by your rich overlords, then you’re just a burden on society and your community and your family. You’re what the Nazis called a “useless eater” which meant you were a “life unworthy of life.” It doesn’t matter that nature or God or whatever you believe in fucked up your genes and made you this way (or that you were involved in an accident or just got old or any other number of things), it’s somehow your fault and you should suffer and anguish over being such a burden. It sounds stupid when I put it like that, right? And yet even disabled people themselves are trained to believe this nonsense. I struggle with it a lot. I know others who do too. But to have a government openly spew this vitriol is deeply concerning.

When you think about the Holocaust (at least I hope you stop and remember it from time to time), if you’re like me, your first thought is of the atrocities that happened to Jews. But in 1939 (approximately two years before Nazis started mass murdering Jews), Nazis implemented the Euthanasia Program which became Aktion T4. In the beginning, they required all doctors/clinics/hospitals/etc. to report any children (newborns to age 3) who showed signs of mental and physical deficits, then the Nazis would encourage the families to turn these babies and toddlers over to special institutions for care. What was the care they offered? A gas chamber. The age gradually increased to 17, then Aktion T4 was implemented which broadened the scope of the Euthanasia Program to include adults in both public and private institutions. This phase of the program is estimated to have taken 70,000 lives. However, the program kept going in secret after Hitler publicly ordered its halt. It expanded to include people who were simply too old and bombing victims and more. They stopped using gas chambers, opting instead for overdoses and the like. But it kept going throughout the war and conservative estimates are that 250,000 people were murdered because they were deemed to be burdens on society. And I’m not even going to get into the horrible experiments that the Nazis did on disabled people. But I truly believe this is where we’re currently heading under this administration. It starts out with innocent enough statements and promises of help and it turns into “let’s murder all the cripples!”. Then things just get worse from there for everybody else.

And none of this is to say America has been innocent of shit like that. We have our own Eugenics movement, which we’re honestly still struggling with in a lot of ways. Murder has been part of it. Forced sterilizations. A push toward the “perfect” family, but only if it’s a mommy, daddy, and 2.5 kids. Etc. Yeah. It’s not a great part of history for us either. I don’t know why we’re letting it get a foothold in our government once again. Okay. I know why (because rich dumbasses just want to make more money for themselves without paying taxes and poor dumbasses believed the hype and decided the rich ones could run our country), but I don’t know WHY… you know? These are openly horrible people. Racist. Sexist. Ableist. Transphobic. Homophobic. Only keep the poor around to work themselves to death in their factories (jobs… whatever) for money they’ll never have time to enjoy (if they even make enough to cover basics). Cry and throw tantrums when anyone even suggests they pay their fair share in taxes. But sure. They have your best interests at heart.

Personally, I’m not convinced that cripples are the useless eaters in this country. Politicians make ridiculous amounts of money for no reason. They don’t even work most of the year unless you count schmoozing and going to fancy dinners and golfing every weekend on the taxpayers dime. They never come to any agreements. They dig us further and further into debt, then blame the few social programs we have so it seems like cripples and regular old people are to blame. Instead, they could take pay cuts, make the billionaires pay their fair share, and eliminate a crapton of the national debt in the process. The fact that they all suck at their jobs and don’t do anything remotely productive kind of makes them sound like the useless eaters and wastes of space, but what do I know? I’m just a scumbag cripple who’s a burden on society.

And now I’m getting uncivilized, so I’ll stop there. I’ll be back next week with the regularly scheduled book review!