It Doesn’t Work Like That
Saturday, I was reading what was supposed to be an academic, or at the very least, academic adjacent piece that purported to compare socialism and anarchism. To borrow a Scottish phrase, it was entirely windy pish. However, something stuck between what teeth I have left; it was irritating me far more than it should.
When deep into internet research I happened across a short mocking the “if you are well enough to take a holiday then you are well enough to work” criticism that has recently been taken up by the illiterati of the media, oligarch owned and social alike. Once again pulled into the septic pools of anti-disability rhetoric and influencers I noticed the similarity. Like my earnest anarchist, the world simply doesn't work like that. The impossibility of being Schrödinger’s cripple should be obvious to anyone unless there is a diagnosable cognitive deficit that prevents this. Perhaps we are missing a diagnostic criterion here; if they can't see that they are being bigoted and hate filled with no grip on the world that they inhabit, then it’s them who should be ushered off to wherever it is they think disabled people should go.
Before I digress into how best to “finally solve” the persecution problem with their own methods, back to the issue that discourse currently faces: truth has become an opinion. And, as we know, everyone is entitled to their opinion. While technically the case, this doctrine misses out that not all opinions can be true. I would suggest that not all opinions should be held, but I’ll leave that more moral judgement aside. When truth is absent, genocide becomes an opinion. This is the discourse of the extremist right: collapse truth and insert mythology in its place. It happens over and over again: a golden age, an external threat, a future stolen, and a simple them and us world view. If you are not us, then you are the “them” that is against us. Without getting bogged down in detail, right wing mythology places itself as an entity detached and unsullied by the present, and thus its behaviour is justified under the banner of opposition and not being like “them”. The rules don't apply because the rules are corrupt.
What we see today is right wing extremism doing what it does best: exacerbating and raising societal tensions when there is genuine scarcity and economic peril for the majority, while protecting the property and economic interests of the wealthy who create that very peril. It is a function of capitalism and very much a function of the monopolistic billionaire capitalism we have now. It is not without a certain irony that the status quo is unsustainable for almost every position on the political spectrum.
It isn't difficult to say we can't go on like this. This is being weaponised against the most vulnerable; the idea of society caring for the vulnerable, disadvantaged, let alone the disabled, is unsustainable. At the same time, AI companies can burn through billions per quarter, and that is fine. That spending is disgustingly unsustainable; it doesn't take much to see that the current trajectory of monopoly capitalism is unsustainable. So, quite rightly, people are disgusted enough to reject the feudalist, torment nexus future of the tech oligarchy doom cult.
I wish I had answers; I feel powerless and irrelevant. Insane economics and fascist politics in a society that is in accelerated decline feel unstoppable. I am reminded of Niemöller; they are coming for my disabled comrades and me first, only this time there will be cheering. It feels like it is already too late, and that the horror show must play through before anything can change. The history of people is not one that fills me with hope or optimism.
The disabled are the most vulnerable, the least able to put up any resistance to being dehumanised and thus being solved. During the pandemic, there were people I knew who had the opinion, which was disturbingly common across the health and fitness world, that the weak were a sacrifice worth making so that the rest of society, the strong ones, could survive and carry on. That this would be a natural cull to the benefit of society. They could not understand when I broke off from them completely, see I had been one of them, they didn't see me as one of the weak; but I was. During the pandemic I was incredibly ill and vulnerable and those who cared went above and beyond to protect me and give me the best chance of making it out. I told them, that is me you are willing to sacrifice on the altar of consumer capitalism.
It was an eye-opening time; I saw people’s true colours, good and bad, along with the relative numbers of each. It doesn't fill me with confidence. People live their lives oblivious that they are milliseconds away from being the person they have decided is subhuman waste to be disposed of. No one chooses disability, whatever Poppy in the Telegraph thinks, and it’s no fun despite the Daily Mail headlines saying otherwise. The disabled and the vulnerable, we get to see how broken and failed the system is. We live daily with how society, its structures, its values, and its systems, are broken; we live with the reality that there is no “social contract” in our society. Individualism has won over selfish hearts. When society collapses, extreme ideologically supported hatred fills the space where compassion and cooperation should be.
I find it hard not to feel hopeless; I remind myself that I can be a voice among many telling the true story of the present, and that our voices will echo through history. There are days this feels like a hopeful truth and others where it rings as a deceit designed to flatter my ego. What I do doesn't have meaning; instead, I comfort myself by assigning it qualities it doesn't inherently possess. Legacy is the polite pursuit of hubris.
Not every day is sitting with legs dangling, gazing wistfully into nothingness; however, the sense that the dark clouds of violence and oppression are closing in never quite leaves. Those of us with no shelter are more aware of the rain. Which is to say, not everything has to have a higher purpose; more than ever we need to be immersed in the process being the point and detach from feeling our value is derived (in any way) from our productivity.
Today I have only questions and anxiety, sitting with the desire to enjoy my life. I am blessed that, along with the challenges and limitations, I still have opportunities. Until next week,
