by Cruelty because of disability is the unfortunate, de facto, standard of living for anyone who dares to live outside the mainstream of the able-bodied merely by purchase of birth. Janna, a Deaf Woman, and my wife, feels the sting of that cruel indignity every single day with impatient people who refuse to acknowledge her Deafness and who force her to read lips or to use her voice because they don’t feel like writing or finding a common cure that will enable a fair communication dyad that can be understood by all parties.
That inevitable cruelty is part of the daily station of the Disabled, and those of us who love and care for our Disabled friends and family feel that cruelty, too, by proxy, and we do our best to help create a cure of basic human courtesy. We are often unsuccessful.
What fascinates me, in a maudlin and depressing way, is when families of the disabled place politics above doing the right thing. A glowing example of a family member standing up and doing right is found in David Axelrod, one of President Obama’s dearest friends and campaign managers, and the fact that Axelrod is willing to shave off his 40-year-old mustache in order to raise a million dollars for epilepsy research. Axelrod’s oldest child has epilepsy.
Okay, so two Humanist Liberals — David Axelrod and I — both support non-cruelty for the Disabled we love and honor and that, by default, is also why we share unbridled acclamation for Obamacare because we know, because we live it, that Obamacare protects the Disabled and the other unfortunate and guarantees them universal healthcare no matter what happens to the family and friends currently advocating for them.
Those facts of love irrevocably lead us to circle around to the conservative side of healthcare and we are curiously presented with two raw, and unforgiving, examples of hardcore Right Wing lunatics like Sarah Palin and George F. Will who both have severely disabled Down Syndrome children in their lives, and yet, they loathe and despise Obamacare because, I believe, the human solution was championed by a historic Democrat, and not a Republican demagogue.
It’s time, again, for patriotic Americans to rise up to protest this obvious infringement on our economic and personal freedom. November is just around the corner. Today, the Supreme Court issued their ruling on Obamacare. In November, We the People will issue ours.
Obamacare is just an unpopular law enacted by grotesque logrolling (securing three Democratic senators’ votes with the “Louisiana Purchase,” the “Gator-aid” and the “Cornhusker Kickback”). Furthermore, Obamacare passed because grossly corrupt conduct by Justice Department prosecutors in the trial of Republican Sen. Ted Stevens of Alaska had cost him re-election.
Both Palin and Will reek of disingenuous humanity in their faux revulsion in the face of Obamacare. Instead of honestly championing what Obamacare means to millions of people, Disabled or not, in guaranteeing them proper healthcare coverage, they instead choose to play down to politics instead of up to love — even though they have directly experienced the misdemeanors of cruelty that the Down Syndrome children in their lives deal with, and will deal with, for the rest of their lives, and that’s the confounding part of this whole politics-as-per-usual scheme to one-up the other guy just to make yourself feel better.
Obamacare is now the unstoppable law of the land — and conservatives like Sarah Palin and George F. Will should have been leading the right fight right from the start to support proper healthcare for every single American as a Right of Birth and not as an Act of Congress.
Chief Justice John Roberts led them by the nose up the proper pathway, but it will always be their damning disgrace that that both Palin and Will tried to sink universal healthcare — even though they knew better — because they live every day with the reality of requiring the right thing.
I think both Will and Palin suffer the idea that family will somehow always be around to take care of its own through their privately paid insurance. A costly assumption to make!
Right! They both have enough money to care for their disabled children — but what about the rest of the nation? You’d think by the divination of their lives that they would both be preternaturally more compassionate about these longevity and long-term care matters of living and thriving.
I suspect their colness and inhumanity comes from being wealthy – they can buy all the care and support they need either directly or through insurance and always have been able to – they have no concept or what it is like to live – as millions do – without that saftey-net. Their priorities are to ensure they and their like have enough money to make what are real problems and issues for most people merely an expense.
That’s a great point, Nicola. One would hope that daily, direct, access to cruelty because of disability would somehow temper them to be a little more generous and slightly more human and much more understanding of the more unfortunate around us — but, I suppose, sometimes love of the almighty dollar defeats any tendrilic caring.