First, they came for the immigrants.....
We have seen this movie before, and it does NOT end well at all! And remember, every time, the road to fascism is literally always paved with, "you're overreacting".
Trump's increasingly fascist agenda is currently picking up warp speed as we speak. Mass roundups and deportations of immigrants (and not only "illegals", by the way!), literal concentration camps (this time with crass merchandising too!), no due process, stifling dissent, unitary rule by decree, and so on, is bad enough as it is, and it will NOT stop there. And his gutting of Medicaid and SNAP, especially the part about the "work requirements", is clearly not only a classist agenda against poor people, but also a eugenicist agenda against disabled people as well. (From that very first time when we saw him openly mock that disabled reporter, we all should have known exactly what Trump was really all about.) Fascism and eugenics have always gone hand in hand, as we have infamously seen throughout history, just as much as it is aligned with misogyny and racism.
And now he has brazenly signed a sweeping and very disturbing executive order targeting homeless people, especially those with mental disabilities. They, along with disabled people in general, are the "canaries in the coal mine" of every fascist oppression and genocide. This, dear reader, is how it escalates even further. You were warned.
And the Democrats as a group, with a few exceptions here and there, have been pretty spineless throughout this whole ordeal. And even before the election, they were pretty lackluster and neoliberal too. Not only did they fail to implement a genuine, economically progressive agenda, but their divisive identity politics really seemed to get the better of them, and the asinine "catch and release" and "defund the police" approach to crime that some of them had regrettably supported, has served only to bait voters into voting for the self-proclaimed "law and order" (lol) strongman dictator.
For years, at least since his first successful campaign began in 2015, Trump has been proudly waving his red flags like a matador in front of a bull, while the majority of Americans responded with a collective shrug (that is, if they don't support him even more as a result). Though now, hopefully the tide is finally, if belatedly, turning against him.
(For the EPSTEINTH time, RELEASE THE FILES!)
That said, some activists on social media (Bluesky, of course, but also a bit on X and Substack too) recently seem to have missed the mark about exactly how we got here. Some have claimed that because we "rushed back to normal" from the pandemic and therefore somehow in doing so "threw disabled people by the wayside" when we ended the COVID "mitigation" measures, that was eugenicist and has thus led to the latest fascist and eugenicist tendencies. Sigh. Normally, I would not even dignify such a wild assertion with a response, but it has been said over and over again so many times that now I think I should address it.
First, the specious claim that we somehow "rushed" (lol) back to normal can be debunked right out the gate: waiting two years is NOT exactly "rushing"! It was more like taking the very, very scenic route back to normal. Remember, these so-called "mitigation" measures (lockdowns, mask mandates, antisocial distancing, school and business closures, and so on) were originally supposed to be for "just two weeks". Riiiiiight. How quickly we forget! And it's not like these illiberal and authoritarian measures were really effective, as the best evidence shows that these measures were worse than useless overall. So two years of rolling mandates of various flavors, was two years too long. The only way out of a pandemic is through, and "flattening the curve" only drags it out longer than it would otherwise be.
Of course, this is speaking in generalities. What about disabled people more specifically? Well, disabled people are NOT a monolith, so we need to get even more specific still: immunocompromised, medically fragile, or otherwise severely and disproportionately vulnerable to the specific virus in question. Again, there is zero evidence that these illiberal "mitigation" measures actually protected them one iota, and to the extent that they delayed the inevitable, such vulnerable people were essentially forced to isolate even longer until at least the very worst of the pandemic was over. And in the long run, doing so only increased their odds of exposure, while decreasing whatever natural immunity they would have had otherwise.
Meanwhile, plenty of people with various disabilities were directly and indirectly harmed by the measures themselves, the same or more so than the general population. This was true for all ages, of course, but a fortiori for children.
Thus, it would have been far better on balance had we simply adopted the "flu strategy", let natural "herd immunity" develop as a wall of protection around the truly vulnerable people, and kept society and the economy functioning as normally as humanly possibly throughout the entire pandemic, all while making an earnest effort to actually treat the disease. Forcing everyone to live as if they are medically fragile or immunocompromised doesn't actually help those who really are. And revoking civil rights and liberties ultimately helps no one except the oligarchs.
It should go without saying, but it still needs to be said. Liberty is NOT a zero-sum game! My liberty protects you, and your liberty protects me. And as fellow Americans, we should thus protect each other. See what I did there?
So, long story short, no one was actually "thrown by the wayside" in the name of "back to normal". And in any case, the pandemic is long over now: even though the virus still exists to this day, by 2023 (or earlier) it has mutated down to become far less dangerous, and practically everyone has already had it, often multiple times. It's basically the new common cold or seasonal flu now. So get that specious narrative out of your heads. And furthermore, if anything, these illiberal and undemocratic measures (and worse, the jab mandates) only paved the way for full-blown fascism by shifting the Overton Window in the direction of authoritarianism, while also at the same time angering the "silent majority" into being more likely to vote for the party that (ironically) did these things the least during the pandemic, and were much sooner to go back to normal. The Branch Covidians really have a LOT to answer for!
(No wonder the MAGA-aligned crypto-fascists were able to pose themselves as the "reasonable" or "based" ones, until they got (re-)elected and the masks came off once again. And the Dems lost a lot of credibility by stubbornly waiting so long to pivot on Covid, and then doing so abruptly.)
And when some people on the fringes argue that such illiberal "mitigation" should never have ended at all, well, they are literally giving ammunition to the fascists to not only reify and reinforce authoritarianism in general, but also to unwittingly bait them and even the fence-sitters into even more eugenics as well. You can just hear the fascists whipping up an even bigger eugenicist scapegoating frenzy now: "Those people over there are costing you, not only your hard-earned money, but your civil rights and liberties as well!", and people not being able to see the irony of it all.
Fascism begets fascism. Every single time.
(Mic drop)
P.S. Masks are still useless (or worse) for the most part against airborne viruses. See the 2023 Cochrane Review, for example. And as long as we are on the general subject of covering one's faces, albeit in a very different, non-medical context, there is NO good reason why any law enforcement agents (including ICE) should be covering their faces while making arrests. NONE. Seriously, if you really are so sure you are doing the right thing, then show your faces!
