Resisting Conceits of Revolving Turnstiles

Is this what you're afraid of? -- Jeremy Childs

James Hamblin makes the usual devastating and classically liberal argument for which The Atlantic is known, in his dissection of Trump's linguistic foibles. It is the type of feature which readers of the old media periodical appreciate. And I am, admittedly, a dilatory supporter of the publication. Early on in my starving vocation, I sent them poems, fiction, like thousands of aspirants, then stopped, and now only pitch to them when I am in a caffeine overdose of brilliant topic effort. Twenty years ago, I would have trusted Hamblin's byline and expertise, but do not take this to mean I can refute or undermine him with the same detail he utilizes to undermine the president. I used some of his same examples to push back against George Will's "Dangerous Disability" column, which trended on social media late last spring, in a more rapid, cursory fashion, and couldn't give it away. This has made me terse and caustic, because I still know how to do what journalists do, but I always have it harder, with a not quite figurative hand tied behind my back. I thought I could break the glass ceiling. I thought I could have a normal self-sufficient life, but no, the assholes in my state look at my age, my chronic condition, and say I have to categorize myself as "nursing home eligible" in order to maintain independence. I am not being off topic. Hamblin undermines himself without realizing it. Septuagenarians represent an expendable class, not that this is shocking. It is biologically easier to have a medical crisis at 70, or 69, than it is at 36, but he is, essentially, making a meritorious relegation of the aged. Pope Francis would certainly cry foul to that. In my piece, I cited evidence that Roosevelt would die in office, and did not have the time to burrow through microfilm in my battered chair to use the examples Hamblin does to buttress what we already know: FDR was a great Liberal, and but for the grace of god, if the public knew how sick he was as a paraplegic, closing out the ambitions of the Axis powers would have been much more complicated.

As a side note, if you believe my militancy is an aberration, who interred the Japanese? None other than the most powerful, and one of the wealthiest, cripples in the world. I cited more examples than Hamblin does, but my point was that whether or not FDR would drop dead, or JFK was spaced out on narcotics for degeneration, etc, we got through it without the merry Congressional nightmare of applying Amendment 25, and we've survived perfectly fine without Julian Assange revealing Angela Merkel's secret plan to conspire with Elizabeth Warren to remake the west in Castro's image, our birdseed perfectly apportioned.

I do not like Donald Trump, and would have preferred Governor Bush or Rand Paul, but the very charges the left deploys against him exposes why liberalism is ultimately untenable: disability is suddenly the hot button, but no one breathes a word about disability law and what reasonable accommodation means, with appropriate support. I may also agree with Hamblin about Reagan. I knew the old stage hand had dementia during his Iran Contra testimony, but both the country and President Reagan still functioned. Alzheimer's isn't a fucking movie. My grandfather lived with it for years before he effectively lost his mind. In essence, James Woods is accurate. Scratch a liberal and beneath their epidermis, ultimately you'll find a Nazi staring back. Cillizza wins this round, chicken noodle soup notwithstanding.

Damage Differential

The pubs and eateries along my radius on Walnut Street have a certain old city charm, and the Cafe at 2011 can boast a certain picturesque insularity, this wounded warrior gratified, that, last spring, the burly Irish got me over the innocuous step, onto the portable ramp, and I set eyes on the Black Adder for the first time, sort of indicting myself for a now pronounced anti-social aura that radiates from me, as I asked him if I could "stay". His response: All are welcome, and while I am not quite as committed an ideologue as he, I've become emotionally invested in the Liberty on the Rocks Meet Up.

But I'm self-conscious in terms of my physical dilapidation. This is  not to convey I was ever great at flaunting my femininity through dressing. Orthopedic surgery made my flexed contortions worse even in youth, but I have graduated, since I wiped out my savings in 2013,  toward a more thorough deterioration. I look like someone now living off the street, except when the will that has kept me alive resurges. Episodic breakthroughs.

I'm also tired of sitting outside, forcing my boys (whoa!) to sit with me on the sidewalk tables when they'd rather congregate in the bar. It is chilly now, and even if the thick set Irish firefighters were so inclined to haul the Jazzy Quantum up the plank, I cannot risk a circuitry breakdown as a result. My Quickie P-200 was already battered that spring, and was off balance, falling apart, so I cannot assume a gratifying struggle to enter the Cafe actually shorted it. I live in the power chair, and no model is that durable, but the Quantum is basically a battery and a plastic caster wheel casing, metal base, and I hate the fucking thing, know it cannot be subjected to punishment. If I attend, therefore, I will be consigned to waving at the guys through the window, feeling alienated as a result, irritated with my hearing loss--but the group matters to me. I've developed an emotional attachment to center city's marzipan radicalism. What to do?

I no longer support the Americans With Disabilities Act. It is a useless statue if properly scrutinized, and for every activist victory, there is regulatory pushback. The owner of the Cafe should not have to modify his establishment for a former middle class cripple on the skids, nearly deranged from the banquet of human suffering exposed and experienced in the Quaker geography of Southeastern Pennsylvania; Black Adder cannot be blamed for picking a location not modified for access, and it may be I am not perceived the way I imagine. It is equally true that I cannot fully engage if the clique has to be charitable by making a point of coming to me. They are there to mildly booze and share a meal while discussing politics. I am there to constrain my inner Mussolini from engaging in a shoot out with federal agents. Maybe one or two of them could hook me on downers, but it is not particularly a soluble issue. If Tom Reid were to pop up, and remember our off campus watering hole called Walios, he'd look at that continuum, probably shocked to compare me as the undergraduate he knew then, turning herself a corkscrew for Tassoni, hanging on Jerry McGuire's sleeve, to the ravaged grand dame that a non-violent software developer, with some additional assistance from Tony Stiles, has to reign in. A handful of local anarchists, conservatives, proselytizers, to these I've attached such internalized importance, in the waning days of functionality. A real diehard libertarian would probably say that the doctors kept you alive as a body to be exploited, and that is just the way it is. Liberals may have felt it was their duty to lift up your potential toward inclusion, and your failure is on your own head for giving the socialist paradigm the finger.

The real truth of the matter lies in self-hatred, what I am, the hell I've seen, like the surgeon detective in Anno 1790, and that too, is insoluble. Quadriplegia is a bitch. I've lived it over a half century, and want to stop living it now, and in disability culture, that is heresy, grumbling. If I want to attend, then attend already. Sigh.

Mulch

It was after this failed interview post that I noticed the probtheme link in my traffic sources, (it was also my birthday) and it led me to speculate on what my isp trackers  thought I was capable of. Scalping sweet briar on a spear shaft? I care far too much about my own ego to pelt lesbians with egg shells, and leaving vitriolic imagery with boiling vats aside, the reasons I have drifted rightward from the progressive advocacy Catherine represents in her Barack deification (I know, I have been there, though not, insofar as it concerns the Obamas, with them) is because I have been tortured on the rack of the lie of social equality fifty ways from Sunday.

And my interview, fuck wits, was to campaign for Planned Parenthood. It is incumbent upon me that I did not ask the girl on the phone, whose name was Emily, the right questions before I showed up, and so I gift wrapped my parachute when I realized it would be next to impossible for me to field that degree of inner city travel.

However, my point to the gay marriage girls is exactly the reality check my physical limitations represent: Gay marriage is cosmetic. Including people like me in the real world is not. I might have been able to handle in office clerical duties and was shot down. By what metric my exclusion on the basis of my brain damage is progressive in terms of reasonable accommodation, this eludes me. Perhaps when Catherine lowers her brimming temperature, she'd have a few thoughts in response.