Trouble

[Fair warning, you may want to buckle up. This will not be a pleasant post, and I am 100% sure I will make people angry and possible lose friends over it. If you are thin-skinned, you may want to just move along. And, as usual, I will be quick with the delete key for aggressive, threatening, or mean comments. You've been warned.]

The brain is a funny thing, how when we're doing things our subconscious is always working and making connections our thinking brain hasn't thought of. Which is why I was rather curious about the fact I suddenly had the song, Trouble in River City from the musical, The Music Man, going through my head while I mucked stalls this morning. After a little thinking, I have it figured out. My revision of the song might give you a clue as to why it was the morning's earworm. 

[For those who don't know the musical, it is about a con man who travels from town to town creating fear and selling band instruments as a result. This takes the form of telling parents that the pool hall will ruin their children and they need an occupation for their children lest they fall prey to this evil. His usual MO is to jump town before the instruments arrive despite his promise of teaching the children how to play them. In the musical, our grifter has a heart of gold, and due to falling in love with the town librarian gives up his wicked ways.]

In my version of the song, the con man is RFK., who I am pretty sure does not have a heart of gold. (You did know I'd write about him tonight, didn't you?) Without further ado...

A vaccine, don't you understand?

Friend, either you're closing your eyes to a situation

you do not wish to acknowledge

Or you are not aware of the caliber of disaster

Indicated by the presence of vaccines in your community.

Well, ya got trouble my friend

Right here I say, trouble right in the US of A, why sure I'm not a doctor

Certainly, mighty proud I say, I'm always mighty proud to say it. 

I consider the hours I spend sharing my opinions as if they are fact golden.

Now I know all you folks are the right kind of parents

I'm gonna be perfectly frank

Would you like to know what kinda of things happen when you buy in to all that claptrap 

That doctors like to spout? 

Reactions, that's what, fevers and shakes and hysteria.

The list keeps goin', things don't stop there.

The next thing you know, your darlin' little tot will have...

Autism.

And that my friends is something you don't want to let loose on your family.

Trouble (oh, we got trouble)

Right here in the US of A (right here in the US of A)

With a capitol "T" and rhymes with "V" and that 

Stands for vaccine (that stands for vaccine)

We've surely got trouble (we've surely got trouble)

Right here in the US of A (right here in the US of A)

Gotta figure out how to keep the young ones healthy, not a burden.

Obviously, I am going to address RFK's comments regarding people with autism. In case you missed it, the most egregious part was, "They'll [children with autism] never pay taxes, they'll never hold a job, they'll never write a poem, they'll never go out on a date. Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted."  And in another section he says, "Autism destroys families." There was also mention of children being a burden. 

Now while I have plenty of thoughts about the idea of any children being a burden and not having value because they won't pay taxes, I still cannot write our my very personal thoughts with regard to the value of my children without significant swearing. So. Much. Swearing. 

What I can do is suggest that when historians look back on this particular era of history, which sadly, may well be under the heading, "The Fall of the United States" in that particular chapter in the textbook, there will be all sorts of thoughts about why a rather functional and seemingly caring country could so quickly be okay with the idea of the disabled and infirm being sent to death camps which were oh, so comfortingly called, 'wellbeing camps'. And perhaps the beginning of the end was the idea that a vaccine could cause autism and this was something to be avoided at all costs. That is was far, far better to allow your child to contract contagious and potentially deadly diseases rather than run the chance that they might develop autism as a result. If you look at it this way, death of a child is far preferable to a child with autism. 

Ultimately it becomes a matter of what you are more afraid of. Clearly there are a great many people who see death as the preferable option. Because when people are operating out of fear, they are going to make the choice to avoid what they perceive to be the worst option. To many people, having a child who can't 'keep up', who might not be successful in terms of prestige or finances, who might need to live at home for the duration of their lives, who might need more support than a typical child is the worst-case scenario of parenting. In the adoption world I saw this all the time. If a child gave even a hint that they might not be able to move out on their own at an appropriate time, then that child waited and waited and waited. And if enough people begin to see a child who is not typical as an unnatural burden, something to be avoided, then there are some logical steps that follow. I believe what we are seeing is just the very next step in a direct path to a dictatorship deciding that these same children are not worth keeping alive.

Official Nazi records characterized the disabled as "useless eaters" and "burdens upon themselves and the nation's resources" and having "lives unworthy of living". They were loaded onto busses and sent to extermination camps. Parents who gave birth to a disabled child were told the child was being taken somewhere to receive treatment. Instead, the child was "humanely euthanized" and the parents never knew. When I hear RFK use the term, 'wellbeing camps', it is incredibly foreboding. 

When we as a country allow the disabled to be marginalized, to be mocked, to be stripped of rights and aid, we run a very great risk of deciding that it is better for them to be put out of their perceived misery. We are on a very slippery slope here my friends. We must stand together for what is right and good and not allow a single one of us to be denied personhood or value.