We should just die

“Those people . . . ” Donald said, trailing off. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die.” 

— Fred Trump, My Uncle Donald Trump Told Me Disabled Americans Like My Son ‘Should Just Die’

This quote is from last year, when Fred Trump was hawking his book about his uncle, though I didn’t read it until recently. As a chronically ill person who has developed disabilities through disease progress and age, it doesn’t surprise me that the President is an open eugenicist. (You may remember he got in trouble for openly mocking a disabled reporter during his first campaign.) My lack of surprise isn’t just because he’s an awful person, though; it’s because so many people, even nominally liberal folks, feel the same way.

I’ve heard both sides of the issue: when I was young (in the 1990s) and my disabilities and illness weren’t apparent, I was often told by both older adults and peers that I needed to have kids and mother them, generally with the more or less explicitly stated premise that I was educated, white, and would produce the right kind of kids.

As I got older, people started asking about kids in a more “why don’t you have them?” way, and I learned pretty quickly that admitting that some of my chronic health problems were genetic was the quickest way to get baby-pushers out of my hair. My decision not to have kids stopped being selfish and became wise and brave, on the premise that my children would be the wrong kind of kids.

There’s no moral to this story: just the observation that Trump’s not alone in his feelings even if most people will be horrified by the extremity of this quote and the reference to expenses. I’m just grimly amused by the idea that we might finally get the death panels we’ve been threatened with since the Clinton years under a Trump presidency.