Tag: Disability

Hot Wheels

One of the tempests in the congressional teapot this month has been the uproar over Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett (D-Dallas) calling Governor Greg Abbott “Hot Wheels”. Abbott, of course, is a wheelchair user after a tree fell on him. It’s not the first time he’s been mocked for his disability; back in the summer of 2020, two Empower Texans staffers were caught making fun of him on a podcast that was accidentally published before it was edited.

Crockett is one of the new breed of aggressive Democrats who go after Republicans hard. For folks under about 45, there has been no time in which most prominent GOP politicians haven’t been mustache-twirling villains trying openly to destroy their political opponents and the federal government. Young Democrats and leftists see no point in playing nice with people who, in their lived experience, never play nice with them. And a lot of Democrats and left-leaning voters, sometimes including me, eat that red meat up.

It’s not like Abbott would have avoided knifing Crockett (politically) before this incident. And it’s not like Abbott hasn’t swallowed his pride and sucked right back up to the Wilks and Dunn machine in the years since their flunkies said worse about him than Crockett did. And it’s not like Republicans, including President Trump, haven’t made meaner fun of disabled folks before.

I have mixed feelings about what Crockett said: I’m not in a wheelchair and I doubt I will be in the near term, but I’ve been aware I might need one since I was in high school. If it were me, I’d laugh it off, but I’m not a Republican politician. I also despise Abbott precisely because of his policies toward his fellow disabled people; he’s been throwing us under the bus for a long time. Also he hates DEI, which includes benefits for disabled folks like him.

But it’s disingenuous for Crockett to say she didn’t think of his disability and his wheelchair when calling him “Hot Wheels”. She’s not wrong that Abbott’s a hypocrite. The MAGAts slamming her are hypocrites too, but their freedom to do what the little people can’t is part of their worldview. And even though she’s a member of the House of Representatives, the fact that Crockett is a Black woman makes her a little person in the eyes of MAGA.

The apology, or whatever she might say about calling Abbott “Hot Wheels”, isn’t for them. It’s for people like me, who would like to think our Democratic politicians are both more honest and a little better people than the worst Republicans.

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Book Review: The Anti-Ableist Manifesto by Tiffany Yu

The Anti-Ableist Manifesto: Smashing Stereotypes, Forging Change, and Building a Disability-Inclusive World by Tiffany Yu. This was a solid read, but I felt old and sad while reading. Old because I’d never have dreamt of showing Yu’s boldness around my disabilities; sad because considering disability activism and accommodations during Trump II is depressing.

The structure of the book is solid: short chapters with bullet points and questions for reflection. I’ll need to reread it slowly to answer the chapter questions. Yu communicated her values and goals and the steps to achieve them clearly. At the same time, the book has a millennial vibe about disability accommodation: proactive, identity-based, and assuming good faith in dealing with employers, businesses, and government, an assumption I don’t share. Some of this comes up explicitly in her chapters on working with disabilities. Yu’s optimism about improving workplaces doesn’t jibe with my experience. Her experience with government in California is also different to what I’d expect in Texas.

Part of our difference is generational, but also I’m reading the book in 2025. It was published before the election, which not only changed federal government but also confirmed a cultural change hostile to DEIA. President Trump is openly eugenicist and HHS Secretary Kennedy plans to solve chronic illness and other health problems by “reparenting” patients in organic work farms. Within the context of the manifesto, it makes sense that Yu barely mentioned the eugenic discrimination in triage of COVID patients. Yet the widespread acceptance of discrimination against the disabled during COVID both parallels and foreshadows the open bigotry of the current Republican administration.

A book that addressed those issues wouldn’t be Yu’s manifesto, though I’d read a book by Yu that addresses continued advocacy and community with other marginalized groups in a 2025 context. All of her advice is good and similar to that I’ve read for and by other marginalized groups. It’s just going to be harder to follow now than it would have been when Yu wrote it.

Part of the discomfort I felt while reading Yu’s book was internalized ableism and the feeling that I don’t do enough advocacy for myself or around disability in general. I’m glad Yu got over those feelings. Her book points the way to a world where disability doesn’t evoke shame and anger because the conditions that lead to them have changed for the better or been eliminated completely.

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.