I can only think that people who are happy in this current social climate are fooling themselves or selling something, because my experience since 2020 as an immunocompromised person has been the same. Friends that have told me they “care about” and “want to help” people will not wear a mask and have stopped talking to me. It is an incredibly alienating life and I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t irrevocably changed my opinion of the notion of a broader public goodwill. I have made concerted efforts to find reading material on the history of the medically vulnerable and marginalized and, ideally, its intersections with Marxist principles if I’m lucky, and the few things I have managed to find paint a dour picture. Hundreds of years - thousands, even - and the disabled are still seen exactly as they were then: nuisances at best, a rot to be cleansed at worst. To call me doomer is an understatement at this point. No one sees me as human, no one sees me with any value, or they would do this very simple thing that everyone at this conference seems to have done without spontaneously combusting or whatever it is everyone thinks happens when a venue enforces rules. So when I see things like this, I am relieved, and pleased, and I hope people take the message: you all can do it, you just don’t want to.
I can only think that people who are happy in this current social climate are fooling themselves or selling something, because my experience since 2020 as an immunocompromised person has been the same. Friends that have told me they “care about” and “want to help” people will not wear a mask and have stopped talking to me. It is an incredibly alienating life and I’d be lying if I said it hasn’t irrevocably changed my opinion of the notion of a broader public goodwill. I have made concerted efforts to find reading material on the history of the medically vulnerable and marginalized and, ideally, its intersections with Marxist principles if I’m lucky, and the few things I have managed to find paint a dour picture. Hundreds of years - thousands, even - and the disabled are still seen exactly as they were then: nuisances at best, a rot to be cleansed at worst. To call me doomer is an understatement at this point. No one sees me as human, no one sees me with any value, or they would do this very simple thing that everyone at this conference seems to have done without spontaneously combusting or whatever it is everyone thinks happens when a venue enforces rules. So when I see things like this, I am relieved, and pleased, and I hope people take the message: you all can do it, you just don’t want to.