Anger and Apathy

Today is just a rant to get something off my chest.  Life can be a bitch to get some of this frustration out there when you have become like white noise to almost everyone around you.  Something happened two days ago and it raises numerous flags for me.

We have #blacklivesmatter, we #bluelivesmatter, and even an #alllivesmatter but I am left with the impression following this incident that there is an underbelly of belief out there that some lives are more valuable than others.  What am I ranting about, the planned, announced and completed murder of 19 disabled individuals, leaving 26 others injured and where is the outrage.  The same outrage that created the movements mentioned at the beginning of this paragraph.

The perpetrator of this horrendous event had been in custody after submitting documentation that he could “obliterate 470 disabled people” to the police.  He turned himself, an action I would interpret as a cry for help and they still choose to release him on March 2.  So we now have disabled killing other disabled, in part, due to a disparity of service provision.

This is indicative of a societal thought process, “groupthink“.  In some situations it can manifest itself through terrorism but it can also manifest itself as “disability erasure“.  We begin to marginalized based on productivity and we do it to ourselves.  Although some of my peers may deny it, the truth is approach a Paralympian and congratulate him on his efforts at the “special Olympics“.  Two completely different events but one that inadvertently marginalizes the other.

And now we have done it again.  If this had of been a facility for veterans there would be world-wide condemnation.  But it wasn’t, it was an institute servicing persons with developmental disabilities.  I don’t hear much indignation over this one and that just leads me to wonder how much we have segmented ourselves…