30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the unemployment rate for people with disabilities is still twice the rate for non-disabled people. One of the key reasons may be that many ableist assumptions about disability and basic competence are still so widely considered common sense that we don’t even think of them as discrimination. Then, just when it seems like employers are starting to think differently about disability, competence, and employment, popular politics intervenes to reinforce everyone’s worst instincts.
A few weeks ago, news and social media followers were alternately distracted or amused by a new round of health and mental state spitballing against President Trump, based on the idea that he’s secretly physically or mentally disabled, or both. Trump is old and infirm. He’s physically failing. Worst of all, he’s either mentally ill or suffering from some sort of age-related dementia! These mental fitness arguments are also often used to explain Trump’s more outrageous actions and offensive personality traits, even his beliefs. Several of the key “takeaways” from Mary Trump’s forthcoming book … though significantly not all of them by far … apparently include assertions of clinical mental illness and “personality disorders.”
Since well before Trump’s 2016 election, speculating freely about his mental and physical “fitness” for the job has been a popular if unofficial tactic for many of those who oppose and resist him and his administration. However, not all of Trump’s critics are so quick to jump on the “Trump-is-sick” bandwagon.
In The Atlantic, David A. Graham makes a similar, though slightly more equivocal argument, focusing on what he considers “extensive evidence” that he is “temperamentally unfit to lead the country.” His argument here is interesting, because it skates very close to diagnosing Trump with some kind of mental illness. Yet, Graham concludes by rejecting ableist arguments entirely and suggesting we all focus instead on his actions and behavior. This may reflect the fact that in the popular understanding, the line between mere personality traits or “temperament” and mental pathology is very fuzzy.
Caroline Reilly of BitchMedia notes that this tactic has never been confined to just President Trump, writing:
“We’ve seen this playbook used time and again: We saw it when Hillary Clinton fainted in 2016 as she battled pneumonia; we saw it when Bernie Sanders had a heart attack in 2019; and we see it in current conversations about Joe Biden’s stutter. Ableism, it seems, is bipartisan.“
In a Washington Post editorial, leading disability activist and disability policy expert Rebecca Cokley takes this a step further, offering an excellent rebuttal to these attacks on their substance, but also pointing out what so many other disabled people have felt since ableism first became a go-to rhetorical tactic against Trump. These accusations of physical and mental “infirmity” may or may not damage Trump politically, but they absolutely hurt and harm people with disabilities.
“Every single professional with a disability I know has been questioned privately and publicly about whether their “condition” hinders their ability to do their job. This is a universal truth and fear for any individual across physical, mental, intellectual, sensory and chronic illness communities.“
As Reilly further observes, ableist attacks on individual politicians have a much broader corrosive effect on disabled people more generally:
“… Every time a politician stumbles, stutters, or misspeaks, we seemingly return to that toxic notion that to be ill is to be less than, to be less capable and less worthy of a job or respect.”
Whether in politics or management, disability discrimination is lazy. Instead of facing up to actually terrible employees … or a loose-cannon President … we look for an escape hatch that allows us to “get rid of them” without taking responsibility for what they stand for and why people support them in the first place.
This can bring temporary relief, but it leaves deeper problems to fester. And these arguments also usually produce collateral damage. In both politics and the workplace, loose talk of mental instability, chronic illness, and physical impairment is like mustard gas on a WWI battlefield. It’s tempting to use, but it can’t be controlled and can blow back on anyone.
Physical and mental fitness arguments in politics also have a troubling history. In 1972, Vice-Presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton was dropped because he had been treated for depression. No one candidate is essential, but who is to say the United States didn’t lose an outstanding leader when Thomas Eagleton fell to ableist fears of mental disorder?
It’s also worth remembering that totalitarian regimes have used psychological diagnoses to neutralize political opponents as recently as the 1970s and ‘80s. Deviance from approved ideology wasn’t just a political problem in the Soviet Union. Disagreement was treated as a literal pathology. It’s an extreme example, but we come pretty close to it when we start labeling abhorrent beliefs as some kind of personal clinical deviance, rather than signs of deep social and ideological division. The implications for free speech and democracy are chilling.
And again, using the stigma of disability as a political weapon also helps keep people with all kinds of physical and mental conditions stigmatized and economically dependent. The social and financial costs of this are massive, and not contained just to disabled people themselves.
So, what do we do instead? How do we respond to employees, or politicians, who we believe may be sick, fragile, or clinically unstable? With workplaces riven with competition and politics so polarized, how can we effectively protect ourselves from those who we feel are genuinely unfit? Here are five principles to keep in mind:
1. Stay away from armchair diagnosis
Most people can’t help connecting “weird” or “irrational” behavior with “mental illness” … or stumbles and awkward movements with disability or “frailty.” That’s usually regarded as simply observant, but it’s also ableism … unsupported assumptions about a person’s mental or physical state based on superficial evidence. And most of us have at best a superficial understanding of mental and physical disabilities.
Don’t do it. Stick with what you know, and set aside what you can only speculate. That goes for what other people speculate too, even when they present as psychological professionals or medical doctors. If they haven’t met and conducted a proper examination, then their opinion is just that, and no more reliable than anyone else’s.
2. Focus on individual people’s actions and behaviors
This is prejudice 101, but it never hurts to review. Resist the temptation to rely on what you expect from different “kinds” of people, and assess each person as an individual. What matters is what people do and how they behave with others, not what their health or mental status might or might not be.
The key thing to remember is that while most disabilities have effects on the disabled people who have them, neither physical nor mental disabilities can truly predict or explain what any person will do or can do. Any physically disabled people can be capable of performing any physical task, either in the usual way or with adaptations and accommodations. And any mentally disabled person can be perfectly reliable, rational, and analytical … able to process any tasks, using the usual methods, or some different routines and supports.
In any case, if you are assessing a coworker, employee, or a politician, your only concern is results. Are they doing a good job? Are they working well with others, if working with others is necessary and important? If they are having difficulties, can they be surmounted with reasonable accommodations, or maybe a different perspective on the matter?
This is one of the rare instances where a genuine businesslike approach actually helps. Results are what matters, not half-baked theories, personal hang-ups, or prejudices.
3. Focus on ideas and ideologies
At first glance, this runs counter to distinctly American values of fairness and nonpartisanship. You’re not supposed to judge a person for their politics, or either punish or reward them for their personal views and beliefs.
Yet, even in the workplace, while retail, partisan politics shouldn’t be a factor, some ideas and beliefs are understood to be off-limits, or inherently counter-productive to the job at hand. Open racism, sexism, homophobia, and other beliefs are not welcomed or sustainable in well-functioning organizations.
And in politics, judging and acting on people’s belief systems is entirely appropriate … it’s what politics is.
Also, it’s important not to confuse objectionable beliefs and behaviors with mental illness. Racism is bad, but it’s not a mental illness. Sexism is gross, but it’s not a pathology. Cruelty and narcissism are unpleasant, and ultimately dysfunctional, but they aren’t illnesses. It’s tempting to some people to equate terrible beliefs and attitudes with impairment, but they aren’t the same things. Disabled people aren’t more likely to be evil, and evil can’t be explained away by disability.
4. No matter how dire a personnel matter is, don’t look for an easy way out
When someone is driving either chaos or chronic mediocrity in your organization, you want them out. And there are always procedural and “political” barriers to making that happen. There are steps to follow for fair termination. There are consequences to deal with if the person you are getting rid of has allies.
It’s the same in politics. For good reason, our institutions have barriers in place to prevent getting rid of people we have once elected just because we’ve changed our minds and things aren’t working out. And no one political or philosophical viewpoint is allowed to lord it over all others merely because they have a thin majority at any given time. Barriers and consequences are built into the system for a reason.
Either way, in politics and in workplaces, taking short-cuts around those barriers is seductive, but also potentially illegal and certainly a bad idea. One of the shortcuts people think of is physical or mental “unfitness.” If we can “prove” that the problem isn’t the person or their ideas and policies, but rather an unfortunate illness, then we can get rid of them with something that may feel like a clear conscience, maybe without consequences. We all supposedly agree that an “incapacitated” person can’t do a job, or serve in an elected office. So it looks like a path to agreement where agreement can’t otherwise be found.
Core problems in workplaces and politics don’t go away just because a particular person is gone. Serious problems are almost never all the fault of one person … in politics, and in workplaces too.
5. Don’t throw around stigmatizing language about mental or physical disability
Meanwhile, an important piece of background culture change is to quietly but firmly break the habit of pathologizing language.
Stop calling people or ideas lazy, sick, weak, fragile, crazy, nuts, certifiable, or insane. Language like this may seem unimportant, and it can be very difficult to avoid. But it is important, and disabled people notice. We really do. Stigmatizing language like this hurts. It weighs us down. And acceptance of it sends a message to us and everyone around us that it’s okay to judge people based on their real or perceived physical or mental disabilities. This is toleration of illegal, harmful prejudice, and it needs to stop, especially when it’s used casually.
These principles are themselves common sense. Most of us know they are the right ways to approach questions we might have about other people’s mental or physical conditions. We only overrule ourselves because our prejudices also feel like common sense to us. That’s why we can’t assume our own good intentions. We need to be deliberate about rejecting ableism, in our own everyday lives and workplaces, and in the intense heat and high stakes of politics.
PHOENIX (AP) — Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a prominent proponent of debunked public health claims whom Donald Trump has promised to put in charge of health initiatives, said Saturday that Trump would push to remove fluoride from drinking water on his first day in office if elected president.
Fluoride strengthens teeth and reduces cavities by replacing minerals lost during normal wear and tear, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The addition of low levels of fluoride to drinking water has long been considered one of the greatest public health achievements of the last century.
Kennedy made the declaration Saturday on the social media platform X alongside a variety of claims about the heath effects of fluoride.
“On January 20, the Trump White House will advise all U.S. water systems to remove fluoride from public water,” Kennedy wrote. Trump and his wife, Melania Trump, “want to Make America Healthy Again,” he added, repeating a phrase Trump often uses and links to Kennedy.
Trump told NBC News on Sunday that he had not spoken to Kennedy about fluoride yet, “but it sounds OK to me. You know it’s possible.”
The former president declined to say whether he would seek a Cabinet role for Kennedy, a job that would require Senate confirmation, but added, “He’s going to have a big role in the administration.”
Asked whether banning certain vaccines would be on the table, Trump said he would talk to Kennedy and others about that. Trump described Kennedy as “a very talented guy and has strong views.”
The sudden and unexpected weekend social media post evoked the chaotic policymaking that defined Trump’s White House tenure, when he would issue policy declarations on Twitter at virtually all hours. It also underscored the concerns many experts have about Kennedy, who has long promoted debunked theories about vaccine safety, having influence over U.S. public health.
In 1950, federal officials endorsed water fluoridation to prevent tooth decay, and continued to promote it even after fluoride toothpaste brands hit the market several years later. Though fluoride can come from a number of sources, drinking water is the main source for Americans, researchers say.
Officials lowered their recommendation for drinking water fluoride levels in 2015 to address a tooth condition called fluorosis, that can cause splotches on teeth and was becoming more common in U.S. kids.
In August, a federal agency determined “with moderate confidence” that there is a link between higher levels of fluoride exposure and lower IQ in kids. The National Toxicology Program based its conclusion on studies involving fluoride levels at about twice the recommended limit for drinking water.
A federal judge later cited that study in ordering the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to further regulate fluoride in drinking water. U.S. District Judge Edward Chen cautioned that it’s not certain that the amount of fluoride typically added to water is causing lower IQ in kids, but he concluded that mounting research points to an unreasonable risk that it could be. He ordered the EPA to take steps to lower that risk, but didn’t say what those measures should be.
In his X post Saturday, Kennedy tagged Michael Connett, the lead attorney representing the plaintiff in that lawsuit, the environmental advocacy group Food & Water Watch.
Kennedy’s anti-vaccine organization has a lawsuit pending against news organizations including The Associated Press, accusing them of violating antitrust laws by taking action to identify misinformation, including about COVID-19 and COVID-19 vaccines. Kennedy is on leave from the group but is listed as one of its attorneys in the lawsuit.
What role Kennedy might hold if Trump wins on Tuesday remains unclear. Kennedy recently told NewsNation that Trump asked him to “reorganize” agencies including the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Institutes of Health, the Food and Drug Administration and some agencies under the Department of Agriculture.
But for now, the former independent presidential candidate has become one of Trump’s top surrogates. Trump frequently mentions having the support of Kennedy, a scion of a Democratic dynasty and the son of former Attorney General Robert Kennedy and nephew of President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy traveled with Trump Friday and spoke at his rallies in Michigan and Wisconsin.
Trump said Saturday that he told Kennedy: “You can work on food, you can work on anything you want” except oil policy.
“He wants health, he wants women’s health, he wants men’s health, he wants kids, he wants everything,” Trump added.
Americans and Canadians are cousins that is true. Allies today but long ago people were at loggerheads mostly because of the British Empire and American ambitions.
Canadians appreciate our cousins down south enough to visit them many millions of times over the year. America is Canada’s largest and most important trading partner. As a manufacturer, I can attest to this personally. My American clients have allowed our firm to grow and prosper over the past few decades. There is a problem we have been seeing, a problem where nationalism, both political and economic has been creating a roadblock to our trade relationship.
Both Democrats and Republicans have shown a willingness to play the “buy only American Made product” card, a sounding board for all things isolationist, nationalistic and small-mindedness. We all live on this small planet, and purchase items made from all over the world. Preferences as to what to buy and where it is made are personal choices, never should they become a platform of national pride and thuggery. This has brought fear into the hearts of many Canadians who manufacture for and service the American Economy in some way. This fear will be apparent when the election is over next week.
Canadians are not enemies of America, but allies and friends with a long tradition of supporting our cousins back when bad sh*t happens. We have had enough of the American claim that they want free trade, only to realize that they do so long as it is to their benefit. Tariffs, and undue regulations applied to exporters into America are applied, yet American industry complains when other nations do the very same to them. Seriously! Democrats have said they would place a preference upon doing business with American firms before foreign ones, and Republicans wish to tariff many foreign nations into oblivion. Rhetoric perhaps, but we need to take these threats seriously. As to you the repercussions that will come should America close its doors to us.
Tit for tat neighbors. Tariff for tariff, true selfish competition with no fear of the American Giant. Do you want to build homes in America? Over 33% of all wood comes from Canada. Tit for tat. Canada’s mineral wealth can be sold to others and place preference upon the highest bidder always. You know who will win there don’t you America, the deep-pocketed Chinese.
Reshaping our alliances with others. If America responds as has been threatened, Canadians will find ways to entertain themselves elsewhere. Imagine no Canadian dollars flowing into the Northern States, Florida or California? The Big Apple without its friendly Maple Syrup dip. Canadians will realize just how significant their spending is to America and use it to our benefit, not theirs.
Clearly we will know if you prefer Canadian friendship to Donald Trumps Bravado.
China, Saudi Arabia & Russia are not your friends in America. Canada, Japan, Taiwan the EU and many other nations most definitely are. Stop playing politics, and carry out business in an unethical fashion. Treat allies as they should be treated.
