The Sky-Is-Falling Panic from Biden's Illness-Impaired Debate Performance Has Its Roots in Ableism and Fails to Recognize Biden's "Vulnerable Strength"
This Ableism Is Doing Exactly What the Projecting Former Ableist-In-Chief and Project 2025 Want
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Harriet Tubman is one of the most remarkable women to have ever lived. From 1850 to 1860, she worked as a conductor on the underground railroad, earning her the nickname Moses. At the end of her mis remarkable women to have ever lived. From 1850 to 1860, she worked as a conductor on the underground railroad, earning her the nickname Moses. At the end of her mission, Tubman brought 70 enslaved men and women to the North. She even worked as a spy for the Union Army during The Civil War.
That is information most Americans know. But most people don’t know that Harriet Tubman lived with a disability.
At the age of 13, Tubman received a devastating head injury from an overseer when he threw a lead iron at her head. For the rest of her life, Tubman battled epilepsy along with narcolepsy and headaches that were as chronic as they were debilitating.
Janell Hobson argues in her Frontiers: A Journal of Women’s Studies article “Of ‘Sound’ and ‘Unsound’ Body and Mind: Reconfiguring the Heroic Portrait of Harriet Tubman” that Tubman’s “vulnerable strength” shatters the stereotype that the disabled -- more specifically disabled women -- are weak. It also upends the ableist belief that disability can be overcome, which creates inaccurate historical and creative narratives.
“Of ‘Sound’ and ‘Unsound’ Body and Mind” analyzes how mythologizing Tubman into a “superwoman” has hidden her disability and its impact on her life and social justice work. Hobson asserts this omission ignores how chattel slavery abused and disabled not only Tubman’s body but the collective African American body. Ultimately and most importantly, she proves that ignoring Tubman’s disability disallows Tubman’s agency.
Despite my whiteness, as a woman, mother, writer and teacher with multiple sclerosis, I know firsthand how my own agency has been disallowed. I also know ableism and encounter it constantly. Nearly two years ago, I left an academic department and university that I had taught part-time in and for because they were ableist. Classes denied to and taken away from me because of my disability, and I later learned the ADA paperwork I had filled out and submitted to the university’s HR department years before had never been filed.
Enough was enough. I turned my focus elsewhere and began teaching part-time at Loyola University Chicago and upped my tutoring and teaching hours at Chicago’s Wilbur Wright College. While the previous institution counted me out, these higher education institutions not only brought me in but counted me in.
Now many of us are counting out President Biden after his lackluster debate performance because he was contending with a head cold along with managing his stutter. Ableism fuels the despair and impulsive calls for Biden’s removal from the Democratic ticket at this late stage in the campaign.
If you have never been sick or injured a day in your life, I offer you my congratulations. You are one of the blessed and the few. For the rest of us, abled-bodied or not, I ask who does their best when ill? Illness is even more challenging when one is chronically ill and disabled. My MS worsens when I am sick and affects everything from my mobility to my speech. In addition to the stress caused by concentrating on a debate with a psychopathic insurrectionist who told more than 30 lies and enduring a head cold, Biden also concentrated on his stutter.
I’ve read and heard people say that Biden should have addressed the fact he was sick at the debate’s start or had his team reschedule. Rescheduling would have allow him the time he needed to recover from his head cold. Biden was snared in a catch-22 though.
Biden would have faced criticism from a portion of the electorate and the milquetoast mainstream media if he and his team had rescheduled or if he mentioned in his opening statement that he was sick. These would have either shown him as “weak and vulnerable” for rescheduling or foolish to have even attended in the first place.
This criticism would have been on top of cruel attacks from convicted felon Inmate Number P01135809 and his MAGA enablers and cult members who already shame illness and disability. Mary Trump, PhD has spoken about how illness was believed to be a sign of weakness by her grandfather Fred and uncle Inmate Number P01135809. During the Covid pandemic lockdown, one MAGA cultist told me it was not his responsibility to vaccinate or mask because I have MS and that I should just stay home and die.
Convicted felon Inmate Number P01135809, his MAGA enablers and MAGA cult members have projected convicted felon Inmate Number P01135809’s own cognitive decline on Biden (convicted felon Inmate Number P01135809’s father Fred died from Alzheimer’s Disease). Psychologist John D. Gartner, PhD recently told The Weekend Show’s Anthony Davis that while Biden displays normal signs of aging, Inmate Number P01135809 demonstrates accelerating dementia.
Unlike healthy and abled-bodied people, I carry a specific lens and a different life experience. I have also gained further knowledge from my education in women’s, gender and sexuality studies. One of my research interests is feminist disability studies. All these allow me to adjust and refine how I see life and events. What I see toward Biden right now is clear ableism toward his illness and stutter.
It is not uncommon for people to resist and become angered from my assessment despite plenty of historical and contemporary evidence proving my assessment. Along with being a racist country, the United States is also an ableist country. In his book How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram X. Kendi argues that racism and ableism are “conjoined twins.” Yet ableism and inaccessibility are not unique to the United States. When I visited the Oscar Wilde House this past March in Dublin, I found the home now open to the public for tours had not been retrofitted with wheelchair ramps or an elevator for the mobility impaired like me.
Defensiveness and denial, characteristics of white supremacy culture, are not just reserved for discussions centered on race or when white people are called in for their own racism or how they benefit from white supremacy and racism. Since racism and ableism are conjoined twins, defensiveness and denial also occurs when a person or group recognizes and calls in ableism. The latest example is when a man yesterday denied my claim that the reaction toward Biden was ableist before he referred to me as “sweets.”
President Biden has also been called names and mocked since childhood. He has fought a stutter along with bullies. One bully was a nun at his Catholic elementary school who made fun of his stutter, making Biden flee the classroom and return home. When his mother Jean brought him back to the school, she confronted the nun and told her, “I’m gonna come back, and I’m gonna knock that bonnet right off your head” if she again ridiculed her elementary-school age son for something out of his control not to have. Stuttering is now protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Jean Biden passed away in 2010 at the age of 92. President Biden has strong longevity genes on his mother’s side and that bodes well for him. If Jean had still been alive when this happened below, I’m sure she would have knocked that electrocuted hamster off convicted felon Inmate Number P01135809’s head. By the way, the “one-man crime wave” also couldn’t get Laken Riley’s name correct either in this hate rally.
Scientific research has found neurological components and differences cause stuttering. This research has also found stuttering is not caused by a psychological disturbance, low intelligence or poor mothering skills. Biden along with others who stutter have to manage it every day in their work and life.
The most vocal media responses following the debate have been ableist — even among my fellow Substack authors. One of whom, Sam Harris, while a neuroscientist is not a neurologist. In addition to being a neuroscientist, Harris, like Ben Affleck pointed out, is also a racist Islamophobe.
From Harris’s Friday post:
From Alexander Vindman’s Friday post:
Here are some others:
In 2024, especially with MAGA and Project 2025 bemoaning “woke culture,” this attitude is infuriating, harmful and offensive. Project 2025 in its chapter on The Department of Health and Human Services include the disabled as part of “woke culture” and the “woke agenda” not caring that the disabled are the largest minority group in the world according to the United Nations as well as the largest minority group in the United States according to the National Institutes of Health. And the largest minority group has not been treated well throughout American and world history.
![Left: Woman with dark hair wearing a white shirt. Right woman with dark hair wearing a white dress with a black collar.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fc291f1e3-b119-489d-8fe7-0f517c44cf17_150x194.gif)
![Left: Woman with dark hair wearing a white shirt. Right woman with dark hair wearing a white dress with a black collar.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F4585076c-5d0d-4a68-8001-2eac9d70ad8a_605x721.jpeg)
In the 20th century, The Nazis either sterilized or exterminated the physically, intellectually and developmentally disabled along with the mentally ill using pure carbon monoxide gas. Without the U.S.’s love affair with eugenics and the sterilization of Carrie Buck, an involuntary sterilization only made possible after the Supreme Court legalized it in its Buck v. Bell ruling, Hitler and the Nazis would not have become inspired by this along with the U.S.’s Jim Crow laws.
Buck v. Bell has never been overturned and remains law of the land.
On the other hand, eugenics and ableism are not part of Native American culture. According to Kim E. Nielsen in her 2012 book A Disability History of the United States, American Indigenous communities only considered a person disabled when they “lacked or had weak community relationships.” In pre-Columbian North America, adults and children “were not considered disabled” if they performed physical labor and contributed to the community in another way.
Centuries ago the disabled and even the elderly were often institutionalized and hidden. Even today, the disabled and the elderly are sometimes sent to nursing homes only to never be visited again by family and friends.
It’s not like the United States has never had a disabled President. Abraham Lincoln battled clinical depression throughout his life. James Madison and Theodore Roosevelt lived with epilepsy. Theodore’s cousin Franklin used specially modified wheelchairs after contracting polio as an adult.
![Top row: Man with black hair and black beard wearing a white shirt, black tie, and black jacket and Man with white hair. wearing a white shirt and black jacket. Bottom row: Man with mustache and holding up a hat wears a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit and man wearing a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit holds a black dog in his life. A girl with bobbed hair and a ribbon in her hair wears a shite and gray dress stands in front of the man who uses a wheelchair.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F9f04cdf7-0829-404a-b741-e66130f1aa4b_746x1000.jpeg)
![Top row: Man with black hair and black beard wearing a white shirt, black tie, and black jacket and Man with white hair. wearing a white shirt and black jacket. Bottom row: Man with mustache and holding up a hat wears a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit and man wearing a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit holds a black dog in his life. A girl with bobbed hair and a ribbon in her hair wears a shite and gray dress stands in front of the man who uses a wheelchair.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F6800d1c5-4d90-45ee-b975-6a77b5bea9ac_3469x4096.jpeg)
![Top row: Man with black hair and black beard wearing a white shirt, black tie, and black jacket and Man with white hair. wearing a white shirt and black jacket. Bottom row: Man with mustache and holding up a hat wears a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit and man wearing a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit holds a black dog in his life. A girl with bobbed hair and a ribbon in her hair wears a shite and gray dress stands in front of the man who uses a wheelchair.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F7e4adafe-f615-4abf-820b-0586210e2358_1056x679.jpeg)
![Top row: Man with black hair and black beard wearing a white shirt, black tie, and black jacket and Man with white hair. wearing a white shirt and black jacket. Bottom row: Man with mustache and holding up a hat wears a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit and man wearing a white shirt, gray tie, and gray suit holds a black dog in his life. A girl with bobbed hair and a ribbon in her hair wears a shite and gray dress stands in front of the man who uses a wheelchair.](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/w_720,c_limit,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Fb04a170a-7fa6-4781-b6a6-980d4706e798_600x750.jpeg)
Yesterday Biden demonstrated he should not be counted out nor replaced. One of my favorite quotes comes from the Jesuits: “Go forth and set the world aflame.” In his North Carolina campaign speech yesterday, Biden brought fire and proves he will ignite the United States and the world with it.
Don’t ever dismiss or count out the chronically sick and disabled. Despite appearances, we’re more vital and passionate than most people realize. And we will set the world ablaze when you least expect it.
This is ableism gone mad! Are we seriously expected to believe that a head cold is the cause of Biden’s incoherent and completely irrelevant ramblings? Is a cold causing him to talk about his golf handicap? Is a head cold why he’s forgotten to mention the major crises facing the world? And so on…
Since you say it is ablelism to want to dump Biden because he was incoherent for much of the debate, let me ask you a question. If you, as a person with MS, were drafted to go to war as a combat soldier, would you do it? Probably not, you would acknowledge that your illness might make you a liability to yourself and fellow soldiers, if you could not keep up with the pace of the fighting, etc. Now apply that analogy to Biden. No, we are not sending Biden to fight a war, but the presidency is a very demanding job. It doesn't respect bedtimes. Why isnt' it okay to acknowledge he is no longer up to the job at hand? It's really not ageist or ableist to question whether he is up to the job of "Commander in Chief". Doing so is imposing your agenda or cause and saying that trumps the good of the nation. When my mother got macular degeneration, she turned in the keys to her car.