ONE MILLION BLOG READERS

NEVER BACKING DOWN

This week, my blog received its one millionth unique visitor.

I have been blogging daily for more than a decade.

Sometimes I have posted beautiful photos from exotic travel.

Certainly this space has served as a bully pulpit to scold lousy government services and terrible companies.

A few times, I have shared photos of my cats – or tragically, a tribute to one who went over the Rainbow Bridge.

But more than 90 percent of my posts are related to disability advocacy.

Most of those point out flaws in the built environment.

With all due respect, our planners, architects, engineers, builders and municipalities that regulate them have had more than a third of a century under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) to get it right.

But the vast majority continue to push back, resist and even go to court to try to get out of the responsibility of observing federal civil rights legislation that guarantees equal access for people with disabilities.

Hundreds of local governments – and related transit, redevelopment and similar agencies – still design sidewalks, parks, buildings, transit systems, airports and much of the built environment in ways that isolate and dehumanized people with disabilities.

Sadly, with a plethora of lawsuits against the ADA and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, a stacked Supreme Court may strip away basic dignity and independence of people with disabilities.

In case you are wondering, the CDC has documented that one in four people experience disability in their lifetime. That is more than 85 million Americans. Globally, the WHO has recognized that there are far more than 1 billion people with disabilities.

Not only is a level playing field a basic human right. But it also makes economic sense.

In addition to the staggering loss of dignity and quality of life, it costs trillions to warehouse people instead of mainstreaming them.

It costs dimes on the dollar to create inclusive spaces and places.

Once that is done, the rampant under- and unemployment of people with disabilities can become a thing of the past.

Catastrophically, our White House, Senate and Congress and far too many governors and state legislators  -- seem hellbent on reducing the inclusion gained under nearly 35 years of the ADA.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion is the very definition of a Democracy – it is the core fiber of what it means to be in the United States. But the savage right wing would like to reframe DEI as something as loathsome as fascism.

This blog will never back down from championing DEI, especially in the lens of disability.

Not even if it costs me clients and work.

Not even if it places me in the crosshairs of an authoritarian government goose stepping its way toward a Nazi police state.

I will risk my nest egg, career and freedom – defending my right to underscore ableism and other treacherous acts of hatred toward the disability community.

Give me the liberty to be an ally, or give me death.

FLAWED LOGIC

FROM A SUPPORTER OF A DEEPLY FLAWED PRESIDENT

I wrote last weekend about my challenging an acquaintance to explain if he regretted voting for Trump.

I usually don't do these kinds of things.

I'm not a "I told you so," scorekeeping, gotcha kinda guy.

But I am watching an insane person and his right wing sycophants destroying good things that took decades to build in the nation I have lived in for more than half a century.

They big ah-ha ammunition my former friend came up with.

That he did us all a big favor because Trump, while a little Twitter rant addicted and not quite a statesman, is not Hillary Clinton.

That's it.

Pure and simple.

She would have been the devil.

And that's all my acquaintance needed to tell me.

Like I would smack my hand upside my head and totally get it.

That's right, it is perfectly logical to prop up Trump's rating by creating a mythological narrative for what the Hillary Clinton presidency would be like.

What a mind meld miracle, I thought.

This puts a whole new light on everything.

Fire the Dolphins coach because he had a cocaine addict right hand man on his coaching staff.

Hell no, if it been the coach behind door #2, the assistant coach would have been a mad sniper picking off people from the top of a college tower....so by this new Trumpian tribal logic, the bad guy is the good guy...simply because a presumed, never to play out in reality, path taken by the runner up would most certainly be much, much worse than the reality being crapped out by Trump today.

Wow, who knew this bit of mind trickery would work out so air tight logically.

In this mode, my former friend, who is Jewish, should build a monument to Hitler.

(are you crazy Steve, I hear you asking?  are you a neo Nazi nutcase?)

Nope, I say.

I'm simply applying the new -- Trump is good for America because Hillary would have been the Devil -- logic to world history.

You see, Hitler and his Nazis that killed and tortured -- Jews, disabled people, gay people, mentally ill people, etc -- did everybody a big favor.

The other potential leader of Nazi Germany, hiding behind door #2, would have slaughtered 60 million.

So by comparison, we should rewrite the history books and crown Hitler the king of humanitarians of the first half of the 20th century.

But why stop there.

If the Trump supporter logic is spot-on, then we need to do a whole lot of re-framing of history, simply because the Hillary of the time....clearly would have been much worse if they grasped the reins of power.

Jerry Sandusky?  Swing open the prison doors and let him run a Boy Scout Troop.  Yeah, he used his power to rape, molest and destroy little boys put in his care....but hey, the runner up "Hillary" coach behind door #2 would have victimized 10 times more boys than Sandusky.

Sandusky, in an exemplary showing of restraint, only robbed the innocence of a dozen or so.   Better build a statue of him on the Penn State campus -- because he saved more than 100 boys from falling prey to that Door #2 predator that he admirably took the place of.

There's more.

John Wayne Gacy.  A monster. The Trump school of faulty logic thinks not.

He strangled his sex torture victims before stowing them under his house.

The evil, "Hillary" hiding behind Door #2 clown-cloaked killer would have buried the boys alive.

See, by comparison, Gacy's damn near a stand up guy.

I mean, when you find out someone's kidnapped, raped, tortured, killed and buried your son.....wouldn't you feel so much better knowing that the bizarro world, Hillary-esque, lying in wait behind door #2 predator didn't get the chance to do terrible things to your boy before burying him alive.

See, Trump supports aren't crazy.

It all makes perfect. Sense.

Just trot out some insane, never will be realized terror scenario of what Evil Hillary (and is she so evil because she's progressive, or because she's a woman.  We all know their role is to take a grab by the P---y, not to perpetuate the old white male indignity of first living under and African American president, then living under a woman in the White House) and Trump looks like the second coming.

Yep, that's it.

I know see the light of day.

In fact, I'm going to catch the next flight to Ohio to thank the insane, cruel, hateful boss that treated my wife like dirt when she was working her tail off in one of her first jobs out of school.

Why, under the prism of this new Trump supporter enlightenment, I now see that the boss was a stand up person.  A true mentor and humanitarian.

I mean, they didn't toss my wife out of her wheelchair.

They didn't toss acid in her eyes.

But surely, the #2 candidate, the monster who they were blocking because they got the job, would have beaten my wife to death and hidden here where I could never find her.

Yep, sure hope that old Bastard is still alive.

Gotta fly up and thank them for being an a-hole, yes, but not nearly as bad as the Hillary that could have wrecked everything, if given the chance.