Typically, when disabled people imagine the future, they imagine flying wheelchairs, full inclusion in education and an end to the subminimum wage. They never thought about society going backward, as we have unfortunately started to see.
With the help of Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services who is notorious for his anti-vaccine stance, polio, which had been nearly eradicated thanks to a decades-long global vaccination campaign, is “ready to party like it’s 1949!” As it tweeted recently, polio is very excited by the thought of less federal funding for childhood vaccines as well as the end of school vaccine mandates.
Tooth decay is also set to surge in the coming years, and the bacteria responsible gave a high five to polio when they met at the Conference of Unpleasant Things. Tooth decay’s comeback will be facilitated by the belief, increasingly common in the US, that fluoridation is part of a government plot to lower people’s IQs. (In fact, the government’s laissez-faire attitude toward COVID is the main pillar of the current plot to lower people’s IQs.) Anyone who has seen British television, which features people from places where they do not flouridate the water supply, can attest to the fact that Americans, who generally do have fluoridated water, benefit greatly from it.
The third nasty thing linked to a regression in American society is the fact that people are using the R-word more. Numerous news outlets reported that former Vice President Harris was called this word by Trump in meetings, and teachers have reported that it’s being used frequently in classrooms again for the first time in years. The R-word, when reached for comment, was absolutely ecstatic. “The ’90s are in! When you wear your JNCO jeans and flannel shirts, you should use me to remind others that people with disabilities are stupid, and that’s hilarious!”
People with disabilities, when reached for comment, were too busy gathering sticks and matches in preparation for the coming dark ages to find any of the above hilarious.