I have always had the sneaking suspicion that those in power want people like me dead. Growing up in poverty, I was made to feel at best like an “other,” at worst, a “burden on the system.” At times, friends suggested that perhaps I am “too sensitive” or “cynical” for feeling this way. But today, in the United States, it seems we have fully transitioned from our typical, more genteel “policy violence” into a clear and overt plan to eliminate (sacrifice?) the poor and most vulnerable.
In a press conference held in the White House Rose Garden this past Sunday, President Trump came right out with it: if we lose only 100,000, possibly 200,000 people due to the COVID-19 virus, we will have done “a very good job.”
It is clear who those 100,000 to 200,000 people will be: our most vulnerable. It will be poor people (many now deemed “essential workers”), who don’t have the privilege of paid time off or job security. It will be frontline workers like nurses and cashiers. It will be the homeless, prisoners, and migrants. It will be folks like me with disabilities, compromised immune systems and other underlying conditions.
Frankly, it is a bit refreshing to hear such honesty when you have been gaslit your whole life! Thank you to the ruling class for their candor in admitting that indeed there is a subclass of human beings that society can not only do without, but — in fact — things will run much more smoothly, cheaper, and more efficiently without.
As I sit here today, on day 15 of self-isolation here in my Chicago apartment, I can’t help but contemplate this new reality I am surviving in… and what the next several months will be like for those Americans deemed most expendable.