I had no idea that happened and it is entirely unsurprising that he, of all jagoffs, and he has always been a jagoff, would be vice signalling on Bill Maher and tossing other brain injured folks entirely under the bus.
I feel horrible for all the people who worked so hard to get him elected, even when it was obvious that the best thing would have been for him to drop out.
And I really don't think it was ableist to suggest that someone who had literally had a stroke mid campaign should drop out. For his own good. A proper recovery period might have avoided him devolving.
This also applies to supposedly leftist, progressive, or liberal content creators. And even worse, a lot of them are not only negligent with access, they are actively and intentionally ableist towards their political opponents.
Also a stroke survivor over here. I can confirm that some aspects of my personality changed, although not my politics. It’s possible this happened with Fetterman.
i think the moralization of work and physical/mental ability runs so bone-deep in people born and raised under late capitalism that even hardcore leftists are totally immune to noticing their own ableism. it's the undercurrent of so many casual insults, so many linguistic ticks, so many "values"
this. fucking hate it when i've been getting along with someone and they let their hair down on this issue as soon as they're pissed at someone who "deserves" it
I mean, it is true that concussions and strokes can create personality changes but so can having national attention. I'm not sure why someone would decide it's better to say he's conservative as a function of disability when actually he's conservative as function of fucking ego.
It's like RFK Jr's brain worms.
It's not funny but it's timing is weirdly coincidental.
But Trump recently claimed that he'd never said "Lock her up" so we're clearly off the rails.
Fetterman sucked long before his stroke. People were just too taken in with populist rhetoric and his aesthetic and don't want to admit they got played because they didn't actually care about his policies, just the signaling.
There exist many, perfectly sane, perfectly smart evil people
They are not hypocrites because they are uneducated, they are hypocrites because they get away with it