I’m walking. I was. I was walking. I don’t take this lightly. Walking, to be able to walk, is not a given. I’m a disability rights activist. I get that merely to say I was walking or will do so is a privilege. In fact the body is itself a privilege. Every single body. And this is what the Christo-fascists don’t understand. Bodies are a gift from God or Carbon and rather than gloat about yours, stand for the principle of bodies, all of them. Recognize the advantage you may have (however briefly) and then, get bigger than yourself and celebrate the bodies adjacent. Even this celebration is a privilege. Don’t blow it. Don’t shut the window on the magnificence of creation. This is for you Pete Hegseth. For you Franklin Graham. For you, you smug MAGA followers. It’s the body, the magnificent, variable, wildly dynamic, sweetly different body that matters whether you believe in God or Carbon. I was walking. Last year at this time I couldn’t do so easily. I was fresh from serous heart surgery. Nurses led me up and down a corridor as I leaned on a grocery store shopping cart, my feet shuffling, my hospital gown puffing out and the fresh incision in my chest aching. I was alive. Dear Hegseth: I was alive and grateful. So think about this—what are you fighting for? Of course I know the answer. You’re fighting for a sub-class of white bodies. Poor man. You don’t know, apparently that those very bodies you admire are merely corpse flowers.
Planet of the Blind 