How to Criticize Politicians 101: Now With 100% Less Ableism!
By: Elena Chambers
Tags: Democratic Party, Ableism, Politics, Dyscalculia, Learning Disability

Now that most of the country has breathed a collective sigh of relief after successfully voting out a dangerous bigoted asshole with no moral compass or regard for the lives of other human beings, it’s time to talk about upper-middle-class liberal ableism. What exactly could I be talking about when many liberal/left-wing voters claim to not tolerate any kind of prejudice? I’m not talking about openly mocking people for their disabilities as we have unfortunately seen our president do on public television, but I’m talking about a more subtle kind of ableism that is too often excused when the people on the receiving end are awful politicians and/or awful people.

So why do we care about being fair and respectful to Donald Trump and other people similar to him? Well, we actually don’t. However, the comments made about public figures, especially widely disliked public figures, do not exist in an isolated bubble. In fact, when attacks on the perceived intelligence or competency of an individual are placed in the same context as criticisms of their lack of morality, this contextualization creates a false association between neurotypical performance of intelligence and personal moral standing that is inherent in the ways in which certain tropes have come to be incorporated into the media. For example, the undergraduate library at my university recently published the following tweet regarding Michigan’s electoral college votes: “As a library, it is extremely vindicating to have Michigan vote for the candidate who can read books.” I must admit, without the implied sarcasm and additional context of the widely persistent privileged-college-town belief that intellectuality is a morally essential trait, this tweet might seem harmless. However, as a person with a disability who has always struggled with both reading comprehension and vision convergence in addition to not being able to even sit still for five minutes since the beginning of the covid-19 pandemic let alone actually focus for long enough to read anything, I couldn’t help but take it a bit personally. But to me, the worst “jokes” are the ones that reference standardized test scores as a way of suggesting that people who voted for conservative candidates are unintelligent. I saw another tweet in the midst of the vote-counting from a liberal activist that said: “the best part about any major political event is watching everyone from my hometown who got a 14 on the ACT try to explain constitutional law.” The implications inherent in this tweet are that people with conservative political views are unintelligent and only unintelligent people would get a bad score on a standardized test, therefore, they know nothing about constitutional law.

Let’s break that one down a bit, shall we? If these implications were valid, that would mean first of all, that no one who got a 14 on the ACT was capable of explaining constitutional law. This is an ableist assumption because we know that standardized tests are biased, inaccurate, and ineffective at measuring real intelligence for all students. In fact, I don’t recall the ACT requiring any knowledge of constitutional law at all- which brings me to the next implication inherent in this tweet: that belief abilities exist on a linear continuum- therefore if a person does not excel at a so-called “basic” or “baseline” skill they cannot excel at a so-called “advanced” or “specialized” skill. In other words, this statement assumes that if a person cannot do well on a standardized test, then they must not be able to understand constitutional law. However, contrary to popular belief, being able to regurgitate statistics pulled from an unnecessarily complicated graph does not have any bearing on whether a person will be able to develop an adequate understanding of constitutional law. Do the (presumably conservative) people from this person’s hometown truly understand constitutional law? I have no idea. It is quite possible that they don’t- (I certainly cannot say with confidence that I’ve learned everything there is to know about this topic and I highly doubt the author of this tweet can either). However, speculations about their respective ACT scores are completely irrelevant to the conversation about their credibility. If you’re wondering why this matters or who it hurts, I will say this: It hurts me, a person who got very low standardized test scores, not due to lack of intelligence but because of an undiagnosed learning disability that the education system refused to acknowledge. It hurts all the students with learning disabilities growing up in a world that tells them that their ability to fit outward performances of intelligence into a standardized mold is reflective of their personal value.

But now let’s look at another example. Being a basic 20-something-part-time-virtual-college-student, I was scrolling through tiktok and came across a video of a girl sitting in her car while the following words appeared over her head: “No matter who you voted for, I have messages for both sides. Biden supporters, stop insinuating that Trump supporters are stupid” (here I allowed myself a moment of hope, but then I read the next part:) “Trump supporters, here’s what insinuating means.” The video ended here, leaving me sitting with my own disappointment that another person had resorted to ableism thinking that they’re helping to bring about positive change. This brings me to my next point: Trump supporters’ intellectual/cognitive function or lack thereof is a morally neutral quality and has very little to do with Trump’s hateful and destructive beliefs and actions. Even people who struggle with empathy or thinking for themselves are still responsible for their actions, including choices about the people to whom they give their support. Actions carry moral weight (such as choosing to vote for a candidate that will cause significant harm) but the sufficiency of individuals’ performances of societally-defined “intelligence” as judged by gen-z tiktokers do not. In other words, being perceived as a person who lacks cognitive function is not morally equivalent to supporting someone whose actions have contributed to the deaths of thousands of people and there is not necessarily a correlation between them.

The reality is that the left too frequently tries to establish credibility on the basis of superior cognitive ability by applying intellectually conformist judgments to right-wing voters and politicians as a means of asserting dominance and proving ourselves to be of higher moral standing. When we do this, however, we indirectly discredit and devalue EVERYONE with or without cognitive or neurological disabilities who can see their own qualities in these insults. By continuing to mock right-wing “unintelligence” rather than criticizing the harmful policies enacted under conservative leadership and destructive actions taken by our current president, we are creating an inherent connection between our supposed superior cognitive ability and our morality, competency, and value as a political alignment. By doing this, we are perpetuating the false and ableist belief that intelligence is a moral trait. “Intelligence,” is not half of a binary opposition, let alone reflective of any kind of personal moral strength or failing. To all my fellow liberal voters who have read this far, this is what I want to say to you: please do the work to add ableism to your list of unacceptable prejudices and try to understand that it goes beyond showing people mobility aides basic human decency. It means examining and questioning your own associations between your performance of ability and your personal value. It means refraining from making ableist jokes, even about people who have done terrible things. It means saying “Trump is a terrible president” or “I absolutely hate everyone in the Trump administration with a burning passionate hatred” rather than mocking someone’s cognitive abilities. There are so many ways to criticize terrible politicians by calling out their actions, but sometimes we don’t always want to form well-thought-out arguments and instead we want to just be angry. In these instances, I hope that you know that your anger is valid and also remember that we too are angry- both at the current administration AND at the ableism present on both sides of the political spectrum and in most other aspects of our lives. I hope that in these moments you will also remember the people you claim to be advocating for and working alongside. I hope that you imagine the change that could be made if we were united in our anger instead of divided.