Dementia, disability and the 2024 presidential election

(RNS) — I’ve spent significant time in this column on our responses as the Catholic Church and in our broader culture to populations with dementia and other disabilities, examining just how badly we treat them. This focus was partly the result of the pandemic, which exposed the worst of our failings, but even now we are still facing a dementia crisis. Our attitude toward those suffering dementia, if we stay on the same trajectory, could lead to mass killings of “choice” by physician-assisted suicide.

This process is already well-advanced in Canada, where those with dementia and physical disabilities are sometimes forced to choose between paltry social support and, not to put too fine a point on it, killing themselves with the help of a health care provider. This move is supported even by Canada’s Alzheimer’s advocacy group!

A significant part of the battle is for the general moral standing of people with dementia and other disabilities, and older adults in our culture more generally. It has become something of a cliché to say that, unlike cultures that tend to value their elders even when they are sick, infirm and disabled, consumerist Western cultures tend to value people who affirm youth, production and novelty. This is how Western cultures justify pushing mentally vulnerable people to the margins — into facilities where they only rarely intersect with the rest of us.

Sometimes our attitudes, which contribute to what Pope Francis terms our “throwaway culture,” are hidden, even to ourselves. We send our elderly relatives to underfunded nursing homes rather than finding them a place in our homes, telling ourselves they prefer to go. We arrange for physician-assisted killing, saying that older adults and others with dementia and other disabilities would be better off dead.

Our ageist and ableist attitudes, usually kept on the down-low, have come out into the open during the current election cycle in profound (and profoundly disturbing) ways.

The mocking attacks on President Biden because of his age and infirmity, quite apart from legitimate questions about whether he can do the most difficult job in the world, were both disgusting and revealing. Listening to a good number of podcasts across the political spectrum, I’ve heard no shortage of conservative political talkers who have made fun of his speech, his walk, even his ability to control his bowels.

After Biden’s very poor debate performance against Trump, people such as Ben Shapiro of “The Daily Wire,” Clay Travis of “OutKick,” Sean Davis of “The Federalist,” and Joel Berry of “The Babylon Bee,” among many others, all mocked the president’s supposed dementia.

Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump is surrounded by U.S. Secret Service at a campaign event in Butler, Pa., on Saturday, July 13, 2024. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar)

“The Babylon Bee,” meanwhile, ramped up its ableism after the horrific assassination attempt on Trump’s life, using it to attack the Secret Service. There is, happily, bipartisan support for holding that agency to account for its inexplicable failures that day. But who will hold “The Babylon Bee” to account for disgusting headlines such as, “Secret Service Beefs Up Trump’s Security with Squad of Blind Midgets”?

Trump himself was reportedly insensitive to disabled people’s moral standing, apparently suggesting to his nephew that he allow his disabled son (and other similarly disabled children) to be euthanized. “The shape they’re in, all the expenses, maybe those kinds of people should just die,” Trump said, according to a new book by his nephew Fred Trump III.

This kind of ableism is by no means limited to the right, with Bill Maher referring to “Dementia Don,” Kamala Harris’ campaign going after Trump’s memory and a staff member for BBC’s “Newsnight” recently calling out Trump’s supposed cognitive decline. With some exceptions, too, Democrats are the ones championing laws permitting physician-assisted suicide.

In May I wrote a column with disability studies scholar Meghan Schrader, who has helped me understand more about the rich resources the Catholic Church offers for advocating for disability justice. One way the church can directly affect the lives of the disabled is by making sure they are full participants in Catholic life. Groups like the McGrath Institute for Church Life at Notre Dame have given us wonderful resources and roadmaps for doing precisely this.

That will take collective action and lots of time. But perhaps the most immediate thing we can do as individuals — particularly here as tensions run high leading up to November — is examine our consciences and behavior to make sure we are not employing ableist and ageist ideas and slurs as a means of trying to hurt our political opponents.