I don’t feel so bad that the US government expects the workforce of contractors and subcontractors to be 7% disabled, now that I know how easy it is to qualify, thanks to an excellent piece by David Solway. To stay on top of the latest developments in societal rot, head straight to academia, where spoiled students and indulgent educrats have been pushing the concept of disability into new realms of absurdity:
A poor memory became a disability, for which students were allowed to bring a “Memory Aid” to exams — once called “cheating.” Fear of exams became a disability for which the student could be permitted to write at home. Bipolarity became a disability for which a student could request assignment deferrals and forgiveness for class absences, sometimes amounting to credit received for a course almost never attended. Habitual time-stress became a disability for which extra writing time would be allotted. Students who are unequal to the task of listening to and summarizing lecture material can request a “note-taker” conscripted from the student body — a permit which entails a host of obvious pragmatic and pedagogical perplexities.
Scent allergies became a disability, requiring teachers to abjure cologne or provide the student with an unoccupied room. Difficulty with normative procedures became a disability requiring advance course outlines and transcriptions of what are called “alternative format materials.” Dyslexia became a disability akin to blindness. A note from a psychologist reporting a student “under my care” can be used to set aside academic criteria and official class deportment.
At Western University, a student actually had her grade changed from an F to a B by the Faculty Dean on the grounds that she has an “intellectual disability” — i.e., she is mentally retarded.
A short-term effect of this lunacy has been to turn college students — young and strong, in the prime of life, venturing out to establish themselves in the world — into the squishy-soft, self-indulgent, self-hating, useless creatures we know as “snowflakes.” Other short-term effects include grade inflation, the collapse of standards, morale problems for both students and faculty, wasted time catering to whining parasites, unnecessary expenses that help drive up stratospheric tuition costs, et cetera.
Long-term effects may be worse still:
When the university succumbs to the disability prepossession across the board, the culture itself is at risk of intellectual and functional decay. It grows progressively disabled, incapable of dealing with reality, of managing its economic affairs, of recognizing its enemies, of absorbing adversity, and of disambiguating truth from error, fact from fiction and nature from ideology. Unfortunately, there is no superordinate Disability Office to appeal to, from which we can demand or expect the false magnanimity of concessionary privileges — which would, in any case, merely compound the syndrome from which we suffer.
This syndrome, known as moonbattery, is a terminal illness if not forcefully addressed before the degeneration becomes irreversible.
If snowflakes ever stop being pampered, they will melt.
On a tip from Steve A.