“Things Fall Apart; the Centre Cannot Hold”

If you’re anti-vaxx, you’re not going to like this rant, but you should hear it anyway.

I spend a lot of time on YouTube, enough to make me neglect my work and the rest of the world. Over the last year or so, my favorite thing to watch has become what I call the Reddit-reads, which are YouTubers who read and comment on sub-Reddit posts. There are a lot of them: r/antiMLM, which mocks people in and proliferating MLMs and pyramid schemes; r/wooosh, which features jokes and comments that are documented to have gone over someone’s head; r/ThatHappened, which exists so we can all laugh at OPs (original posters) who tell unbelievable stories that are usually self-aggrandizing. My favorites to watch/listen to are r/EntitledParents, r/ChoosingBeggars, r/EntitledPeople, r/InsaneParents, and…r/VaxxHappened and r/antivaxx.

I really shouldn’t expose myself to those last two, because while all the entitled assholes and spoiled brats featured in these Reddit posts infuriate me and cause me to leave comments that alarm other viewers, nothing quite boils my blood as much as anti-vaxx parents. Yes, it’s funny to see screenshots of Facebook posts of smug, uneducated parents talking about how they can heal anything with their essential oils, but when you try to look beyond the screen, to consider that on the other side there are actual morons procreating and actual kids being put in danger, the whole thing takes on a more somber tone, and the laughing turns to sadness for some, and rage for people like me with so much repressed aggression.

For those not aware, somehow, these parents are anti-vaxx for a few reasons. For one, some of them believe vaccines are unnecessary, that it’s all a scam to put money in the pockets of Big Pharma. Others seem to sincerely believe vaccines cause autism; the really off-their-rocker ones also claim these harmless little shots lead to homosexuality, SIDS, cancer…I saw one poster declaring that they were told their child’s recent shot had AIDS in it. (Anyone else afraid of the thought of such stupidity procreating?) Some anti-vaxxers believe their trusty essential oils can cure anything, and anyway, children having childhood illnesses such as chicken pox, mumps, and measles leaves them with NATURAL immunity, and if something is NATURAL, it must be good, right? Anthrax is NATURAL, you vile cunts who need to be sterilized post-haste.

Being autistic myself, it already irritates me to hear such people say, and they do say, that they would rather have a child who gets sick, even a dead child, than an autistic child. Perhaps they’re being, in their own way, careful, preventing harm, because God knows, these are the types of people who would, when they have a child not up to their standards, kill the child and then groan about how it was just so HARD, that they wanted a NORMAL child. If any of these people ever read this, read the following with care: When you choose, because yes, it is a choice, always, to have a child, that means you drop everything else you are holding. Maybe you can pick it up later, maybe you can’t. Maybe your child is the neurotypical sort who needs no extra help and will have a wedding you can dance at, maybe they won’t be. Maybe the sky will one day fall down around you, and all you can do is hold that child and love them and have whatever faith you might hold that things will be all right. Parenthood is irrevocable and tops the list, every list, over everything else. If you believe otherwise, if you don’t perform in this role to the best of your abilities, if you can’t love your offspring because you think they are damaged goods, you don’t deserve your child, and you should be held down and sterilized.

And they spread such LIES, I assume that’s how they recruit more believers. I saw one that claimed only one person in a recent year died from measles. Actually, according to what I’ve read, the number of measles deaths was 110,000 globally in 2017. Measles was all but eradicated in the industrialized world. We almost had it GONE. We had polio, thanks to Bill Gates, eradicated. The diseases which plagued the childhoods of our predecessors and killed so many of our aunts, uncles, and cousins before they had a chance to live are now preventable by getting simple SHOTS. Yet they are resurfacing, because mothers with no medical education read a couple blogs and maybe a discredited study by a charlatan who had his license taken away (fuck you eternally, Wakefield), and now they believe these miraculous shots are just evil Big Pharma trying to poison their baaaabiiiieesss.

I honestly don’t understand. I don’t understand how every educated person, every health organization, every doctor you meet can tell you that vaccines are life-saving and that complications are rarer than being struck by lightning…but a few flat-Earthers on Facebook are more convincing? For the ones who so want their child to have these illnesses and develop natural immunity instead, even if it risks their child’s life, I really want to know…why? If the choice is A, give my kid a recommended shot that will prevent an uncomfortable, perhaps painful illness and B, let the child have that uncomfortable, painful illness, what the hell kind of parent chooses pain for their child? Do you secretly hate your child? Yeah, Big Pharma is corrupt and money-hungry, but their vaccines can save your kids’ lives. Those things can both be true at the same time. As the great Dr. House said, you know what’s another rich industry? The building and selling of tiny kid and baby coffins.

On top of that, anti-vaxx mothers, what incentive does Big Pharma or anyone else have to inject your kids with “poison,” when if that were true, they’d have been found out and fought against by now? I know that because you shit out a bunch of kids, you think you’re some amazing Earth goddess who knows what’s best, more than any doctor. Newsflash – you’re not that important. What, are you Sarah Connor, and the whole world is the machines trying to destroy the leader of the resistance? No, you are no one, no one cares about your kids, and yet, all of us apparently do, more than you do. You’d rather fancy yourself Xena: Warrior Mom than admit you’re a crotch-goblin incubator who will leave behind nothing but an SUV, some Starbucks receipts, and probably a big MLM debt.

You know what you’re actually doing, anti-vaxx moms? You’re destroying the herd immunity we so depend on. There are people who can’t, for medical reasons, have these vaccines, and there are little kids who aren’t old enough for them yet, and your drooling, snotty, unvaccinated spawn are breathing germs all over the place and putting these kids at risk of contracting diseases no one, at least in the modern United States, should have in 2019. Sometimes these moms say, “Oh, well, you all are vaccinated, so we’re not hurting you, why do you care?” For this exact reason, fuckwit. God, I wish we could put them all on an island somewhere and they could die off and leave the intelligent people alone and healthy.

I remember Bill Maher saying in one of his specials that it was not good for us, the people, to see us, because we’re not good. He was talking about reality TV, and I agree with him, but I also think of that line when I look at the people on the internet Reddit has shown me. I know they’re the extreme minority, and that most people are sensible, but I don’t have as much hope for the future as I used to. We were better once. We all spoke multiple languages, learned the classics, took part in revolutions, and wondered what people in the future would be like. I don’t think any of us suspected there would be flat-Earthers, pro-disease mothers, fat women proclaiming health at every size, kids who can’t look up from their screens without wincing at the sunlight and the sight of the living.

It’s not something I like to think about, but if you didn’t know, part of the reason the American colonies were able to defeat the English and form their own country was because my dear, befuddled husband sent aid to the colonists, which further increased France’s debt, which was one of the catalysts of the French Revolution. Our lives might have been different, might not have become as horrible as they did, but this country, the one I was born to in this life and that I love, just HAD to be born. It was fate, it was necessary for the level of comfort in which we live now that Monsieur Lafayette do his job well, and that the ships arrive in the colonies in time to help them, and that France throw off a heavy, centuries-old yoke to be the free country it is today, still friends with the America it helped birth.

I’m proud of my husband. If anyone had told him on the steps leading to that terrible blade that because of his actions, not only would his beloved France become free and happy, but that our friends in the New World would one day lead a much-improved, modern, healthier planet, Louis would have climbed the steps faster and laid his head down with that troubled smile he always tried to muster for me, but without trouble this time, with a clean conscience and a heart full from loving and being loved. My death didn’t matter the way his did, though perhaps it wiped a slate clean of rage and hatred for the people, allowed them to build the nation I hope to someday see again. I think even as the last crowd I would ever see shouted abuse at me, somewhere in my mind I wondered…what sort of people will they be? Who will come out of this darkness in order to make it all worth it?

Maybe, while I scowl at people on the internet, offended by their stupidity, I’m still waiting for the dimness to dissolve into light. Still waiting for an answer to that question.

Author: athlynne

"From mirror after mirror, No vanity's displayed. I'm looking for the face I had Before the world was made." - W.B. Yeats View all posts by athlynne