Sounding the Alarm Part 2
Eugenics masquerading as Paternalism (for Part 1 go here.)
Nearly 40 years ago, I read The Deed of Paksenarrion by Elizabeth Moon. I was into fantasy at the time, and this was epic fantasy featuring a strong woman. I was eager to read stories about strong women (still am), even better if they were lesbians like me. Elizabeth Moon played with gender and sexual identities and norms in her books, and the main character, Paksenarrion, was no exception. Paks was not interested in sex. She could carry a pig across the farm, but she was as virginal as new snow. Since fantasy is all about the battle between good and evil, I probably don’t need to tell you that Paks became a warrior for good. Eventually, she became a paladin, gifted with special powers, perpetually shiny armor, a horse from heaven, and a very shiny, very big sword that could neutralize evil spells. But along the way to becoming a paladin, Paks got ambushed and confined underground, where she was forced to fight hellish opponents over and over. She was alone and afraid but clung to her belief in her saint (Gird) and fought on. There seemed to be no end in sight.
These days, I feel like Paks in that underground hellhole. The Trump administration keeps heaping obscenity on obscenity in its quest to make the country over into a white, Christian Nationalist state that benefits the rich and victimizes everyone else, with a special hellhole dedicated to those who are homeless, mentally ill, or reliant on substances. The Executive Order signed on July 24, 2025, titled "Ending Crime and Disorder on America's Streets" purports to be a document that promises treatment and help at the same time that it calls for health data on people in public housing to be turned over to law enforcement and to lock up people who are unable to care for themselves, i.e., homeless (among whom people of color are disproportionately represented) for the sin of cluttering up the idealized urban landscape with their ugly, dirty, pathetic, often brown and black bodies.
Unfortunately, some families will applaud this measure because they think their loved one is going to get treatment despite their loved one’s refusal to accept treatment voluntarily. But the promises of treatment and care for people with serious mental illness are not supported by the very text of the document. There is no new money for hospitals to lock up the people who will be newly conserved, and there isn’t room in the hospitals that do exist. There is no money for training and staffing those yet-to-be-built hospitals. The document calls for the abolition of judicial precedents and State laws that protect due process rights for people facing conservatorship. I have to wonder: Will people placed on these conservatorships ever get off again? Where will they be housed when there is no existing housing or facilities and no mention of funding for those things in this Order? It took eight days for them to build Alligator Auschwitz. How long do you think it will take them to build new “facilities” to hold the thousands of newly conserved people? Are they likely to get even a mirage of good care in those facilities, given that there are not enough psychiatrists and nurses and techs to staff the hospitals we have now? I do not believe families want the changes this Order will bring to the lives of poor people with serious mental illness, especially if their loved one has no insight into their illness and is living on the streets.
This Order has one predictable outcome. The criminalization and confinement of people who are inconveniently needy or troublesome to have around. The people building and running detention centers (organizations like CoreCivic and GEO Group) are already getting paid big bucks to lock up anyone the administration defines as an immigrant (the shell game of who is and isn’t an immigrant is clearly focused on the color of the immigrant’s skin) in makeshift facilities without adequate medical care, sanitation, food, and water and without due process. To put it simply, this Order calls for the return of mass institutionalization of anyone the Administration finds inconvenient. And it will be paid for by your tax dollars. The rich will owe nothing, the corporations will reap profits, and, as usual, the most vulnerable will suffer the most under the cruel heel of the oppressor.
The existing system that is already criminalizing mental illness is locking up large numbers of people who are homeless, mentally ill, or substance users and alcoholics in our jails. The new system will be immeasurably worse. We will be back to the days when anyone could be accused of insanity and locked up. A poor person who has bipolar disorder and lives in public housing and gets a ticket for failing to pay his bus fare can be picked up and jailed and lose his housing just because he has bipolar disorder and has committed a “crime.” Lest you think I am exaggerating, I call your attention to the 70% of immigrants currently in detention facilities who have committed no crime at all except the crime of seeking a place to raise their family where they didn’t have to be afraid of gangs, or government-sponsored terrorism, or extreme poverty, a place where their daughters might be able to walk home from school without risking kidnap, rape, or murder. A place where, even though the jobs were brutal and the pay bad, there were jobs and there was the possibility of banding together to make the most of limited resources. Read the room. Those people are being treated worse than the criminals in our jails. A lot worse. What makes you think those who would be conserved or imprisoned thanks to this new Order would be treated any better?
This Executive Order is eugenics disguised as paternalism. It is built on the Nazi playbook and designed to disappear hundreds of thousands of people quickly and efficiently. Your loved one might get conserved or might get sent to jail/prison. But where will they be sent for treatment? Will they build a new treatment facility for people who’ve been conserved in your county? Or a new jail where there’s psychiatric services integrated into the jail? Who will pay for this new treatment center or jail? Your County? Does your county have hundreds of millions of dollars for that? What else will have to be cut to find the money?
And where exactly would they be able to build those facilities in your county? Hm, maybe there’s no place in your county for a new facility. Maybe they will send your loved one to another state, another country. Will you be able to find them? Will you be able to visit them? Will you be able to have a say in their treatment? Should they eventually be released and allowed to return to living in the community will there be any outpatient programs to support them? Will there be any place for them to live? Because the cuts to Medicaid and housing programs and food banks are going to devastate the resources the poor rely on including public housing (where they have to report that they have a mental illness and that report goes to the Sheriff ) and public behavioral health care programs.
And your loved one will be poor because they will only have SSI. Or wait. Will they have SSI? They can’t get it while they’re criminally imprisoned and often can’t get it restarted once they get out, even with help. If they’re conserved, will their conservator (who will fill those jobs? Pay those salaries?) apply for SSI for them? How long will it take to get it now that Social Security has lost thousands of workers? Do you really think the disability evaluators are going to be more sympathetic than before? That the rules will loosen up and make it possible for more people to qualify now that there are more people applying?
This Executive Order is evil and spells doom for hundreds of thousands of people. How I wish that a brave, noble paladin could ride in and rescue us from this. But Paks can’t help us. We must continue to fight in every way we can to stop these obscene rules from being implemented. If you are not rich, you are vulnerable. If you don’t have mental illness, aren’t homeless, don’t have a substance use problem, you may think you are safe. You are not, your children are not, your nieces and nephews and cousins are not, your neighbor is not, your spouse is not, your parents are not. No one who cannot buy their way out of this is safe. The world is about to get a whole lot more cruel. But maybe that’s the point.
Here is the list of rights that people on involuntary holds currently are entitled to in California. Tell me whether you think people conserved under this Executive Order and confined to the new facilities yet to be built will continue to be entitled to these same rights.
The Right to Humane Care
The Right to Be Free from Abuse or Neglect
The Right to Social Activities and Recreation
The Right to Education
The Right to Religious Freedom and Practice
The Right to Be Free from Discrimination
I have zero faith that a MAGA administration will look out for the rights of people they lock up in their gulags. They haven’t so far.