The A.F.R. search the Antitoi shop — "The nation U.S.A. treated wheelchaired persons…"
The nation U.S.A. treated wheelchaired persons with the solicitude that the weak substitute for respect. As if he were a sickly child, Fortier. Buses knelt, smooth ramps flanked steps, attendants pushed him aboard flights in full solicitous view of those standing upon legs. Fortier owned attachable legs of flesh-tone polymer resins whose interior circuitry was responsive to large-bundle neural stimuli from his stumps, which with metal crutches whose bracelets locked to his wrists allowed a sort of swirling parody of perambulation. But Fortier, he rarely wore the prostheses, not in U.S.A., and never for public transit. He preferred the condescension, the pretense of institutional ‘sensitivity’ to his ‘right’ of the ‘equal access’; it honed the edge of his senses of purpose. Like all of them, Fortier was willing to sacrifice.
Context
The theme's fullest counter-doctrine, whole and unabridged: U.S. disability "sensitivity" anatomized from inside the chair as disguised contempt — solicitude being what "the weak substitute for respect" — and then weaponized by its object, who declines the prostheses that would blur his wound because the daily condescension keeps his purpose sharp. The wheelchair as both wound and credential in a single paragraph; the scare-quotes around 'sensitivity,' 'right,' and 'equal access' are the text's own. Its living counterexample is p. 753, below.