Racing to the Abyss?
Ben Everidge for Thomas
Photo Credit: Adobe Stock by MiaStendal
Why Independent Voters Must Stop America from Repeating Its Deadliest Mistakes
Political independents believe passionately in individual freedom and limited government interference. That is a strength – an anchor against federal overreach, regulatory excess, and partisan extremism.
But there is a difference between government stepping back and government abandoning its responsibility to protect public health.
That line is now being crossed.
And the consequences are far more dangerous than many realize.
As Donald Trump, RFK Jr., and their allies flirt with dismantling America’s vaccine infrastructure - from childhood immunization schedules to federal research funding – they are not restoring freedom.
They are reopening the gates to diseases that once defined childhood not by innocence, but by funerals.
This is history.
And if America forgets that history, we will repeat its tragedies.
The Last Time America Lived Without Vaccines, Children Died in the Thousands
It is easy, in 2025, to forget what the early 20th century looked like in this country.
But here is the unvarnished truth:
Polio paralyzed or killed 15,000 American children a year. Parents feared summer, not because of vacations, but because poliomyelitis season swept through public pools, playgrounds, and schools. Hospitals overflowed with children trapped inside iron lungs.
Measles infected three to four million Americans annually. Before the vaccine, 500 Americans – mostly children – died every year, an unending churn of preventable loss. Many who survived suffered permanent brain damage or blindness.
Whooping cough killed 9,000 children a year. Infants suffocated in the arms of their mothers. Communities lived in cycles of dread every few years as outbreaks returned.
Diphtheria killed more children in some decades than any other infectious disease. It suffocated victims slowly as toxins destroyed the body from within. Entire towns were shut down.
Smallpox scarred the nation – literally. It killed a third of the people it infected. It did not discriminate by age, race, or class. George Washington, the father of our nation, ordered mass inoculation during the Revolution because smallpox killed more soldiers than the British army did.
This was not medieval Europe.
This was America, within living memory.
Vaccines didn’t arrive as ideology. They came as salvation.
Vaccines Are a Public Good Because Diseases are a Public Threat
Many independents prefer the smallest possible government footprint.
But infectious diseases do not respect:
State borders
Personal philosophy
Political identity
Parental choice
Or “hands-off” governance
A single unvaccinated cluster can reintroduce outbreaks that cost billions and kill thousands.
Vaccination is not “government overreach.”
It is a pact and agreement that in a free society, individual freedom must coexist with mutual responsibility.
You don’t get measles alone.
You don’t catch polio alone.
You don’t spread whooping cough alone.
Public health exists because no individual can stop an epidemic, but a society acting together can.
The Trump-RFK Agenda: Rolling Back a Century of Medical Progress
If this administration continues down the path of:
Removing childhood vaccine requirements
Weakening CDC authority
Cutting funding for the National Vaccine Program
Legitimizing debunked vaccine myths
Empowering anti-vaccine activists to direct federal policy
… then America will no longer be questioning the return of disease. They will be living it.
Welcome to the Theoretical End of Trump’s Second Term, If This Continues
Measles clusters in multiple states
Polio detected in wastewater in major cities
Whooping cough outbreaks in rural counties
ICUs are overwhelmed with infants who cannot be vaccinated yet
Travel restrictions placed on the United States by other countries
Thousands of preventable deaths
This is not hyperbole.
This is precisely what happened when vaccination rates dropped in the 1920s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, 1990s, and early 2000s.
History is clear: When vaccine coverage drops, disease returns. Always.
Has history not taught us anything?
What Does “The Abyss” Mean?
In this context, the abyss is not metaphorical.
It is literal.
It means returning to:
Wheelchairs and leg braces are standard childhood accessories
Mass graves during outbreaks
Schools closed for epidemics unrelated to COVID
Travel bans on American cities
Infant mortality rising for the first time in generations
Public health costs are exploding beyond control.
It means entering a future that looks disturbingly like our past.
The abyss is the place where ideology overrules science, where political branding overrules medical reality, and where leaders choose applause over life.
Independents Must Lead Because the Duopoly Won’t
Democrats talk about science but often politicize public messaging.
Republicans talk about freedom but ignore the communal consequences of their rhetoric.
Independents are uniquely positioned to restore rationality – common sense – common self-preservation. We are:
Pro-science
Pro-freedom
Pro-responsibility
Pro-America
“A government that “keeps its hands off” should not be a government that abandons prevention entirely.
Vaccines are the one area where:
The science is long settled
The stakes are unacceptably high
The consequences are catastrophically deadly
The solutions are crystal clear despite the partisan rhetoric
Independents must draw the line here.
Because if this line moves, everything else moves with it. Disease, death, disability, distrust, division, and more.
The Thomas Take: Freedom Without Responsibility Isn’t Freedom – It’s Deadly Chaos
America stands at a crossroads.
Down one path: informed independence, personal liberty balanced with public health, science serving freedom.
Down the other path: a return to an era when sickness defined childhood and funerals punctuated family life.
When leaders of any party begin dismantling the protections that saved millions, when political movements deny the stark realities of epidemiology, when science becomes optional, and prevention becomes blindly partisan, that is when a nation begins racing toward the abyss.
We still have time to stop.
But time is not guaranteed.
Independents must lead because the stakes are nothing less than the health of the nation, the survival of our children, and the memory of what life used to be before vaccines delivered us from the darkness.
