"No one in my generation had autism"
Sure thing. Uncle Barry, who collects every issue of Mechanics Monthly, and has spent over $10,000 on his model train set that is a perfect scale recreation of King's Cross Station, is completely neurotypical.
this post was submitted on 18 Apr 2025
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This response vexes me because while Uncle Barry here is certainly an example, what these people are forgetting (and what this thing about Uncle Barry glosses over) is that until the Americans with Disabilities Act, and the fights from the 70s onward, if a family in the US had a child with an IQ of under 70, they were often shipped off to an institution.
Deinstitutionialization didn't really begin to gain steam until relatively recently in our collective history- here in Tennessee we still had one of these facilities open until the nineties. These people didn't believe there were people with severe mental disabilities, because our society hid them away!
Look up Clover Bottom. But don't, because it's horrifying. I've met people who lived there their entire lives. What was done to them was disgusting.
It is awful what was done to them. But it's awful that people with a greater severity of condition, a greater need for care, are often glossed over in these comment sections. It feels like they're made invisible in these conversations just like they were in those institutions! And I'm terrified that assholes like RFK Jr will disappear them for real!
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I have a staunchly leftist but older co-worker who thinks no one she knew growing up had autism.
"I still think something is causing it" despite being pro-vaxx.
The propaganda is extremely effective unfortunately
Considering how provaxx they where back then, it's insane seeing people who grew up with polio repeating antivax shit.
Like back in the day. No one got cancer....cause they didn't know wtf it was, doesn't mean the shit wasn't around. Science didn't stop in 1904.
Just on cancer as an example, there's a solid argument to be made that it was historically diagnosed as a consumptive disease. My great great aunt died of cancer awhile back and she was practically wasting away.
consumptions usually refers to TB, its has been called wasting sickness forever, because one of the symptoms of cancer(terminal) was cachexia which is your body wasting away. i found it interesting inuyasha mentioned its old term"wasting sickness" which immediately knew it was cancer.
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When I hear something along the lines of "there is no way someone can be that stupid." I think about 2 things.
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How dumb the average person is and realize half the population is dumber than that.
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The interview of a Yosemite Park Ranger discussing the difficulty of designing the perfect bear proof trash can. The ranger is quoted as saything,"there is a considerable intelligence overlap between the smartest bear and the dumbest human."
The moment has reignited broader concerns about Kennedy's qualifications and judgment...
He has no qualifications and an exactly equivalent amount of judgement.
🙄 🤡 🖕 🖕
He may have 0 qualifications, but I wouldn't say his judgement is exactly equivalent. His judgment goes much more into the negatives, since everything he says and every decision he makes is actively causing harm. We would be better off simply having the role vacant, or giving the job to someone in a coma.
Ironically, even the most profoundly autistic people, the ones that resemble his characterization of the condition, would still be better at the job than he is.
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Nothing will meaningfully improve until the rich fear for their lives
Congress too, we need them to step down. The rich are afraid of taxes, congress needs to be more afraid of us than they are of taxing the rich. they still need to get food. They still have family that live in our communities. They should feel as safe as an illegal immigrant smuggling thought crimes across the border.
Narrator: Indeed, he can
Methinks the "doctors" fucked up his so-called brain worm incident...
Evidently, they removed what there was of the brain and left the decaying dead worm in its place.
🤷♂️
Twist: The worm is still alive, and operating RFK Jr. like a fleshy mech.
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'He Cannot Be This Stupid'
He's even more stupid than they are acknowledging.
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Are people just realizing now that he's unfit for his job?
Yeah. That's how stupid America really is. Worse than Carlin ever thought possible.
Of course he can be that stupid. If you don't think you can be that stupid, you are as out of touch as he is. There is no known bottom to human stupidity.
Touted 'Unfit'
By senators prior to his appointment?
No, by some anonymous posts on social media last week
So will this result in any actual consequences?
Absolutely not
Great
Hey, that 65 year old neighbor with the $200k model trainset? Yeah, probably autistic.
Short answer: if they got it bad, they're dead or in a nursing home. That's why they aren't walking in a mall. They ran out of health.
Long answer: in recent times, there seems to be lower threshold of diagnosis.
But if he truly thinks he can pinpoint exposures that increase autism - things like the exposure to tetraethyl lead which probably increased criminality and decreased mental health - good luck for combing scientific studies. There may be some. But if he's gonna rewind the age old "vaccines cause" record and replay it, nah, I won't be listening.
It's not that there's a lower threshold. It's that the definitions and our understanding of Autism changed. People who formerly would have been labeled with Asperger's are now labeled (correctly) with Autism Spectrum Disorder. Plus we've learned how Autism can present differently in other communities that aren't white male children. Acknowledging that girls can even be Autistic is a relatively recent development (the 90s).
The truth is that there are likely a ton of people out there with undiagnosed Autism, because they wouldn't have met the criteria to be diagnosed as kids based on our understanding at the time. It's why there are so many adults now getting late life diagnoses.
I was a scientist and have tested on the spectrum myself. And I think a whole lot of my colleagues would have too. Except if you're high functioning and productive, there is little reason to test you. The misery of being on the spectrum and not being able to easily socialize with other people or to detect their emotional states is unimportant to society as long as one meets the performance standards society sets for you. Not that I'm complaining but I might have felt better about myself if I had known why I wasn't able to do those things until I was an adult. I suffered depression largely because I was "weird" growing up and was bullied until I became an accomplished wrestler and it became dangerous for others to bully me. I truly think sport saved me. And taught me how to act more normally. Not everyone on the spectrum is so fortunate.
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They're going to blame flouride for sure
Way too many rural (i.e. well water) cases for that to even make a good scapegoat.
Not even. Older people got the mercury-stabilized vaccines he's ranting about, they should be more autistic according to him.
He's just fucking stupid.
"cannot be this stupid?" This is a kakistocracy, it's only stupid.
It's an administration of "well, I haven't seen it, so obviously it isn't real."
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Plenty of older people have ASD. I know a couple personally. They have childhood stories of being beaten, yelled at, difficulty with teachers and peers. They claim to be fine today, but telling horror stories of your trauma as a kid really says otherwise. If ASD was bad enough to be “retarded”, they were kept from society and/or put in State Homes. RFK is ADHD, and the only thing that kept him out of jails due to the untreated effects when he was younger is hs family name and wealth.
the only thing that kept him out of jails due to the untreated effects when he was younger is hs family name and wealth.
That and having a penis. Rosemary wasn't so lucky.
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The lady doth protest too much...... I'm calling it now, some psychiatrist tried to diagnose Rfk Jr with autism and he lost his fucking shit about it. I mean the dudes been obsessed with dead animals since he was a child always been known as "eccentric".
"He was in fact, exactly that stupid..." - Ron Howard
I love how this is the hill people finally die on, and not the other absolutely wild shit this guy has said before he even got this gig, like collecting roadkill or his extremely well documented conspiracy-esque, anti-vaccine history.
A friend of mine learned she had adhd at 65, and autism very recently at ~78. She said that her behavior and interests finally make sense.
One of Donald's cabinet? Unfit?!?
Again?
I'm sorry but if you can listen to RFK speak for longer than 10 seconds without becoming enraged then you really are just fucking dumb.
He’s been unfit since he got in.
I still... maybe it's my years working construction, but when I look at RFK Jr. - his mannerisms and gestures and speech patterns and connection (or lack thereof) to reality - I see a tweaker, clear as a bell.
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Look, he's killing people. He should be arrested and go to trial for criminal negligence and manslaughter. Like the rest of the bunch.
But they can't even say it lol. "oh, some people touted!"
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He's dumber than most people can imagine. Jack, Ted, and Bobby might have been morally bankrupt but they weren't stupid. Something went seriously wrong with this one.
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All the people who made the boomer neurodivergents disappear either have dementia or are long gone. Easy scapegoat.
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"Have you ever seen anyone...71 years old, with full-blown autism?" Kennedy asked. "Head-banging, nonverbal, non-toilet trained, spinning, toe-walking...these other stereotypical features?"
"Where are these people walking around the mall? You can't find them," he said. "They're not in homes, there are no homes for them, there are no institutions... anybody can look around and see that this is a canard."
I keep seeing the Forest Gump quote overlayed over him whenever I see one of his posts, "I am not a bright man."
Also, there very much are older people like this. My mother worked with severe people my entire life. The elder autistic exist.
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