The Roberts court invented the official acts immunity out of whole cloth for the sole purpose of keeping Trump out of jail. They're quite capable of interpreting everything he does as an official act.
Are you referring to the Trump government's treatment of trans people?
RFK views autistics as undesirables, so it's absurd to believe that he'll be any nicer to us.
> “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,”
What makes more sense is that he's collecting our personal information for imprisonment and execution.
>> “These are kids who will never pay taxes, they’ll never hold a job, they’ll never play baseball, they’ll never write a poem, they’ll never go on a date, many of them will never use a toilet unassisted,”
This is true of people with severe autism. I know someone whose autism is severe enough she'll probably never be able to live independently. Doesn't everyone view that medical condition--the condition, not the person--as undesirable? Doesn't everyone view being healthy as better than being unhealthy?
I have ADHD. I'd rather not have ADHD. I take a pill every day to control it. My kid has it too. He'll have to take a pill every day for the rest of his life. I'd love to avoid that outcome. Avoiding disease is a good thing!
Your comparison makes no sense. Bangladeshi Americans, as a group, are normal and healthy. They don't suffer from a medical condition that could be cured.
But to use a better example, south asians have a significantly higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Almost everyone in my family has it. It would be great to cure that or figure out how to avoid that. I'd be fine with the government collecting data about that, so long as there was an opt-out.
> Your comparison makes no sense. Bangladeshi Americans, as a group, are normal and healthy. They don't suffer from a medical condition that could be cured.
I was trying to give you a sense of why I interpret his comments as a threat. He's described all of us as if we're a burden when I've been supporting myself for decades.
Some autistics would want a cure, but others feel that their perspective is equally as valid as neurotypicals. They don't see themselves as sick and in need of a cure.
> But to use a better example, south asians have a significantly higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes. Almost everyone in my family has it. It would be great to cure that or figure out how to avoid that. I'd be fine with the government collecting data about that, so long as there was an opt-out.
My main impairments are face blindness and a severe difficulty with reading facial expressions - I'm in the bottom 5% of the population. I would happily take a cure for either of these if it was offered. If it's a more general personality change, then I'm not interested. I'm comfortable with who I am.
There isn't an opt-out for me and there's a long history of eugenics in this country, that's why I'm concerned about this.
And I'm saying you shouldn't compare people of different ethnicities to people with medical conditions. I'm normal where I'm from. My skin color is an adaptation to the tropical climate I'm from. It's not a medical condition that's maladaptive to normal functioning, or something that ideally we could cure.
Your use of the term "eugenics" is nonsensically broad. Society should seek to cure diseases and maladaptive medical conditions. That's not "eugenics."
Your problem is that you fail to understand that autism isn't a disease, it's a neurodivergence, their brains are just wired slightly differently. Many autists live their whole lives without even suspecting of their conditions, and most of those who are aware of it live absolutely normal lives. The only way we could potentially "cure" autism is if we somehow altered peoples' brains while in the womb, if that's not eugenics I don't know what is.
Reducing the incidence of undesirable or maladaptive medical conditions is a good thing. That's why we have vaccines, for example. That's why we perform second trimester screening, for example.
This is why autistic people are wary of efforts to "cure" autism -- because the people leading the charge always use dehumanizing language to frame their cause. It becomes a moral imperative. "We have to cleanse humanity of this scourge! We have to save the children!"
And what do we have to do to accomplish this goal? The solutions are always the same: register us all in a database, send us to a camp or a farm for "curing", and prevent us from reproducing through forced sterilization and/or euthanasia.
Unless and until autistic people are in charge, then all such efforts to "cure" autism and "find the cause" should be treated with extreme skepticism.
He’s being incredibly clear that when he talks about people that have trouble participating in society, he is talking about the 26% of people with profound autism.
Online autism conspiracy theory channels turn this into some kind of eugenics purge.
He's not being "incredibly clear" because he speaks about autistic people with one broad brush.
And in calling this "a conspiracy theory" and "some kind of eugenics purge", you seem to be intentionally downplaying the very real and very legitimate worries of autistic people, a group who has historically been subjected to eugenics purges in the past, which started using the language and rationale Kennedy espouses.
If Kennedy wants to be taken seriously and with good faith, he should put autistic people and experts in charge of this effort. That he doesn't speaks volumes about his true intentions.
Sorry if that sounds like a conspiracy theory to you, but autistic people like myself see the obvious parallel here and we aren't going to just be quiet and allow it to happen again.
No, this is always the defense people come up when RFK says something insane.
It's not deepfake, it's not edited, he is just actually a crazy person. Yes, he truly believes HIV doesn't cause AIDS. Yes, he truly believes vaccines don't work.
We should not be listening to him on anything, let alone things that actually matter. There are people living on the side of the road with more credibility and reasonableness than him. And, we will not be gaslit by his defenders who, I can only assume, are equally as insane as him.
It’s edited. Watch the full thing, he says ‘to be clear I’m not talking about (high functioning people)’ but rather a group of children who seem to have a sudden onset of autistic symptoms at two. Seriously just watch it.
As far as I can tell I've heard all the words from that man and his surrogates. What are the words that have been said which I have not heard, which would clear all this up?
So about 25% of the kids who are diagnosed with autism are nonverbal, non-toilet trained, and have other stereotypical features, headbanging, tactile and light sensitivities, stimming, toe-locking, et cetera.
Aside from not being toilet trained, the rest of that applies to me. So am I "profoundly autistic"? I mean, maybe but at the same time I don't think that's really what he means. So you can see my confusion. Is he talking about me or isn't he? Because he's listing off things I do all the time, and calling the these features of "profound autism".
He also says:
"with full-blown autism, headbanging, non-verbal, non-toilet trained, stimming, toe walking, these other stereotypical features. "
Again, not incredibly clear by my reading. Very broad brush being applied here.
In the whole speech, he doesn't refer to autism as a "spectrum" disorder once until he's prompted by a reporter in those terms. Telling, because he clearly views autism as a binary of high/low functioning or high/low needs, which it's not. So again, painting autism with a broad brush.
Then there's this:
Then you have to ask yourself, why is it so pervasive? Why has it been thrown up against us for so many years? Clearly, there are industries. This is coming from an environmental toxin. Somebody made a profit by putting that environmental toxin into our air, our water, our medicines, our food. It’s to their benefit to normalize it, to say, this is all normal. It’s always been here.
Yeah, so let me get this straight, RFK says this and yet it's the autism community who you think are the conspiracy theorists?
Yes, I would consider an adult that bangs their head to stim to have profound autism.
Yes, RFK said that and then I do think some extreme members of the autism community are conspiracy theorists. Literally nothing that he has said that you have quoted indicates that he wants to create concentration camps or kill everyone or anything else said on the autism community channels we have both read.
Let's assume they were planning to create concentration camps, do you naively expect them to publicly admit that in plain language or how do you think that would look?
Even the Nazis didn't have the political capital to plainly admit to their own atrocities. They tried to keep it secret for as long as they could, then they denied the camps' existence, denied the abuse in those camps, denied the genocide, falsified medical records to make it appear that people died from pneumonia and unfortunate medical complications.
In reality they were injecting children with pathogens, experimenting on them, torturing them, starving them and ultimately killing them. In the end they even tried to make their families pay for their "care". Officially, nobody knew anything terrible was happening. Unofficially, everyone was complicit.
> In 2023, Godwin published an opinion in The Washington Post stating "Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you." In the article, Godwin says "But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump’s 2024 candidacy and Hitler’s progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy."
Normally I agree but Godwin's law is officially suspended the moment they threw a Nazi salute.
Regardless, Godwin's Law is a thought terminating cliche, which is shielding us from the truth. The person you responded to wasn't calling them Nazis (although I am), they were asking you to engage in a hypothetical to try to make sense of a problematic issue: for 70 years since the Holocaust we have heard the slogan "never again", as a cry to the future to prevent such an atrocity from ever happening again.
The question to all those who hear that cry is: how? How do you prevent a holocaust from happening again?
The problem the parent is pointing out is that the perpetrators of a holocaust don't say that is their intent. They will say they are "punishing criminals", "deporting illegals", "purging drug dealers", "cleaning up the streets", "bringing order", "causing peace", "uniting the nation", "restoring glory" etc.
Therefore in order to prevent a holocaust, one has to necessarily stand in the way of people who claim to be doing good. No one doing a holocaust claims to be doing evil.
If you wait for undeniable proof of a holocaust before you act to stop it, you will fail. That kind of proof only comes after the fog of war has cleared.
Therefore if you really want to prevent a holocaust, you have to do so before they consolidate power, before they operationalize their intent, at the stage when they still have plausible deniability, and when they can make their plans seem reasonable. You prevent them from laying the groundwork for the holocaust, despite all the deniers.
Trying to equate any random hand gesture that just happens to have their arm extended at some point isn't fooling anyone, but it's a strong signal for your true feelings on the matter so I appreciate the time-saving part of it.
This would be my cue to dip out of this conversation, and I will actually stay out -- if random people reading through these replies feel compelled to tell you this, and your response is to put a crown on your own head, I will leave you to it.
What I had said was "shows the same thing as the link I provided". In the link is a video of a neo nazi group doing a Nazi salute, which consists of two strokes:
1) hand on heart
2) thrust hand outward from body
Which is exactly the 1-2 gesture that Musk makes. Juxtaposing the neo Nazi group and Musk doing the salute at the same time makes clear just how similar they are.
As for your proof, what you have brought is as follows:
1) AOC waving her hand across her body three times. When juxtaposed next to the neo Nazis, it's clear what she is doing is not what they are doing.
2) Tim Walz pats his chest twice and then outstretches his hand in a wave. This again is not the 1-2 gesture heart->outstretch arm that the neo Nazis do.
3) A still of a man with his arm outstretched. Obviously not the 1-2 motion because there is no motion at all.
So far, you have no examples that demonstrate people doing the gesture that the neo Nazis are doing. Yet we do have a video of Musk doing the same gesture the neo Nazis are doing.
But fine, for the sake of argument, let's take the best example, Tim Walz, and just presume what he did is exactly a Nazi salute. What I had said was, now the presumption is Nazi until proven otherwise. So then let's look at both men and see if they exhibit other prevalent behaviors that Nazis exhibit.
What are Nazis best known for? Unbridled megalomania. Is Elon Musk a megalomaniac? Yes, he clearly is. He's quoted as saying empathy is a weakness. He's quoted saying if we want minerals there's nothing other countries can do to prevent us from orchestrating a coup to get them. His leadership style is decidedly authoritarian. Checking a lot of Nazi boxes.
Meanwhile Tim Walz is not a megalomaniac. He was democratically elected and follows the rule of law. He ran in a free and fair election, lost, and didn't foment an insurrection. He leads by example and building consensus rather than fiat and sheer force of will. Not a lot of Nazi behavior exhibited...
> But I bet you have already seen them and you just don’t care
Another wrong bet, I've seen everything under the sun and nothing yet has come close the what Musk is doing. That's because Musk is doing the real actual genuine thing, and these "gotchas" are people bending over backwards to try to normalize genuine Nazis.
Look, a lot of reasonable people are identifying what Musk did as a Nazi salute. The worldwide drop in Tesla sales and the massive protests prove that. I don't have to do a single thing to make Musk look like a Nazi, he does that all himself. It's up to you if you want to spend your time defending clearly indefensible actions. You really should save your breath though, because words from you won't convince me; at this point I'll need to see actions from Musk to believe otherwise.
But it is notable that you are willing to bend yourself into knots to justify Musk. This reply is the most substantive one you've written in this whole conversation, by a wide margin. Most others have been perfunctory, but you really warmed up your keyboard with this one. Like the other poster, I find that very interesting and telling.
> He’s being incredibly clear that when he talks about people that have trouble participating in society
Is that supposed to make it better? This distinction between autistic individuals who are productive and those who have trouble participating in society goes back to Nazi Germany where they sent the latter group to "reform camps" and "hospitals" to be murdered and eradicated. That's where the distinction of "Asperger syndrome" comes from.
2) propose to send them to a concentration camp where where they will be treated
Then you had better damn well be prepared to answer specifically how what you're doing is different from what the Nazis did. If you're not prepared to deal seriously and substantively with that very relevent historical precedent, you have no business proposing the registry and the camps in the first place.
This entire term so far has been one ratchet after another of "they will never do that" followed promptly by "wow, they just did that, nothing we can do about it now except deal with the fallout!"
On the one hand they've proposed the autism database.
On the other hand they've proposed the "wellness farms" for drug addicts.
All that's left is for the right hand to start picking up what the left hand is putting down and we are there.
Moreover, they have been demonstrating that they're willing to torture those they consider "subhuman". Look at how they are treating immigrants.
Autistic people are used to being abused in awful ways, so when we see those immigrants being abused and abducted by the Trump administration, it's not very hard to see they would be willing to do this to autistic people. It doesn't take a conspiracy theorist to recognize they're all awful people who are currently unrestrained by the law and general decency.
The conspiracy theory, such as it is, is this: these people look like Nazis, they sound like Nazis, and they act like Nazis, so their proposals related to autism are to be taken with a giant Nazi sized grain of salt.
Are you thinking about the guy the politicians are meeting with, that jumped the border and has two separate domestic violence cases? Agreed that somebody isn’t seeing the full picture here.
No, I'm thinking specifically about the student that was abducted off the street and terrorized. But you bring up another good example of immigrant cruelty. I'm aware of the context you mention, but that doesn't change the fact that with what they're doing, they are highlighting and putting on full display the level of cruelty they are willing to engage in as they wield power.
It's only a matter of time before that level of depravity is directed at American citizens on American soil.
Also I thought you were going to bow out of this discussion?
I bet that didn't happen. Someone on a visa probably waved a Hamas flag or told people how they can support Hamas and then had their visa appropriately yanked. I have no idea, I just know BS when I read it.
Edit: oh you're the same person from the other thread. Figures.
This kind of display terrorizing force directed at normal people for exercising their speech is exactly the kind of excessive force that autistic people are hypervigilant about. We can see they started doing this first to illegal immigrants, then they moved on to legal residents, then they moved to citizens like US citizen immigration attorneys and the us-born children of migrants. If this trajectory holds, they will eventually turn on actual US citizens as a whole.
> Online autism conspiracy theory channels turn this into some kind of eugenics purge.
No, people in leadership positions have a duty to lead - justifying themselves and attempting to get buy in from everyone. Especially so on sensitive topics that we're societally squeamish about due to some very real historic horrors.
I know the memetic field is a bit hazy from the sensationalist media pushing divisive whole-cloth nonsense like Joe Biden is going to make you eat bugs etc, but there is a huge difference when that schizophrenia is actively encouraged from the top.
So this idea that we're just supposed to trust the Trump administration, when many of their actions have already been completely unhinged and senseless (eg huge tariff taxes), when Trump's last time at the helm was completely divisive and destructive, and when he's picked the most unhinged type of charlatans for his cabinet this time around? Sorry, trust needs to be earned - especially the amount required for pulling on rightfully sensitive threads - and they're not even doing the basics of attempting to.
> sensationalist media pushing divisive whole-cloth nonsense like Joe Biden is going to make you eat bugs
This is exactly the same thing. In the full speech RFK makes it clear who he is and is not talking about, I’m torn on whether our leaders need to rewrite their speeches for sound bites.
Maybe? I haven't listened to his speech directly, because I'm burnt out from having to dissect the sheer volume of dog whistles this movement relies upon.
Maybe that's a civically irresponsible take, but it is extremely civically irresponsible for Trump to cause this fatigue by sowing division to create a segment of fervent support. We've had too many years of "4d chess" with everyone trying to read good intentions and coherent reasoning out of the word salad. At this point most reasonable people are only trying to read the tea leaves to know how they might have to protect themselves.
And sure, RFK is not Trump. Except it's clear Trump has no concept of delegation or keeping his hands off of something. Even if RFK has the purest of motivations, it's very easy to see Trump seeing a few edgelord social media comments saying we need to send $whomever to the camps as well, noticing that the topic "drives engagement", and running away with the idea. At this point it's just generally bad to be in the crosshairs of state legibility in any way.
DoGE exists to dismantle branches of government that Republicans disapprove of, enrich the Republican elite, and use the federal government's data for their personal benefit.
Musk has openly reassigned some contracts to SpaceX for personal gain and fired people investigating his companies, so it's a given that they're also privately lining their pockets.
The federal data will be used to harass and disenfranchise their opponents. Musk, for example, can use the NLRB data to identify complainants about his companies, so that he can pay them off or have them sent to El Salvador. The data can also be used for the Safeguard Voting Eligibility Act (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...), which is intended to prevent women, blacks, and other groups from voting.
There's ample evidence of incompetence from DoGE, including obvious coding security holes, firing people who ensure the safety of our nuclear arsenal, and other mistakes that you would expect from an unmotivated intern.
This is supporting evidence that they were picked for ideological reasons - namely, being young white supremacists who wouldn't ask any questions. That's why Marko Elez was rehired. Musk, Trump, and Vance all share his views, he was just dumb enough to express them in public.
> That’s been beat to death. He would face impeachment + removal from office.
Republicans didn't object to Trump's coup attempt, fraud convictions, past attempted rapes, or proven corruption. 70% of them believe that he won the 2020 election. There's no reason to believe that they'd impeach him for child rape unless she was the daughter of a prominent Republican. Trump would have the girl killed, send her parents to a gulag in El Salvador, and Fox News would call it fake news.
It's certainly possible that none of the numerous allegations or proven cases of sexual assault (https://19thnews.org/2023/10/donald-trump-associates-sexual-...) were rape attempts, but that's at best an extraordinary claim requiring extraordinary evidence.
That's why I’ve stopped feeding the troll — I just downvote or flag when necessary. It’s a shame because, years ago, he was one of the better commenters on HN.
