{"id":25901,"date":"2025-10-05T17:49:02","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T00:49:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=25901"},"modified":"2025-10-09T16:34:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-09T23:34:12","slug":"there-are-shades-of-autism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/10\/05\/there-are-shades-of-autism\/","title":{"rendered":"Shades of Autism"},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li>Andrew O&#8217;Hehir at Salon describes Trump&#8217;s war on reality, concerning Venezuela;<\/li>\n<li>Bits from JMG about Democrats, the Pope, a debate trophy named for Charlie Kirk; how Trump lies about Portland burning to the ground; and how the GOP doesn&#8217;t want children to know that bisexuals exist;<\/li>\n<li>And a long piece about whether the Autism spectrum should be split apart.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<div align=\"center\">&#8211; &#8211; &#8211;<\/div>\n<p>A familiar theme, noted yet again.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/app\/uploads\/2025\/10\/GettyImages-2237038869.jpg\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>Salon, Andrew O&#8217;Hehir, 5 Oct 2025<\/strong>: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.salon.com\/2025\/10\/05\/trumps-phony-war-on-venezuela-and-his-larger-war-on-reality\/\">Trump\u2019s phony war on Venezuela \u2014 and his larger war on reality<\/a><a>, subtitled &#8220;Why is Trump attacking Venezuela? All the usual reasons: Wounded pride, limitless greed and conspiracy theories&#8221;<\/a><\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Listing various random events that may be part of a bigger scheme.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Viewed through the distortion lens of Trumpism, those things no longer appear as disconnected or nonsensical but as parts of a grand plan, squares stitched into the great MAGA quilt of meaning. In fact, if we take a closer look at Trump\u2019s phony war with Venezuela, which seems to defy any rational explanation (and isn\u2019t exactly a war with Venezuela; we\u2019ll get to that), it turns out to embody all the elements of a much larger full-spectrum war against reality.<\/p>\n<p>That larger war is breathtaking in its scale and ambition but also severely limited in scope, since a central tenet of the MAGA agenda is to pick easy targets and avoid overt military conflict with actual adversaries. It\u2019s a campaign, albeit a frequently erratic and incompetent one, to push that agenda as far as it will go in every possible direction and, along the way, to establish Trump as a world-historical figure, a latter-day Caesar or Charlemagne or Lenin. (It was grimly amusing to learn that Trump had never heard of William the Conqueror; by his own account, he told King Charles, \u201cThat\u2019s the coolest name I\u2019ve ever heard.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p>It that sounds preposterous and doomed to fail, well, sure. That doesn\u2019t mean it won\u2019t change the world in unpredictable ways for years to come, beyond the lifespan of anyone reading this today. It\u2019s conventional to observe that Trump\u2019s promise to make America great again has always implied an impossible return to an imaginary past that never existed: bits of the 1950s, the 1890s and the antebellum South, all stirred into Ronald Reagan\u2019s \u201cMorning in America\u201d commercials. &#8230;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>But, we know this already.<\/p>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>Short bits from <strong>JMG.<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2025\/10\/trump-demands-fox-stop-interviewing-democrats\/\">Trump Demands Fox Stop Interviewing Democrats<\/a><a> (Talk about cancel culture!)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2025\/10\/pope-leo-open-your-arms-and-hearts-to-migrants\/\">Pope Leo: \u201cOpen Your Arms And Hearts\u201d To Migrants<\/a> (As if MAGA Christians care what the Pope says, let alone Jesus, who is too woke for many)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2025\/10\/florida-names-college-debate-trophy-for-charlie-kirk\/\">Florida Names College Debate Trophy For Charlie Kirk<\/a> (This is perverse, since Kirk didn&#8217;t debate, he harangued)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2025\/10\/trump-rages-about-judge-he-appointed-portland-is-burning-to-the-ground-and-he-should-be-ashamed\/\">Trump Rages About Judge He Appointed: \u201cPortland Is Burning To The Ground And He Should Be Ashamed\u201d<\/a> (Portland is *not* burning to the ground. He&#8217;s lying, he&#8217;s deluded, he&#8217;s demented.)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.joemygod.com\/2025\/10\/gop-rep-demands-federal-investigation-after-sons-iowa-high-school-mentions-bisexual-awareness-week\/\">GOP Rep Demands Federal Investigation After Son\u2019s Iowa High School Mentions \u201cBisexual Awareness Week\u201d<\/a> (Because conservatives\/the GOP don&#8217;t want their children to be even &#8220;aware&#8221; that such people exist. As I&#8217;ve said before, parents are terrified of their children being distracted from providing the next generation.)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>\\\\\\<\/p>\n<p>This article suggests a good point. Where useful distinctions can be made, they should be made. (And that doesn&#8217;t mean that science has &#8220;changed its mind&#8221; or any such nonsense. &#8220;Refined its conclusions&#8221; would be more accurate, since science has always done that.)<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/images\/2025\/10\/03\/multimedia\/1003-HS-PROFOUND-AUTISM-Print1\/01-hpfq-superJumbo.jpg?quality=75&amp;auto=webp\" width=\"400\" \/><\/p>\n<p><strong>NY Times, Azeen Ghorayshi, 1 Oct 2025<\/strong> (though in today&#8217;s print paper): <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2025\/10\/01\/health\/autism-spectrum-neurodiversity-kennedy.html\">Should the Autism Spectrum Be Split Apart?<\/a>, subtitled &#8220;Families of people with severe autism say the repeated expansion of the diagnosis pushed them to the sidelines. A new focus on the disorder has opened the way for them to argue their cause.&#8221;<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>At the time Jodie\u2019s diagnosis was first made, the definition of autism was expanding, as it would continue to do over the next 25 years. Once primarily limited to severely disabled people, autism began to be viewed as a spectrum that included far less impaired children and adults. Along the way, it also became an identity, embraced by college graduates and even by some of the world\u2019s most successful people, like <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=fCF8I_X1qKI\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Elon Musk<\/a> and <a class=\"css-yywogo\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/vXq4j8zdIXI?si=a8mGY3jMIfCO1xLR&amp;t=712\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Bill Gates<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Or like Hugo Gernsback (see the book <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Neurotribes-Legacy-Autism-Future-Neurodiversity\/dp\/0399185615\/\">Neurotribes<\/a>), or like me (see <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2017\/04\/24\/i-can-do-anything-mark-haddons-the-curious-incident-of-the-dog-in-the-night-time\/\">this post<\/a>.)<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s the extreme cases that RFK Jr referred to:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Speaking of autistic children in the spring, Mr. Kennedy said, \u201cThese are kids who will never pay taxes, they\u2019ll never hold a job, they\u2019ll never play baseball, they\u2019ll never write a poem, they\u2019ll never go out on a date.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He is conflating profound autism with non-profound autism. The latter cases have increased, because of expanding definitions of autism. The point of the article is that those parents who live with children with profound autism are feeling sidelined. Yet profound autism is as rare as it&#8217;s ever been.<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nytautismchart5oct2025.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/nytautismchart5oct2025.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"500\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>As always, I am limiting my takes on articles like these. I only quote a bit. There is much more detail at this one. This piece is particularly effective since it deals with real cases.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Andrew O&#8217;Hehir at Salon describes Trump&#8217;s war on reality, concerning Venezuela; Bits from JMG about Democrats, the Pope, a debate trophy named for Charlie Kirk; how Trump lies about Portland burning to the ground; and how the GOP doesn&#8217;t want &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2025\/10\/05\/there-are-shades-of-autism\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,90,54,20,89,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25901","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservative-resistance","category-conservatives","category-politics","category-psychology","category-reality","category-thinking"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25901"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25953,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25901\/revisions\/25953"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25901"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25901"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25901"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}