When Trump was elected I thought I might just list stupid things as he did them, have a decent chuckle, write a bit, and we’d all move on. But it is too much. Too often. There isn’t enough time in the world to write about all he does an how it affects everyone. And it started with the people he pulled out of absolutely NOWHERE to run the various offices in government. You could not choose more inept people.

Just the other day the woman in charge of education confused AI as in the letters for ARTIFICIAL and INTELLIGENCE and totally swapped them for A1 – the steak sauce. Yes, my friends, this woman thought steak sauce was teaching our small humans. I cannot make this shit up. Trump passed up thousands of qualified individuals with Ph.D’s in Education for this absolute fruitcake.

Now I must bring up RFK Jr. He has been after vaccines for awhile. In public he does this random two-step of “well, vaccines are absolutely a good thing… but we need to reduce the amount of environmental toxins…” whatever that means. Before Trump picked him for Secretary of Health and Human Services, he really did a dance where he didn’t push too hard one way or another so as not to lose his chance to be confirmed. Once he got confirmed, he has showed he really has gone totally batshit and has worm food for brains.

Now we have him going “I will have autism solved within 10 months! I suspect vaccines!” Hey, dude? There is absolutely zero proof of any link between vaccines of any kind and autism. Is there a rise in autism rates? Absolutely. A more likely cause is the better access to diagnosing, earlier diagnosing, and even having adults getting diagnosed when their kids do. There is a STRONG family link when there is autism in a family.

“But! The thimerosal (ethyl mercury) in vaccines cause autism!” Yeah, no. First, it totally doesn’t. That MMR vaccine – autism thing was based on a paper written by a discredited doctor who was helping to make a version of MMR vaccine to compete with it. He was actually PRO vaccine, but only HIS vaccine, so he could make money. Much like Edison with electricity against Tesla. Second, Thimerosal hasn’t even been in the vaccines since 2001. Aidan was born with autism… in 2003.

Yes. *BORN* with it. The theory is that children are likely born with it. An issue with how the brain forms during their second trimester, so obviously vaccines have absolutely fuck-all to do with it. Also, how does one explain autism in vaccine-free families? Not that I think anti-vaxxers are great, because so many people I know rely on herd immunity, but in this argument it only goes to prove the argument that vaccines cannot be the cause.

RFK Jr. has flat out said he refuses to accept that better access to psychiatry care, early intervention, and wider and more definitive terms to help identify a child or adult and where they are on the spectrum could account for the influx in rates over the more recent years. Every time a new DSM came out, the rates shifted to deal with what was now considered part of the spectrum which may have been excluded prior. In DSM-5, there are so many more things we consider as possible autistic behavior.

In the DSM-1 Autism wasn’t even a THING. It was –

“schizophrenic reaction: childhood type”

“Onset before age 3, Withdrawal from social interaction, Failure to develop language for communication, Preoccupation with objects or rituals, and insistence on sameness and resistance to change.” (DSM 1, 1952)

“Autism” as its own thing wasn’t even in the book until DSM-III as “infantile autism” in 1980 but mostly categorized as part of PDD-NOS. Prior it was offshoots like Pervasive Developmental Disorder – Not Otherwise Specified (PDD-NOS) until 1994, and then it could be considered autism or when high functioning, “Asperger’s Syndrome” back then. We do not use that term now, as Hans Asperger was a Nazi and believed in “race hygiene” which is a kind term for eugenics and forced sterilization of the parents.

When RFK Jr asserts that autistic individuals are a blight upon our families; that they are nothing but work for us and will never contribute to society, it is obvious he has never met my friend Jannie. Or Shari. Or Mike – who connected with my own profoundly autistic son so we could communicate even a bit. These people absolutely do contribute. Mike is a safety inspector and has such an ingrained moral code that he would not let Perdue Chicken force his hand when he found safety issues. He got himself a thumbdrive and backed up all his proof, just to make sure shit got fixed. Jannie teaches children, and is one of the most intelligent people I have ever met. Definitely makes RFK Jr. look like he belongs in Deliverance. A man telling the world that autistic people are somehow *less than* merely for having brains that work at a different speed and on a different operating system is so not cool. His relatives would all be ashamed of him. I think the ones that are alive *are* ashamed, and the ones that were of the previous Kennedy Royalty – definitely would have lobotomized this tool by now. After all, they lobotomized his aunt for seizures and acting out, and for being intellectually disabled.

Autism exists on a spectrum. Some are lightly affected. Some are severely affected. All are worthy of love, respect, care, medical treatment, appropriate schooling, AND DECENT GOVERNMENT FUNDING to help parents of the adult children that cannot work find things to do during the days. Because he complains that the autistic individuals are a strain on everyone, but in the same breath gives no thought to how to help fix that. Like, “hey. here’s some funding to send your kid to a program 2 days a week so they don’t turn into a veritable plant since they aged out of school now.” Or even “Hey, we see that you have some plans for your kid to do some stuff, do you need some funding for transportation? We will reimburse you if you keep receipts!” Parents are grasping at anything when their kids turn 22. You complain our kids are a drain, but give us NO options to have them NOT be.

Want stay-at-home parents to return to work? We literally cannot. We have to stay home because we have the kiddo with us, and we have nowhere to take them because they are too old for daycare, and we have no money for programs and now the government is cutting ALL the program money. So no, we can’t go back to work. Someone has to stay home. We can’t even get daycare because that would just be working to pay for daycare. Absolutely no point there. Want to help the economy? Help parents be able to go back to work after their kids age out of school but still need programming. It’s a niche, but not unheard of.

The kids don’t need to be fixed. Or *prevented.*

Start thinking out your own arguments, RFK… and fix THEM.