Tag Archives: autism

February 1, 2025 · 7:47 PM

Gallery of Nitwits

Well, just like the Earth didn’t self-obstruct when Barack Obama won his two elections, it hasn’t 75 7jpj56exploded now that Donald Trump has returned to the White House.  But at least there was never any (real) question that Obama actually won.  And I’m still feeling dismal.

It’s tough to remain faithful to the democratic process and the American vision of equality and happiness when someone like Trump keeps succeeding.  But this is life on planet Earth and it’s imperfect.  In fact, it’s downright screwy!

I don’t care what anyone says.  In my adult life, I’ve never seen anyone as incompetent or unqualified to claim the title of U.S. President than Donald Trump.  As I’ve stated before, I was embarrassed with George W. Bush in the White House.  But I’m incredibly disgusted with this former real estate magnate / pathetic reality TV star / tax cheat / draft dodger / womanizer in the same role.  U.S. politics has truly descended into madness.

Trump’s cabinet appointments have proven equally unfit for such prestigious and high-profile positions.   Former Congressman Matt Gaetz was the first of Trump’s appointments to come under intense scrutiny – and the first to withdraw his nomination.  Trump had wanted Gaetz to be his Attorney General, the nation’s top law enforcement official, despite not having any experience in the legal field – except as a litigant.

Trump’s second choice for the role, Pam Bondi, is Florida’s former attorney general and a corporate lobbyist.  Like the rest of Trump’s nominees, she’s a devout Trump supporter and apologist, but she actually made it through her confirmation hearing in one piece and is now overseeing the U.S. Justice Department.

For Defense Secretary, Trump picked Pete Hegseth, a former military veteran and FOX New TV host.  He also made it through his confirmation hearing – despite tales of his excessive alcohol consumption and sexual harassment allegations.  In this latter respect, he’s Trump “Light”.

Three other Trump nominees – Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., for Health and Human Services Secretary, Kash Patel for FBI Director, and Tulsi Gabbard for Director of National Intelligence – are facing tougher paths.  Kennedy, son of the late and legendary former U.S. Attorney General, ran as an independent candidate in last year’s presidential race.  But his past comments questioning the efficacy of vaccines, including COVID-19, have come back to haunt worse than one of Trump’s ex-wives.  He’d once declared that AIDS in Africa “is an entirely different disease from Western AIDS” and claimed that work done by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is akin to that of Nazi death camps.  He also propagated a popular conspiracy theory that vaccines cause autism in children.

Patel said recently that, if chosen as FBI Director, he’d terminate as many of the agency’s employees as possible and shut down its headquarters building, before reopening it as a museum to the “deep state”.  That “deep state” reference is common among right-wing conspiracy theorists, especially after FBI investigations into Trump’s antics during his first term in office.

Gabbard, a former Democratic congresswoman from Hawaii and a military veteran, may have the toughest road of all of them.  She has insinuated that Russia had some justification for invading Ukraine three years ago; denouncing the administration of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky as a “corrupt autocracy”.  She backed Russia’s unfounded claims that the U.S. and Ukraine have collaborated to engage in clandestine biological warfare.

One of my closest friends, Preston*, is a Trump voter who had told me last year that he was concerned – if Vice-President Kamala Harris won the presidency – she’d send U.S. troops into Ukraine.  He has two young adult sons who could face military conscription, if a military draft was enacted – which hasn’t occurred since the early 1970s.  I can identify with that sentiment.  In 1991, I feared something similar would happen with the Persian Gulf War, when I was in my mid-20s.  Preston believes wholeheartedly in Trump (which I don’t hold against him), but I’m worried now that Trump could send U.S. troops into the Middle East to help Israel fight against Iran.  Both those countries have nuclear weapons.

Another disquieting possibility is that Trump will enact the classic Republican tax cuts – that bullshit “trickle-down” economics regimen every GOP official has pushed onto the American people for over a century; the kind that has always shoved the U.S. into financial despair.  It happened with the Great Depression of the 1930s, the savings and loan crisis of the early 1990s, and the Great Recession less than two decades ago.  Trump’s round of tax cuts and deregulation measures during his first term only exacerbated the trauma of the COVID-19 pandemic.  I fear it’s going to happen again, and the U.S. will find itself in more economic distress.

But don’t blame people like me.  I didn’t vote for either Trump or Harris, but – as with Hillary Clinton in 2016 – I have to concede Harris would have been the lesser of two evils.  That’s never a pleasant position in which voters should find themselves, but it’s how I view politics in the U.S.

Now we’ll just have to see what shenanigans occur with Trump 2.0.  Fasten your seatbelts.

*Name changed

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December 29, 2023 · 10:17 PM

Well Life

In my essay last month about turning 60, I declared I’ll never get “old”.  But I also have to emphasize that I’m in a better place now than I have been in years.  Much of it, I’m sure, has to do with the job I landed this past August.  More importantly, though, I’ve realized that all I’ve endured during my seven decades on Earth hasn’t just brought me here – it’s made me who I am.  We all base our views of reality on our own life experiences, and it’s something that none of us can change.  It’s just a natural progression of life.

But, while we can never change what happened way back when – one vice that has always personally tormented me – we can make use of those experiences and go forward.  We have to move ahead.  We have no choice.

For me, I’m feeling the same way now that I did around the turn of the century.  Over a decade ago – as I reflected on my life to date – I recalled the excitement of the new century and the new millennium.  Overall, the 1990s was the best decade of my life – even now!  I had come into my own as a person; finally understanding that I’m better than even I realized at the time.  I don’t want to sound like a talk show victim, but I grew up shy and introverted; characteristics that carried into my adulthood.  I didn’t boast the same level of self-esteem as my parents – something they never could understand.  Making friends was easy for them, but it was a chore for me.

By the 1990s, however, I had come to realize I didn’t need a large gallery of friends to be whole and complete.  And eventually I accepted my introverted personality as perfectly normal for me.  Two years ago I got into a heated text message debate with a long-time acquaintance who insinuated my introverted nature is a sign of mild autism.  Excuse me?  He worked in the mental health field, so he knew all about those things.  I’m a tech writer, so I’m not familiar with autism. Yet to me, it’s one step above mental retardation.  I was offended – and shocked that he would make that assumption about me.  We were cyber-friends and had communicated for years.  But although we’d never met in person, I had believed he knew me well enough to understand who I am.  He kept trying to reassure me that he wasn’t labeling me as retarded; that retardation was a completely different cerebral condition.  But I remained unconvinced.

That I’ve never had many friends and I’m not a fan of my fellow humans is no indication of a mental disorder on my part.  It’s indicative that people generally have pissed me off to the point where I want little do with them.  That’s why the remote nature of this job is ideal.  I might add that my years of reading, writing, jogging and weightlifting have been extremely therapeutic for me; in other words, they prevented me from either killing myself or becoming a serial killer.

But the period from 1996 to the summer of 2001 was a time of personal renewal; a realignment of my spirituality and priorities.  The world seemed wide open, and the future looked endless.  I felt euphoric, perhaps even naïve.  I have that same feeling now, but I view it with greater caution.  I’m much older and won’t take anything for granted.  I know I have more years behind me than I do ahead of me, so I continue to pursue my various ambitions.  I’ve made it this far – thus I’m not going to give up on myself at this point.  I’ve given up on so many assorted dreams and projects in the past and almost gave up on life altogether.

And yet, I’m still here.  Everyone needs to understand they’re worth the troubles that life throws at them.  You’re all worth something.  Please understand that and keep moving forward.

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February 18, 2022 · 12:57 PM

Neuro-Excited

As The Chief continues his technical writing pursuits, I periodically encounter some odd elements.

In the email below, for example, the recruiter either wasn’t familiar with the English language or they tried to be inspirational.  But yeah!  There are few things more exciting than looking for a job!  I mean what reasonable person doesn’t enjoy the rigor of composing a perfect correspondence to a potential employer – especially if they’re desperate to find a job.

Then there’s this beauty below.  While applying for another tech writing job last December, I had to complete a section which asked a question I’d never seen before.

‘Do you identify as neurodivergent.’

Neurodivergent?!  I actually had to look that up – and was offended they’d made such an inquiry.

For years companies have been taking people’s fingerprints and making copies of their driver’s licenses.  I never had a problem with that and always acquiesced.  It was just part of the hiring process.

I’ve also undergone drug screenings, which entail urinating into a plastic cup.  I still find that more intrusive than anything and – after my last such screening a few years ago – vowed never to do it again.  In that incident I inadvertently starting washing my hands after stepping out of the room, which I didn’t know was forbidden.  I’d already handed the cup to the gloved associate who had been standing immediately outside.  When she practically hollered at me for reaching towards the sink, one of her colleagues (they were both female) passed by and made some chicken-shit comment about men not being able to follow instructions.  They began laughing to which I promptly responded, “Excuse you!”  That seemed to upset them, but I will not be disrespected.  Imagine if male associates had said something similar to a woman.

Now some employers are asking for proof of COVID vaccinations.  And exactly what type of shot I received!  And from where!  That’s when I stop being conciliatory.  I simply told one recruiter ‘NO’.  I would not tell them exactly what type of anti-COVID vaccine I received, much less provide a copy of the card displaying my personal data.  If it’s a remote position, who really cares if I’m vaccinated?!  I received both shots, each of which made me ill.

Understand I’m not some right-wing extremist or a Canadian truck driver.  I think the COVID hysteria has reached a crescendo.

But neurodivergent?!  That’s a new one, which I find as intrusive as the cup thing.

Several years ago a human resources associate with the energy company where I worked asked if I’d had personality disputes with coworkers.

“Come on now,” I replied.  “You’ve been around long enough to know, when you gather different people from different backgrounds in one location to work together, inevitably there’ll be some conflict.”

My elaborate answer seemed to surprise her.  I surmise she was accustomed to hearing something like, ‘Oh never!’  Or, ‘Of course not.  I get along with everybody.  I’m a people person.’

But she had to concede I was right.  A company never knows what they’re going to get when they hire someone new.

Neurodivergent?!

This moment came a few months after I’d had a heated text discussion with a long-time acquaintance who lives in California.  He was involved with two younger men – a couple he’d met on a dating site.  He described one of them as somewhat anti-social, adding that the guy’s mental aptitude fell along the autism spectrum.  He went further, though, declaring that people who aren’t good in dealing with other people are borderline autistic.

It stunned me.  I’ve never been good in dealing with other people.  My parents could never understand why I had such a tough time making friends.  But no one had ever deemed me autistic.  To me autism is just one step above mental retardation.  My California acquaintance tried to assure me he wasn’t insinuating I’m mentally retarded, but I remain unconvinced.  He doesn’t really know me.  We’ve never even met.  So I found his cyber-assessment of me as autistic insulting.

I answered no to the “neurodivergent” inquiry, but I wished there had been another option: ‘Who gives a shit!’

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