The Standard Review

Dunking Autistics

 
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Though the ideas from early American Putirtan culture are hundreds of years old, some of that type of thinking can be found in today's culture as well with regard to how disability is viewed and more specifically how autistics are treated.

The authority during the Salem witch trials was practically in a state of paranoid frenzy due to the fear of having their authority challenged. They were not only concerned with punishing the accused but wanted no trace of them if the accusation proved false. This would prevent the potential for them being charged with falsely arresting people or with abusing their authority.

 It says here:

"Dunking is a form of torture and punishment that was applied to scolds and supposed witches.

In a trial by ordeal, supposed witches were immersed into a vat of water or pond, and taken out after some time, thus and given the opportunity to confess. This process was usually repeated until the victim drowned or gave up and confessed, leading to them being executed in another way, usually hanging or, more rarely, burning. Also, if they had their hands/feet tied, they would be left under water. If they floated they were guilty of witchcraft, if they sank they were innocent but would have usually drowned anyway."

 
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After the notorious Salem witch trials:

"Reversals of attainder and compensation to the survivors and their families

Title page of A Modest Enquiry Into the Nature of Witchcraft by John Hale (Boston, 1702)The first hint that public call for justice was not over happened in 1695, when Thomas Maule, a noted Quaker, publicly criticized the handling of the trials by the Puritan leaders in Chapter 29 of his book Truth Held Forth and Maintained, expanding on Increase Mather by stating, "it were better that one hundred Witches should live, than that one person be put to death for a witch, which is not a Witch".[67] For publishing this book, Maule was imprisoned twelve months before he was tried and found not guilty."

 

Although, today's courts are often described as favoring the presumption of innocence, factors such as economic status, race, and the presumption of ability and competency heavily influence the outcome of a court trial (being viewed as less competent encourages a guilty verdict). Even social skills and how likeable someone is cannot be ruled out as being influential.

With the overwhelming influence of modern technology and the opportunities that present for networking, communication on the Internet largely impacts cultural views as well as how people vote on public policy. Furthermore, the fear encouraged by eugenist in the past century has greatly influenced our cultural bias against disability. This bias is even more pronounced with a disability relating to competency and mental stability. All this combined with the fear-mongering recently from autism advocacy groups such as Autism Speaks, causes autistics to receive a lot of negative attention.

Similar to the ways supposed witches were presumed guilty of crimes and sentenced without an opportunity to defend themselves, autistics who assert themselves on the internet regarding public policy which affects them are often treated with no respect and little if any opportunity to express themselves.

With that in mind I've written some ideas/questions regarding cultural views about disability and more specifically how this influences the experience of autistics that advocate their rights on the Internet. Here are the questions:

 

 

How often has the person living with someone who has a disability ( a parent, caretaker, etc.) had more opportunities to voice their view about the disability than the person most directly affected?

How often have non-disabled people been justified in harming a disabled person due to the public's empathy of what is seen as the able person's burden? How often is this done in relation to the frequency of the disabled person having the way they were being abused, understood and validated?

How often are the expressions of frustration from the abused disabled person accepted in a public discussion? How often is it ignored? In contrast how often does the person living with someone with a disability (parent, caretaker, etc.) express frustration for their perceived burden and have that be accepted and validated? What crimes against the disabled has this acceptance led to?

Based on what is known about something, in particular, that can be called autism (that which can be cured/removed/fixed), how often are people with conditions with a similar amount of information known about that solution (or the lack thereof) asked if they want that condition cured?

How often does a discussion that involves issues that are most relevant to a particular group of people include having them provided the least opportunity to express their views and have that view be respected? How much more often does that happen when this is related to a disability?  What about with a developmental disability? How about in relation to autism?

How much is understood about the lives of adult autistics when they were children? How much effort goes into learning about that and how much is simply presumed? How do convenient presumptions affect communication? What does making convenient presumptions reflect  about the person making them when someone they live with has a communication disorder? How much better could they (the person with the disorder) communicate with the people in their lives if those people weren't making convenient presumptions?

What role does shame play in someone's emotional development? What about academic development? How much is being done to ensure that autistics will not need to be ashamed in the future no matter how competent they are perceived? What are children learning about the importance of competency and will they feel proud when they arrive at the standard cultural expectations (or the ones of their family) or will they always be ashamed of what they haven't achieved and try to degrade others in order to achieve that sense of pride? Who is ultimately served by this striving to achieve?

What do the money and time spent on the gambling everything on the fix or cure in relation to what is spent on encouraging self-esteem and empowerment reflect about the value others place on these people? What does the money and time spent on the gamble to fix them in relation to what's spent on education and vocational training reflect? What about nationally? globally? community efforts? individual households?

Note: Nothing encourages injustice more than the false claim that justice is being served.

MacNeil and the Unawareness of Autism in 20011

 

During Autism Awareness month of April 2011, Robert MacNeil promoted his perspective of autism on television. I'm sure Mr. MacNeil's views on autism will be popular and well received but unfortunately there will be little if any nuance added to this mainstream view that traditionally prevents the educational and vocational opportunities for autistics and promotes the fear campaigns that encourage the worst stereotypes.

In the same way that the views of groups like Autism Speaks and the funding campaign efforts of the Jerry Lewis marathon are exploitive and disabling, the oppressive nature of the psychiatric industry and other medical abuses will go practically unchallenged due to the influence of commercial advertising. Anyone presenting rational alternatives and attempting to discuss practical ideas in a non-threatening environment will be either attacked or co-opted so that the issues which are important remain polarized.

Politics, political agendas, and bullies (and the politics and political agendas of bullies) consistently discourage rational views from being expressed on the internet whenever issues that concern disability are discussed.

This is a tradition that has always provided an ample opportunity for greedy politicians and corporate executives with an insatiable apatite for power to determine the policy that affects people with disabilities and encourages exclusion and negative stereo types.

My impression of online discussions is that we as a society are losing our ability to trust our neighbor, and we often tend to objectify and stereotype each person we meet. This begins by polarizing every discussion and seeing alternative viewpoints (however slight) as a threat to our self-esteem. It's difficult to know what we really believe because our thinking is so attached to the image we display and who we are that an objective view of our expressions is impossible.

Of course there will always be a mainstream view of what autism is ( MacNeil is just one celebrity who will present this narrow view) and due to unregulated commercial advertising and the impact it has on the views of people who want to "make a difference", nuances that are more accepting of diversity will be practically absent from the discussions where that view is presented. However, commercialism and mainstream politics is not what determines the truth. If we truly are interested in becoming a more accepting culture that is promoting diversity, we will find more ways to encourage the voices of individuals without regarding their category or status to determine the value of their expressions, and we will find value in what we hear them say.

When Attitudes and Expectations are Reckless, Autistics get Hurt

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Among the things which have been made clearer to me by seeing how other autistics tend to respond similarly is the way that an attribute is described as pathological for the sake of convenience.

The most important thing I think people should be aware of about autism is that the experience of an autistic person is not validated by any societal norm. Everything about the ways that we evaluate the validity of experience encourages the exclusion and discrimination of autistic people.

This can be attributed to the way that psychology attempts to brand people and the extremely offensive campaigns by such groups as Autism Speaks. However, it can also be attributed to the way that characteristics of an autistic person have typically always been seen by societal standards as something that a healthy normal person should strive to eliminate.

It's much more convenient to tell people to trust than it is to change the environment so that people have a reason to.

We have the most offensive, toxic, Sakrin-coated, fantastic, exchange of pleasantries in society that make claims such as, "Everyone should just be themselves.", "People are the same wherever you go." "We should all just try harder to get along with each other. ", "If people are having problems in their life it's their own fault because they have the wrong attitude.", and "There is no such thing as normal or disabled but a person's individual belief system is what determines what their life will be like."

The worst part of this type of message, whether it be overt or subtle is that this is claimed to be a way to discourage prejudice and bigotry yet the effect is completely opposite. Convenience is the root of a lot of evil, and discomfort is inconvenient. It doesn't matter whether you are directly discouraging a person or encouraging the standards that will ultimately exclude them. The effect is the same, and both are the result of convenient thinking.

One of my attributes of being an autistic person is that I am able to focus on a single subject for comparatively long periods of time. This is also related to being someone who is dedicated, who takes commitments seriously, and is very loyal. Besides this being described as obsessive, if I have difficulty understanding something or expectation is placed on me and my inability to do it is seen by others as a character flaw I will have a great deal of difficulty escaping a chaotic trend of miscommunications and stressful interactions with others.

At this point, whatever positive characteristics I may have are disregarded, and I am then alienated for either being beyond help, or being unwilling to follow the conventions of what is typically considered to be help.

To see beyond these options and explore how some people may experience life in a different way, and therefor need different types of accommodations is very inconvenient, and it opposes the social norms that give most people a sense of pride and dignity. The autistic person must carry the burden in order to provide others with the liberty/privilege/convenience of how they pride themselves.

Because I indicate something personal in what I write, and because I use words that age appropriate standards have declared to be attributed to someone educated beyond 5th grade, conventions encourage people to look beyond the validity of what I have said and personally attack the one who said it. These norms are the result of influence by the education/psychology industry.

There's no need to look at the ways standards are doing us a disservice if we can instead categorize people with particular levels of functioning labels and depend on scientific breakthroughs to eliminate our monsters and develop a pure and stress-free utopian environment.

At this point, what that means is that when an autistic person becomes old enough to no longer be eligible for services (which would be typical for a person with a developmental disability who is evaluated by arbitrary age appropriate standards) they have nothing left to offer their environment, and you will continually have to find ways of dismissing what they say rather than evaluate mistakes and make appropriate changes. The cycle gets worse with time.

More people will become inconvenient and the demands will become harsher so that people can either be ignored, eliminated, or serve as examples of what the next generation must overcome. Rather than repeating these mistakes, people can instead choose to take the time and effort to get involved in the lives of autistic people now and empower them. The current standards will eventually become inconvenient as autistic adults who have been taught that they are a waste of space, oxygen, and food don't respond any better to wrongful treatment.

The Outside Advantage

The highest-ranking government officials in the United States seem to believe they can no longer effectively rule against the special-interest. The executive branch is continuing to provide more rights to these groups at the expense of the majority of citizens.

The voters in the U.S.are often taking the liberty of claiming that policies they encourage are considering the majority of the citizens. The policies can't be that broad that at this point. Instead, the elite is being catered to at the expense of others. There are people who want change but if the position of the inside advantage isn't used for challenging boundaries the advantage is instead on the side of those  who would make the boundaries even more unreasonable and strict.

Autism advocacy is a reflection of the compromising trend because mainstream advocates are so harshly criticized for encouraging any ideas that contradict the industry-driven medical model.

The main excuse I've always heard (in all types of political compromise) is that change can only occur once you get involved where the changes get made. Individual ideas too often are seen as a threat rather than an aid to what this group calls advocacy.

The people who set up the form of government in the U.S. that we are supposedly still following didn't believe that such compromise was necessary. They warned against the type of compromise that government officials and all types of mainstream advocates are making today. The liberties which are being lost at the expense of catering to the mainstream and the compromises which are often harshly demanded are not something we can continue to afford.

The way autism is mainly being described in the media practically never deviates from the medical model which is overwhelmingly influenced by the industry rather than by the continual observation of the people the industry labels. For people to describe an alternative way to see the people who are labeled in this way is highly offensive to medical practitioners as well as the mainstream society that has adopted their views.

All disability advocacy continues to be radical but the confines of this radical approach is increasingly narrowing the options provided. Advocacy from anyone who's thought pattern is discriminated against in any way (which can accompany physical barriers) has traditionally been devalued in the worst way. This means that as autistics are being more recognized we have the least voice in matters that concern us.

We are described as un-empathetic so that we can be categorized and not be seen as having an understanding of another clinically defined subset of autistics. Of course course this also provides justification for bullies looking for vulnerable targets. Our lack of understanding of how the more-catered-to-population in society communicates is described as nothing more than social deficit disorder that prevents us from understanding and or accepting reality.

I recently saw where someone had claimed that Jenny McCarthy was fighting against the media hype. I was astounded that such an expression could be made, which described the hype about autism as the opposition rather than the agreement of Jenny McCarthy view. This is how identity politics is used to isolate and polarize discussions so that the industry's views are protected.

Radical advocacy is not safe. It never was. However, extreme measures are now being taken so that fewer people who are vulnerable to the mainstream demands by special interest can be effectively challenging those demands without being harshly criticized and even penalized using  unjust laws. There is a high price to pay for the complacency which comes from what is described as the necessary political compromise (the inside advantage). Criticism of injustice must challenge the boundaries (both real and imagined) in order for the needed changes to occur.

Fixing, Maintaining, and Compliance Training (dangers in medicine)

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One of the most chaotic and harmful issues that Americans are now having to face is the state of the medical care system. There are many aspects of the system and many influences but what seems to be most crucial is what the commercial advertising of medicine has trained consumers to believe is the objective and capability of doctors.

The government in the United States is more influenced by corporatism than capitalism. This is one of the misunderstandings that leads people to misjudge the medical system. The encouragement of corporations and the lack of responsibility and regulation placed on them is what mainly dictates how they operate.

The insurance companies are part of a major industry unto themselves and are corrupted by their insatiable appetite. This includes Medicare insurance, which is meant to be provided to the most vulnerable. Like many of the corruptions in this country Medicare insurance avoids their responsibility and blames the consumer for the majority of abuses.

There are treatment providers with a more holistic approach that are attempting to compete for FDA approval, which will allow their clients to use insurance for their payment. Unfortunately, only people with the most financial resources will even seek this kind of treatment and are practically the only ones who will report the abuses for any of  the treatments they receive.

A major part of the chaos in the medical system is due to their fantastic notions for how to analyze and control human behavior. In whatever ways medicine has become more sophisticated in order to improve our health it has become more barbaric in how it inhumanely injures the body and attacks the spirit all in the name of behavioral health.

It is reasonable to judge that if someone's body temperature is not regulated to within several degrees of 98.6 that some type of adjustment needs to be made, and medicine has shown to be an effective treatment. However, when a standard is set by medical authorities for the normal range how emotion is expressed in how typical behavior should appear the worst atrocities in medicine can be justified.

The atrocities committed against autistic people in particular have traditionally begun with an interpretation of behavior due to how it is compared to a formal written as well as informal social description of normal behavior. This is further complicated by intellectual reasoning within an exclusive environment. Therefor different types of intellect which are common for autistics are even more discriminated against. The particular vulnerabilities within  an environment where people are valued by their ability to interact socially excludes autistics as well as encourages the worst types of treatment.

In recent years this has become evident by the mystical notions of extracting the element that causes autism from the body and snake oil treatments which are used for control. The only time it ever seems to be accepted is when people believe they can force compliance with behavioral treatments.

No matter the ways medicine was originally meant to serve US citizens, it now often has the opposite effect. To add to the confusion and disrupt a unified effort to change the system, those who have provided aid (mainly through the Democratic political party) have taught us to believe in identity politics. It's almost impossible to mention a particular need which is been identified within medicine, medical treatments, or the educational and access adaptations for the disabled, without identifying with the myth that the resources are scarce. In this way advocates separate themselves from each other and fight against each other with claims of severity and some even argue that there are those who are more worthy of access and accommodation than others.

All medicine can do is create a condition within the body that will relieve particular symptoms. Surgery can't do much more than that. In fact, much of the surgery which we have today has less to do with what doctors have learned from scientific research, and more to do with the fact that we now have anesthesia so the body can be altered without pain. Most of what is done to the body through medicine is simply an alteration of how the body operates.

 

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Behavior being treated by medicine has changed everything about how we view the human experience and how society is addicted to controlling experience at the expense of an environment of trust.

Anything with the powerful potential that medicine has for doing good can be used in an equally destructive way. Any such power that the public does not acknowledge and respect with caution may be used by people with a bad agenda.

We can use any tool, including medicine to make our lives better but anything that has the potential to promote fighting against each other or treating each other with less dignity needs to at least be closely and continually monitored.                                                            

The Prohibition of Autistics in Public

Recently, I've seen where autistics have been abused by police, and it has been reported and even published in newspapers and magazines. As much as the stories themselves are horrible to think about I'm encouraged by the exposure since reports of abuse are almost nonexistent.

In a recent Facebook discussion, the topic was the importance of helping the police to become more aware and educated about autism. While I believe this is important, the tragedy is that the police are only doing something illegal based on disability law. The laws which have been made so that a person with a disability is not exploited by law enforcement and the legal system has been of little value to the majority of people.

At this point, I believe that asking the police to handle such situations differently is  contradictory to many of the public views and trends, which are mainly affecting how they do their job. They are, after all, considered servants of the people(although the people they serve are in the elite minority) and can only be expected to follow the guidelines the public (the voting and vocal public) provides.

This is some of what I believe influences this problem:

#1 The history of psychiatry and it's affect on cultural values



Benjamin Rush, one of the signers of the Declaration of

Independence is considered the "Father of American

Psychiatry", published the first textbook on the subject

in the United States, Medical Inquiries and Observations

upon the Diseases of the Mind (1812).

Wikipedia says this about him:


"In 1792 Dr Benjamin Rush, one of the 'Founding Fathers' of

the USA, presented a paper before the American

Philosophical Society which argued that the 'color' and

'figure' of blacks were derived from a form of leprosy. He

was convinced that with proper treatment, blacks could be

cured (i.e. become white) and eventually... assimilated

into the general population" (Omi & Winant 1986: 148). Omi,

M. and H. Winant (1986). Racial formation in the United

States : from the 1960s to the 1980s. New York ; London,

Routledge & Kegan Paul."

AND:

"He proposed that being black was a hereditary skin disease,

which he called "negroidism," and that it might be cured.

Rush drew the conclusion that "Whites should not tyrannize

over [blacks], for their disease should entitle them to a

double portion of humanity. However, by the same token,

whites should not intermarry with them, for this would tend

to infect posterity with the 'disorder'... attempts must be

made to cure the disease."

One of the men who studied under Dr. Rush was Dr.Samuel Cartwright.

His contribution to psychiatry was, drapetomania,

a mental disorder akin to alienation. He  said that slaves should

be kept in a submissive state and treated like children, with

"care, kindness, attention, and humanity to prevent and cure

them from running away." If they nonetheless became dissatisfied

with their condition,they should be whipped as a prevention

against running away.[2] In describing his theory and cure for

drapetomania, Cartwright relied on passages of scripture

dealing with slavery.

Cartwright also described another disorder, "Dysaethesia

aethiopica", a disease "affecting both mind and body."

Cartwright used his theory to explain the apparent lack of

work ethic among slaves.[3] Dysaethesia aethiopica, "called

by overseers 'rascality'," was characterized by partial

insensitivity of the skin and "so great a hebetude of the

intellectual faculties, as to be like a person half

asleep." Other symptoms included "lesions of the body

discoverable to the medical observer, which are always

present and sufficient to account for the symptoms."[4][5]

According to Cartwright, dysaethesia aethiopica was "much

more prevalent among free negroes living in clusters by

themselves, than among slaves on our plantations, and

attacks only such slaves as live like free negroes in

regard to diet, drinks, exercise, etc." — indeed, according

to Cartwright, "nearly all [free negroes] are more or less

afflicted with it, that have not got some white person to

direct and to take care of them."

This leads me to reason that from the beginning when

the United States became established as an independent

and supposedly free nation, industry, politics, and psychiatry

formed a partnership that encouraged the legal means for

abuse against the majority who made up the lower class.

#2 The effect the eugenics movement has had on how our

current laws are structured.

This says of the eugenics movement:

Eugenics: Semester Research Project -Spring,2002 By Lora Judge



"The Eugenics movement won substantial recognition in early

20th century America. By 1941, 33 US states had endorsed

sterilization policies. The movement was social, political,

and scientific. It reflected the fears of many whites that

their once-great nation was threatened by demographic and

economic change. Their understanding of the principles of

genetic inheritance led eugenicists to conclude that

genetically defective members of society were rapidly out-

reproducing the "normal" members of society at an alarming

rate.  These defectives included the "feeble-minded,"

criminals, the sexually wanton, epileptics, the insane, and

non-white races,  and they were passing on their

"deleterious" genes at the expense of the "normal." The

social cost of such a situation, they feared, would be

devastating."

AND:

"Using the argument for national efficiency, eugenicists

successfully lobbied for the passage of a number of state

eugenical sterilization   laws in the 1920s and 1930s.

Eugenical sterilization was aimed specifically at those

individuals in mental or penal institutions who, from

family-pedigree analysis, were considered likely to give

birth to socially defective children. Sterilization could

be ordered any time after  a patient had been examined by a

eugenics committee that was composed of a lawyer or family

member representing the individual, a judge, and a doctor

or other eugenic "expert."   More than 30 states had

enacted such compulsory sterilization laws by 1940. Indiana

was the first with a eugenical sterilization and it went

into effect in 1907. By 1941, more than 60,000 eugenical

sterilizations were performed in the United States. Most

state sterilization laws were not repealed until after the

1960s."

In this:The Fascist Origins of the SAT Test by Rich Gibson,

San Diego State University, April 2001, it says:

"The frantic rush to high-stakes standardized testing in the

US costs one-half billion dollars annually in direct

expenditures, probably double that in indirect costs. The

chief fetish of the testing movement is the SAT, long known

as the Scholastic Aptitude Test but now known, on the

insistence of the test's owners, the Educational Testing

Service, as just "The SAT."

The SAT measures, above all else, class, sex, and race.

(Fairtest, Roney). The SAT, like every similar test, is

designed to divide people with razor sharp precision, to

enumerate human value and to track people's futures under a

veil of objective science. The SAT is a commodity itself,

for sale to every student, school, and college in the

world. It also commodifies people, attaching worth to

individuals, but more pointedly drawing the lines of what

can only be called class warfare. The impact of the SAT is

to create the logic for a more deeply stratified society,

divided primarily by issues of inherited income, sexism,

and racism. The fraudulent claims of the SAT to promote a

more equitable and meritorious society have been thoroughly

revealed elsewhere. (Lemann, Fairtest, Roney). This

analysis is a brief history of the SAT, unmasking the

politics of the people who designed it, and those who

promote the SAT and similar exams today .

The genealogy of the SAT is far more authentic than the

importance attached to the test's scores. The SAT was born

from the initial IQ tests, written by French psychologist

Alfred Binet. In the US, Lewis Terman and Robert Yerkes

promoted the IQ test and made it a popular instrument to

determine who should be an officer, in a segregated

military, during WWI . Their IQ test was designed to prove

the genetic advantage of races they had already identified

as superior. Terman and Yerkes were executives in the

American Eugenics Society (Mehler)."

 

The standardized test which is used in accordance

with the No Child Left Behind act promote what the ACLU

calls the school to prison pipeline. This article explains:

"The school-to-prison pipeline is one of the most important

civil rights challenges facing our nation today.

• The school-to-prison pipeline refers to the national

trend of criminalizing, rather than educating, our nation’s

children.

• The pipeline encompasses the growing use of zero-

tolerance discipline, school-based arrests, disciplinary

alternative schools, and secured detention to marginalize

our most at-risk youth and deny them access to education.

Zero-tolerance disciplinary policies are often the first

step in a child’s journey through the pipeline.

• Zero-tolerance policies impose severe discipline on

students without regard to individual circumstances.  Under

these policies, children have been expelled for giving

Midol to a classmate, bringing household goods (including a

kitchen knife) to school to donate to Goodwill, and

bring¬ing scissors to class for an art project." 


#3 The laws which provide comfort for elite criminals


Today we have white-collar prisons. Wikipedia describes

white-collar crimes and the idea behind them like this:

"The term white-collar crime only dates back to 1939.

Professor Edwin Hardin Sutherland was the first to coin the

term, and hypothesize white-collar criminals attributed

different characteristics and motives than typical street

criminals. Mr. Sutherland originally presented his theory

in an address to the American Sociological Society in

attempt to study two fields, crime and high society, which

had no previous empirical correlation. He defined his idea

as "crime committed by a person of respectability and high

social status in the course of his occupation" (Sutherland,

1939). Many denote the invention of Sutherland's idiom to

the explosion of U.S business in the years following the

Great Depression. Sutherland noted that in his time, "less

than two percent of the persons committed to prisons in a

year belong to the upper-class." His goal was to prove a

relation between money, social status, and likelihood of

going to jail for a white-collar crime, compared to more

visible, typical crimes."

#4 The industry of juvenile detention

One example of how disenfranchised youths are being

mistreated by our justice system is evident in this

story Pa. judges jail youths for profit 

"A case of judicial

corruption in Pennsylvania has once again exposed the

true nature of the profit-driven prison industrial complex

and the warehousing of poor youth.

Two Pennsylvania judges, Mark A. Ciavarella Jr. and his

predecessor, Michael T. Conahan, received $2.67 million

over the last seven years from a private juvenile detention

center. In exchange, federal prosecutors allege, the two

helped the center secure lucrative contracts from Lucerne

County, then sentenced youth to detention for the mildest

of infractions.

For participation in this scheme—which damaged the hopes,

expectations and futures of hundreds and perhaps thousands

of youth—the two judges were given a plea agreement that

will see them serving a modest 87 months in federal prison.

In addition, the owners of the detention facilities have

not yet been charged with any crime."


The article also points out:

"The New York Times described Luzerne County as “an area in

northeastern Pennsylvania that has been battered by a loss

of industrial jobs and the closing of most of its

anthracite coal mines.” (Feb. 12)

As unemployment increases because of the global economic

and financial crises, it can be expected that more youth

across the country will be thrown into juvenile detention

facilities for petty crimes of survival. Made to pay for

the crimes of capitalism that they did not create, these

youth will face increased hardship in the future."

#5 The defense of bigotry and strict class division

known as the drug wars

Today's law enforcement is heavily dependent on the

prohibition of marijuana. Here's something that points out the

history of the prohibition:

HOW DID "REEFER MADNESS" GET STARTED?

"During Prohibition - an era also referred to as

The Roaring Twenties - government corruption was rampant and

police - a huge portion of them on "the take"--had no desire to see

Prohibition end. The booze ran free at speakeasies, morals were

loose, and jazz was the music of choice, performed predominantly

by African-American musicians who also had a

penchant for marijuana.

As the 1920’s moved into the 1930’s with gang wars becoming

commonplace and public dissatisfaction with Prohibition at it’s

peak, it became clear to even the most corrupt government officials

and even organized crime that the Volstead Act had to go. But it

would not go quietly, and something had to be created to take it’s

place to keep law enforcement funds rolling in and organized crime

in business.

Local and federal policing agencies had grown fat during

Prohibition, and a repeal would put many of them flat out of work.

At the same time, the tyrannical William Randolph Hearst, the most

powerful newspaper owner in America, began printing falsified and

exaggerated stories about the "evils of marijuana". A blatant racist

who despised Hispanics and Blacks, Hearst used his vast newspaper

empire to create hysteria among white parents, alleging that

"pushers" - most of them from the lowly ethnic minority class

that Hearst despised-- would be dealing marijuana to high school

kids, turning them into addicts who would quit school, commit

violent crimes like murder and rape as depicted in the laughable

film "Reefer Madness", produced in 1936."

#6 Autism awareness campaigns

What is considered mainstream autism awareness campaigning is being defined by the fear-mongering of groups like Autism Speaks who are mainly interested in eradicating autistics.

Among other myths the so-called awareness campaigns perpetuate is the idea that autistics are lacking in empathy and compassion.

#7 Identity politics

There are Aspie supremacists tearing apart the ideals of the disability community which has made progress in teaching people how supremacy values, bigotry, and the unwillingness of our society to accommodate those who are considered invalid is responsible for the problems we face.

In conclusion:

In such a society as this, how can we expect law enforcement to have a better understanding of what autism is in relation to how an autistic person may present in public?

Stopping the abuse of law enforcement against autistics will require a radical approach, and it needs to include some understanding on our part of the mindset behind how officers are encouraged to do their work. Without that we won't have the necessary tools to adequately describe what the abuse is and the necessary approach for stopping it.

Autism is Against the Law

Autism is a disability and being disabled is a crime. How people think in different ways is especially vulnerable to the abuses of law enforcement.

Those who have the means to control the broadest part of the population are willing to use their resources to gain an even tighter grip of control over an even larger group. The corporations use their resources to buy the politicians vote so that laws will be made, which streamline consumers and voters in a way that enables mass production of less diversified products. In order for the average/normal consumer to be validated, they must seek an end to diversity and the inconvenience of a broad range of products and services. Ultimately, this means fewer numbers of people with a narrower range of interest.

Having fewer resources gets portrayed as having character flaws, which aid in motivating consumers to buy the popular products which they have been shamed into believing is a respectable practice. The threat of not needing what they mass produce is what large industries will advertise in terms of character flaws so that diversity is equated with shameful behavior.Shameful behavior ultimately translates into what an enforcement agent can claim is inappropriate and illegal.

An autistic person may have difficulty in communicating with someone either because other forms of communication may be better suited for how our brain works. We may present mannerisms that are awkward and uncomfortable for others as well as we may have need for open and honest communication that others are threatened by. We may be in an environment where the lighting, the volume of sound, and the number of distractions is all set at a level that the people who are accepted and appreciated can handle very well. However, this overwhelms our senses.

Others may have learned protective mechanisms of avoiding their prejudices and that protection may be offensive to us. That protection is a luxury that we cannot afford. Nor are we often afforded the luxury of expressing our discomfort about such things without consequences for it.

Honesty and justice may be much more important to an autistic person and yet treating us unjustly may be more easily justified because the offense done to us (which is met with an unacceptable reaction) is typically overlooked. While this dynamic is somewhat an issue with everyone it may be more likely to create unreasonable expectations for an autistic person which triggers an adverse reaction.

I rarely see a television sitcom where someone whose communication diverts from the very narrow and glorified mainstream be part of any joke that isn't at their expense. The subtly of this attitude plays a role in how society views atypical communication as the expression of someone who is abnormal and therefore, has a substandard character.

This character assignation of autistics is particularly counter productive because many(including me) will see the unfair rules and the boundary violations as a reason not to trust authority. At the very least it creates confusion, which leads to chaos. For some this will encourage them to violently rebel, which then encourages the unfair stereotype of autistics generally not wanting to co-operate.

Even more than entertainment encouraging drug use people are influenced to choose alternative or counter-culture lifestyles, which often include recreational drug use because the mainstream is so offensive to them. Because the economy is king, large industries exploit every opportunity to capitalize on the drug appetite in the US. Besides being trained by every public medium to escape reality and make purchases based on impulse, the government ushers the drugs they have deemed illegal into the US, registers the users with the least financial resources as criminals at every opportunity, describes using drugs not distributed by pharmaceutical industry as self-medicating and therefore irresponsible, expands the church of the 12 steps to be used as an unregulated government enforcement agency, gives increasingly more power to the Drug Enforcement Agency to be the enforcers of economic and class divisions, and makes institutionalizing misfits more common than ever.

Whatever tool is used in a class war(at this point the drug war is among the biggest and most effective) will spread to and affect every member of that class. In the same way that drugs are both encouraged and provided as well punishing those who use an unauthorized brand (non-pharmaceutical) ,all people with forms of developmental disabilities and delays as well as learning disabilities and psychiatric illness will be subjected to abuse based on a similar mindset. All differences, delays, and disabilities that affect how people think are considered maladjustments and character flaws worthy of punishment supported by the law.

Learning disabilities being viewed as cognitive problems support trends like the same drugs which are used for the maintenance of ADHD to also be most the popular and dangerous street drug. It also aids those who are allowing the federal government to make even more discriminatory behavioral demands of school children (known as Positive Behavioral Support) and prevent the public from reporting the abuse of school teachers and administrators.

The largest and the most powerful political mental health advocacy group in the US is the National Alliance for Mental Illness (NAMI) which supposedly advocates for the consumers of mental health services. However, they get 75% of their funding from the pharmaceutical agencies who are in command of the services. NAMI has helped to pass laws for forced institutionalization. These laws have mainly been used to aid in the class war that needs little to no reason to incarcerate minorities and the otherwise disenfranchised.

That also goes along with the size of jails being based on children's reading scores and IQ being used as a method for excluding people based on race and class distinctions. The standardized test from the No Child left Behind Act are what the ACLU sees as one of the main reasons for the problem they call the School to Prison Pipeline.

Of course Autism Speaks is the biggest influence of how autism is typically viewed and of course their focus is on genetic research. This serves the same agenda as that of trying control the rate of the population and encourage superiority based on who will follow the authority who is already in place rather than encourage innovative thinking. With this type of thinking people with disabilities are seen as not needing to be accommodated. Instead everyone is simply encouraged to trust that those who are already in power were divinely ordained to that position and only those who act and think like they do (as well as serve their current agenda) are divinely assigned the right to live.

The institutionalization of a standard for correct thinking is nothing more than a marketing tool that is used to exploit, discourage, and exclude people who think in ways that don't make profits for the industries that mass produce.

Grieving about your son or daughter not being all you had hoped for is clearly seen and felt by them and causes an environment of toxic emotion. When people see that their parents are following the standard beliefs and feelings of broader society that views them as a burden that the important citizens need protection from, it makes them the ones who actually carry the inconvenient burden of the bigotry that others don't want to acknowledge or deal with.

Neurodiversity isn't a threat to people wanting to help the most vulnerable part of the population. It is instead diversity of any kind that threatens the propaganda and lies that serves to maintain the current system of injustice.

We really don't need more tolerance and charity given to autistics. We instead need to protect autistics and everyone who is judged as having a disability (or inconvenient nature) and be less tolerant of those who are abusing their authority at our expense.

Links to articles and videos on this subject:

We're Beyond Product Placement Now: Here's Behavior Placement


Psycho-therapeutic interventions in learning disability: focus on cognitive behavioral therapy and mental health



Just Say No! to the War on Drugs



Read or Go to Jail



Sir Francis Galton - Father of Eugenics


Ewen Cameron, Memory Thief- Part 1



Part 2


School to Prison Pipeline: Talking Points



Kendra's Law (forced institutionalization)


CIA Drug Trafficking



CIA and Contras cocaine trafficking in the US (note: What I call Regan's double talk)



Recreational Drugs FAR Less Likely to Kill You than Prescribed Drugs



Death from Ritlin The Truth Behind ADHD



Alcoholics Anonymous America's State Religion



The History of The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration



MDRI Alleges Torture Against Children and Adults with Disabilities in the United States



PBIS: Progressives Bullying Innocent Students (A better and more objective look at Positive Behavioral Supports PBS)


Pfizer Turned NAMI into "Trojan Horse" to Push Geodon Off-Label to Kids,Suit Claims



Trends in Institutionalized Populations



Quote from that page: The US has one of the highest prison to population ratios and one of the highest reported absolute number of prisoners in the world.

Curism is a Tragedy

The story The Wizard of Oz was a cautionary tale about the despair involved with curism. The characters in the story all suffered from the drama which resulted from their need for something they believed could be achieved by magic. The story of Judy Garland's life as a dramatic performer depicted a tragic life of the actress who played in the movie. It seems she suffered from that same disorder.

Curism is caused by an obsession for drama, which is fostered by the impossible expectations of science. Believing that we evolve by viewing the human mind as a more complex organism is the basis for how psychology explains lower-class behaviors in higher class people. Lower-class people may believe that drama in their lives will show them as more sophisticated and prominent than they would be otherwise. Dramatic entertainment was once only provided for the elite. Now everyone has an equal opportunity to learn this depressed way of life. 

The lower-class is now unfortunately subjected to the psychology of sorting complicated emotions (which they may not otherwise be experiencing without training by a professional) which has become more of a punitive aspect of legal and educational reform.

When the economy is dependent on striving to have more money,things, etc., consumerism must be taught as a valid philosophy. If the goals defined by consumerism were achievable for the average person the economy would become stagnant. So the goal must be unattainable to most people to keep them striving, class must depend on financial resources, a large division between classes must be maintained, and the lower classes must learn to honor high-class royalty. This encourages the false idea that the spectrum of human ability is very wide and justifies the separation of classes.

Oppression is necessary to protect false impressions of people in positions of power and authority. Questioning perceptions will jeopardize the distance that many people feel a need to maintain in order to protect their position.

I described in my last post The Jukes and Kallikaks are Home how oppression is often the result of the misinterpretation of peoples worth based on what how their intelligence and ability are falsely defined.

The way the autism spectrum is described by all these levels of functioning is practically useless in that they don't show where someone is in their ability to do a certain thing in relation to what they want to achieve.

Bev wrote a really good post called, She Will Never about the dangers of how kids are described in terms of what is claimed to be their inability. The ways that autistics are being described as such terrible victims are at least irresponsible. Whether being unable to do something has a negative effect on someone or not, many of the derogatory ways that people are described are absolutely harmful.

Every individual plays a vital role in society. The idea for severity of symptoms is a valid way to evaluate diseases that need to be treated or cured. However, as a way of defining abilities with regard to mental functioning it is very limited. Especially if the aid doesn't come with the label. (that's typically the case with autism)

Predictions can only be based on what scientists have learned based on what they can see. The mind cannot be detected by any type of scientific instrument and peoples potential should never be limited as the result anyone's evaluation.

Emotions are healthy but drama can be very destructive. Expressing emotions in overly dramatic ways doesn't make someone more deserving of empathy or aid. It also doesn't show sophistication or intelligence. For the most part, it's simply an attitude that people adopt, which can have devastating effects on their lives and the  lives of those around them.

It helps people to understand everyone's differences, learn about different cultures, and exercise the mental ability to be as productive as they can. However, emotions need limits like everything else and everyone is responsible for their own. It would be good if every person who is trying to help another would apply the Hippocratic oath of doctors, "First, do no harm." Otherwise dominate cultural expectations will ultimately exclude us all.

Autistic Assessments (Trust is Therapeutic)

When people trust in a product, a person, a service, or a stock, they generally feel encouraged to invest money, time and energy. Feeling better about themselves and being more confident about their ability to make wise decisions will help them to see and understand value.

What the concept of neurodiversity has to offer is allowing a broader spectrum of people the opportunity of being worthy of investment and also ultimately becoming wise investors.

How you invest in people teaches them about their worth. If the way you invest in your relationship with a person is with your efforts to fix them so that then they are seen as worthy or become that way to you, you are not only teaching them a way to judge the value of people, but you are also teaching them what value they have according to that scale.

If someone doesn't feel that others see their worth, they are less likely to invest in themselves. What's even worse is the fact that they are likely to seek others who are less worthy by the judgment standards they have been taught and find ways to make themselves look more worthy than them. Achieving the status then becomes worth more to them than any other accomplishments. If this accomplishment is the top priority, all the rest of their accomplishments will have their worth judged in relation to how this goal is served.

If our political, medical, and legal systems are all geared toward unattainable and commercial expectations then survival and the ways to attain that will not only be secondary but again will be judged by these unattainable and commercial expectations.

The psychology industry thrives on these expectations as well as needing for most people to fail at attaining what they claim to be encouraging.

Unattainable goals which are based on commercial expectations must remain unattainable in order to encourage people to continue striving for them. When most people can't achieve standards for inclusion then the standards are instead being designed to create exclusion.

An economy that thrives on competition must be unreasonable. It must create illusions and cause people to be delusional. Men, women, and children must all be taught to be hunters who strive for something that few people can achieve. When people are trying to achieve what they can't, their only natural conclusion is that someone else must look worse for them to look good.

This is how the DSM-IV is geared to help the economy. Self worth must not be something that people are born with, it must be something that they can only attain by achieving the goals that the market driven society creates for them.

The pharmaceutical industry must not only work together with psychological standards to teach people how they need their products in order to be worthy of societies respect and dignity, but they must also use their product to further control their customers. In the same way that buying a product can only allow you to come only so close to accomplishing the goal they have set for you in their advertising, pharmaceutical medicine does not produce a state that can be attained naturally. This dependence is vital to the survival of the industry. If people are able to find out what is truly normal the achievement of normality will no longer be sought. The fact that these medicines subdue those who take them and are disabling is simply a bonus for the industry.

When a charity shows itself to be focused on commercial investments and using commercial tactics to encourage the investment in their cause, they are working together with the broader system which provides them an already established customer base. Of course Autism Speaks will always be good at what they do. However, other people can't counter what they do or encourage something better, unless it's different. If the goals look similar, the public who is educated in consumerism will simply choose the best within that category which are competing with each other.

Consumerism and commercialism do not teach respect. Instead it teaches expedience and convenience. While people may buy those things based on the appetite which has been created, they won't be encouraged to respect those who are advertising a product which does nothing more than fulfill the appetite which they know is delusional.

When respect is the product the only way for someone or some group to efficiently sell the product is to advertise it as being in a different category which makes it worthy based on a different set of standards.

When people are involved in encouraging respect for autistics in the realm of politics, medicine, and the legal system, they must understand that the people whom they are targeting are too savvy to buy a product based on anything other than how it relates to another product in terms of commercial worth. Unless respect is shown by a different set of standards you will be judged by the standards that people already know and are accustomed to.

We can't show that one group of autistics is better than another or that autistics deserve more respect than any other group who has been oppressed for the same reason and by this same oppressive standard.

Autistic people like any other members of an oppressed group was not born believing they had less value than other people. This had to be taught. There is nothing inherent that makes one person more worthy than another. Once someone has been taught that they are less worthy, they have not only learned to see that the world as unreasonably judgmental, but their inherent trust has been severely damaged.

There is no way to use that standard for teaching people to trust in their inherent worth, unless you show them a different system for judging what determines worth. Once they understand that they will be able to judge others in that way and treat them with respect in the same way they have experienced it.

Ensuring the Silence of Autistics

I had a speaking role in a video not long ago which was presented at a conference where Bob Wright of Autism Speaks was also presenting. I was told that Mr.Wright spoke directly following the video and mentioned something about wishing that all people with autism could speak as well as those of us in the film.

I wish I could have told him how many times during my lifetime, I have sat in meetings where decisions were made regarding where I would go, and what I would do when I was unable to advocate for myself. Many of those times, especially when I was younger, were due to my inability.

However, what I would most like to convey to Mr. Wright and others like him is what I have learned from such meetings, from a lifetime of being a disabled autistic and being considered that way, often being declared incompetent, and also from being in institutions where it was made clear what the public saw as my place in society.

What I have learned from my experience is that not only was my ability or lack of it often influenced by how I was being treated but also the treatment was ultimately much more of an influential factor in my silence than my skill for forming understandable sentences.

This has, and still does, influence every aspect of my life. As I have posted to my blog many times, there are very few opportunities for people who have not been given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf to overcome the obstacles so that they will be able to do that.

This is not a mistake that society has made so campaigning against it has rarely if ever produced any positive results. This is clearly representative of an attitude that is meant to give more advantages to those who already have them. When people ignore the root of why oppression exists, they automatically contribute to the problem.

I wish that groups like Autism Speaks were not only seen as the problem but that more people would understand why such groups are able to become so popular in the first place. Autism Speaks didn't create the problem, they are just using what works which also makes the problem worse.

Once it is understood how widespread the problem is people will be less likely to promote commercial and political agendas that only make the problem worse in the long run. There is no merit in most efforts claimed to be politically expedient because the attitudes that create such political agendas and the public policies as they are now are too firmly established for any simple restructuring.

The way to create real change is to get more people involved who are now being excluded due to exclusive standards. This is not that difficult and won't take that much time. It's just a matter of discontinuing what is now being done to prevent the inclusion of this population. Nothing else will affect needed change nearly as much.

The people who have been in similar situations as myself and whom I have been associated with will not join a political movement where the attitude has not changed. It is more important that this population be included than for any small changes in public policy being made. Once this population is included there will be a better understanding of what needs to be changed. However, many of us know all too well what it feels like to be objectified for the objective which someone else has decided will be best for us.

"Nothing About Us Without Us" has too often been used as a slogan used by Disability advocates, which promotes exclusivity. If there was a way to get the best and the brightest included so that misfits would be able to follow, we would have seen the progress made by that approach already.

In places where this destructive attitude is so ingrained in public policy, those who see how they have been victimized by that attitude will not be able to follow until how they think, and what they have to offer is legitimized.

Whatever agendas aren't already supporting eugenics will eventually become that way, unless the attitudes that support a narrow group of people at the expense of everyone else don't radically change. When people don't acknowledge the extent of the problem, they are buying the expediency they claim will solve small problems at the expense of those who are most affected by the larger more general problem. In the long run, no one will be served by this approach.

Note: I'm reposting a request from Stephanie Lynn Keil which I think is important. I hope my readers will support this:

Finally, a productive advocacy group, NOEWAIT. I recommend everyone go visit the site, print out the documents and mail them to your congress people. I am definitely doing this. Today. I'm on the waiting list. Do something productive.