RFK Jr saying the quiet part out loud…
In an article about autism, he talks about how autistic people will never pay taxes, hold a job, go on a date etc. “worthless”. Useless eaters.
This is straight up eugenics.
It’s also wrong. Many people with autism or disabilities can do ALL these things, but our worth should not be predicated on that.
Everyone has intrinsic value regardless of economic ability or contribution.
#hhs #uspoli #rfkjr #autism #disability #ableism #eugenics #fascism
This is on brand and on the trajectory for full US #fascism
Health Department head decides who lives and who dies.
"Thursdays we burn all the sick and the cripples"
Remember GOPniks crying about "Death panels"?
Fascist accusation is *ALWAYS* a projection.
So, um, is this why Bezos pays no taxes?
@broadwaybabyto THIS IS THE MAN NOW IN CHARGE OF AMERICA'S SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS.
THEY'RE MOVING THEM FROM DEPT OF ED TO HHS, WHICH RFK JR RUNS.
THE MAN IN CHARGE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION BELIEVES KIDS EXPERIENCING PROFOUND AUTISM WILL NEVER LEARN TO USE THE TOILET.
FUUUUUUCK THIS FUCKING ASSFERRET.
Signed,
A pissed-off professional special education mediator and facilitator.
I have an adult sister with #autism. She has been diagnosed since she was about 4. There was a lot of BS around working with autistic people in the 1980s and 1990s--whoever came up with behavioral modification should be residing in the center of Hell. Even now, she's able to learn new skills. If she had gotten the kind of treatment children with autism get now, she'd have a better quality of life.
People who treat her like she's a walking tragedy are fascists.
@[email protected] THIS IS THE MAN NOW IN CHARGE OF AMERICA'S SPECIAL EDUCATION PROGRAMS. THEY'RE MOVING THEM FROM DEPT OF ED TO HHS, WHICH RFK JR RUNS. THE MAN IN CHARGE OF SPECIAL EDUCATION BELIEVES KIDS EXPERIENCING PROFOUND AUTISM WILL NEVER LEARN TO USE THE TOILET. FUUUUUUCK THIS FUCKING ASSFERRET. Signed, A pissed-off professional special education mediator and facilitator.
Hitler called the disabled & different 'useless eaters'.
Trump and Putin have America just about there.
Survival of the fittest.
Who's fittest?
Well...
Brown skin?
Born elsewhere?
LGBTQ+
Divergent from a raging white nascar, hockey or football fan on a rampage; a cop crushing a Black man's neck; a 'nice' lady screaming epithets at a South Asian person; critical of a compromised, idiot president; without health coverage; on social security?
Guess what 'eater' you are...
@broadwaybabyto Even RFK Jr.'s sister at some point said sth to the effect of "he may be telling things that sound somewhat reasonable but are actually nuts."
Psychopath Trump didn't bother.
No one is less qualified for government positions than those appinted by Trump, and the person occupying White House.
#RuleOfLaw #USPol #USPolitics #UnseatTrump #UnseatJDVance #UnseatTrumpAppointees
@broadwaybabyto
"Everyone has intrinsic value regardless of economic ability or contribution."
This is definitely the line we have to hold. They want to make the conversation about where we draw the line, who it's acceptable to categorize as "useless." The minute we engage with their arguments about "productivity," we've lost. We have to refuse to even humor them on it. Reject the entire premise outright.
The problem is that 'growth' has been appropriated to only include 'increasing wealth'.
When we talk about someone growing emotionally or psychologically, for example, we aren't talking about how much money they have.
When I was young I believed improvements in knowledge and technology should lead to all of us having to work less - to make life easier, and have more free time. But no, it's just about being a financial slave to line someone else's pocket.
@jargoggles @broadwaybabyto No one has any value, try.
"Value", like good and bad, is a contextual opinion. It's fundamentally a slaver viewpoint; I can get this much for you on the market.
(All the Taoist parables about useful and useless apply just as much to value.)
People are; we have choices about how we respond to noticing that. Lots of those choices don't involve even the threat of murder.
@graydon @broadwaybabyto
"The value of a human being has nothing to do with what they can produce for others."
"That's a slaver mentality."
lolwut?
You have no concept of "value" outside of buying and selling things and you're making that my problem? You have a lot of unpacking to do.
@jargoggles @broadwaybabyto The value of a thing, anything, has nothing to do with the thing and everything to do with you, because value is something you're assigning.
Rather than saying "you're assigning value wrong", maybe we could not do that at all.
@graydon @broadwaybabyto
That's the most up-your-own-ass way I've ever heard someone say, "Like, that's just your opinion, man."
Yes, *I* believe there is a difference between sending people to concentration camps and **not** sending people to concentration camps. *I* believe that the latter is vastly preferable to the former. That's a **value** judgement that *I* am making.
Do *you* think there's a difference between those things? If so, do *you* find one preferable to the other?
@jargoggles @broadwaybabyto The people transporting those other people to concentration camps, the people who would be just as happy to murder directly, are making a value judgement that a concentration camp is the right place for those people. They see the whole thing as a construction of virtue.
If it's about whose values to use, the means of resolving the conflict turns into a lot of murder. (I would expect preventing the concentration camps would result in less murder, and is preferable.)
@graydon @broadwaybabyto
"I would expect preventing the concentration camps would result in less murder, and is preferable."
That is a value judgment.
@jargoggles @broadwaybabyto Yup.
And thus meaningless and useless and in no way operant. It won't and can't do anything.
@jargoggles @broadwaybabyto I am not a Taoist, but a #Catholic: our respect for people does not come from our personal judgement. This is also the stance of #pope Francis.
"The dignity of others is to be respected in all circumstances, not because that dignity is something we have invented or imagined, but because human beings possess an intrinsic worth superior to that of material objects and contingent situations."
It's a long and deep tradition.
https://www.usccb.org/beliefs-and-teachings/what-we-believe/catholic-social-teaching/life-and-dignity-of-the-human-person
@broadwaybabyto > It’s also wrong. Many people with autism or disabilities can do ALL these things, but our worth should not be predicated on that.
Indeed. I have done *ALL* of the listed things here, though TBF, "play [ing] baseball" in my case was largely limited to swinging and missing a lot as a little kid.
But so what? Since when has any of these been any even marginally useful measure of worth as a human being?
@hatysa @broadwaybabyto
So have I. I've even written poems about dating, one using playing "ball" (different kinds) as a metaphor (dispelling that myth too)!
What this guy is talking about is pure fantasy. Whether he genuinely believes it or not I can't say, but either way he is trying spread it, like a Matrix mind-virus. People need to get their mental inoculations updated.
It's not the first time the wealthy funded a eugenics movement.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/10/16/us/eugenics-craze-america-pbs/index.html
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/films/eugenics-crusade/
https://www.geneticsandsociety.org/biopolitical-times/hipster-eugenics-better-babies-billionaires
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Galton
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_eugenics
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/eugenics-adam-rutherford-1.6720545
RFK Jr. owes his public office to a rich bigot, Tim Mellon.
https://coloradonewsline.com/2022/10/10/odea-donor-mellon-gilded-age-slavery/
https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-rfk-donations-timothy-mellon-fec-1872315
1/2
Years before Nazis preached about a master race, millions of Americans tried to breed a better, and whiter, race. A new PBS film looks at “The Eugenics Crusade” that caused leaders to sterilize scores of Americans deemed genetically unfit.
2/2
Rich wingnuts who believe BS about "the natural order" & innate hierarchy.
It's white supremacy & imperialism in disguise.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1467-8330.1996.tb00461.x
https://www.aaihs.org/eugenics-and-the-modern-conservative-movement/
https://irp.nih.gov/catalyst/29/4/unfit-to-breed-americas-dark-tale-of-eugenics
And class warfare...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/book-party/wp/2016/06/23/a-cultural-and-political-history-of-white-trash-america/
Does this implicitly give me permission to *not* pay taxes?
Cause I pay a bunch, despite my autism.
(I definitely didn't play baseball. And I 💯 stand by my choice.)
@broadwaybabyto AuADHD US citizen here
I do all of those things
... well except dating but that's by choice
What an asshole. He should find a way to eugenic his voice box.
@broadwaybabyto [Closes work laptop.]
[Closes tabs with filled-in tax forms.]
Tell me about this program wherein autistics can not have a job and not pay taxes. Is it UBI?
Also, if anyone is calling my eating useless, I'd like to see any of you meatsacks eat wood and degrade the lignin. If RFK wants to try, it can even be a roadkill tree off the highway.
There is an entire-ass reality show about ND people going on dates.
Got me on toilets, though. I don't produce urine or feces.
@broadwaybabyto We can flip this shit around too.
"Nobody neurotypical will ever do anything productive, just line some capitalist asshole's pockets."
How do they like it then?
Everything you said.
A society should be judged on how it takes care of those unable to take care of themselves.
Musk (the fundamental weakness of western civilization is empathy) and RFK Jnr ("reparenting camps" for people who use antidepressants) would argue their society shouldn't take care of those people. Hence, we must judge them accordingly.
@broadwaybabyto My father is autistic, and he pays his taxes, has a job, has written poems and been on dates, and yes uses toilets unassisted. I assume he's played baseball before.
I think RFK Jr is just bad at parenting.
Also: how about before you start eugencizing "disabled" people you kill the billionaires? they ACTUALLY don't pay taxes.
@broadwaybabyto Right wing nut jobs (rwnj) want everything to be simple - no complexity, no nuance, no "fuzzy" areas or vague borders. The concept of a spectrum of human characteristics would be anathema to them. They want you either "in" a category, or "not in it" and also, _they_ define the categories.
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