That Answers That Question

 

I had wondered in the previous post about the following:

Also, and this is important: the way Kennedy speaks about eliminating exposure to a "cause" of autism makes me very concerned about what he thinks about autistic people, that the people expressing aspects of the autism spectrum are broken or less-than.

Well as to that, say no more:

Visiting the FDA on Friday, HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had several “off -the-cuff” remarks which stunned many staffers present, according to a POLITICO report.

            ****

The most insulting comment, however, came when he used an ableist slur when discussing mental health.

“Because of my family’s commitment to these issues, I spent 200 hours ... with the r------d when I was in high school,” Kennedy said at one point. “So I was seeing people with intellectual disabilities all the time. I never saw anybody with autism.”

Okay, scratch that, because maybe I do have a bit more to say about that.

I'm sure he had things he'd rather do in high school than spend any part of his wild youth being a credit to the community, but what if, out of the many individual human beings he puts in the category of "r------d" were any number of people who were autistic, but he had no idea because they weren't diagnosed and/or he was just a dumb teenager?

And now he's a dumb old man. Not impaired--just information-resistant by sheer ego.

That's some healthy, clean fuel for thought, isn't it? If one were accustomed to thinking.

Kennedy has been described as a "miasmist". It shows particularly when he talks about AIDS as not being caused by the HIV virus, but because of the "gay lifestyle". (Mull that over. If you are a gay drug-taking fornicator, you get AIDS. If you are a straight drug-taking fornicator, I guess they make you Secretary of HHS. Bobby's rules, not mine. But I digress.) Something caused people to be tainted. It's medieval in its moral valuation. Who knows where he gets it?

It has a lot in common with the idea that mental illnesses aren't medical conditions, but failings of character, and the idea that disabled people shouldn't have accommodations because well, something happened to them and it's their problem, not anyone else's. It's as unfit a world view for being in charge of an agency regarding health care as an utter lack of science competency is.

But as an aside, he also went off on the Deep State and the idea that institutions made by people will be captured by assorted big interests, while working for the Trump Administration, which is going to give a license to pollute to any chucklefuck who'll pony up, and is getting rid of people who actually know what they are doing and performing in a principled, disinterested way.

Apparently, irony is not a substance Kennedy has had much exposure to. More clean fuel for thought, that.