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I was googling to see if I could find any trace of an article I wrote a very long time ago and while I did not find that one, I stumbled across this one on the Christian Left Blog. It’s been 13 years and without any way to reference my old articles (of which there were many), I had completely forgotten about it.
Considering one of the topics of last week’s podcast was Barron Trump’s obvious autism and its connection to the right’s growing anti-vaxxerism, I thought I’d post the entire article as it was written in ancient times (please excuse the rough writing and poor editing. I was a n00b) and then add a few comments afterward:
Autism And The Inhumanity Of The Right Wing
9/5/2011
By Justin "Filthy Liberal Scum" Rosario
Today I stumbled across an old acquaintance from my camp counselor days and found out that she has two children with autistic spectrum disorder and a third with developmental delays. As you may or may nor know by now, I have a child with ASD as well. Apparently this old acquaintance is a frothing liberal just like me. This got me to thinking: Is it possible to have a special needs child and still be a Right Wing ideologue? And if so, how?
There are millions of children and adults with ASD in varying degrees of severity and dozens of other kinds of physical and mental afflictions. Many, if not most, require some kind of special attention, whether it be home based services like my son received, a special school or a home for adults that cannot care for themselves. These services require special training and is not necessarily something you can take a class or two or read a book to learn. Especially if the ASD is as severe as it was in the case of my nephew who had it much worse than my son.
So who pays for it?
Well, in my case, the State of NY picks up the tab in the form of Early Intervention. They provided a speech therapist, an occupational therapist (for fine motor coordination), a physical therapist (gross motor coordination) and a teacher that spent 10 hours a week with him. Now, I am a stay at home father (voluntary, TYVM) and I have the time this kind of help would require of me but I don’t have the training. The overwhelming majority of parents don’t have the luxury of having one parent at home and they certainly don’t have the specialized knowledge. So let’s say that you are a “small government” conservative that hates having your tax dollars spent on other people (because you are a dick). How do you go about taking care of your special needs children? These services would be quite expensive to pay for and medical insurance doesn’t cover autism last I looked. So what do you do? Let your child languish in the prison that is autism? Hope you find a private charity that just happens to provide ALL of the necessary services? Or do you rely on the government to build a system of professionals that can help parents and their children without incurring crushing debt?
What would be the pinion of a conservative? We don’t even need to ask. We know it. It’s already a conservative mantra that people without children shouldn’t have to contribute to public schools. Just like people with jobs shouldn’t have to help those without. Just like those who can eat three meals a day shouldn’t have to help those who can’t. Just like those who are Christian shouldn’t have to help those who are not. It takes exactly zero effort to extend that philosophy of greed and selfishness to not wanting to pay for special needs children if they don’t have one of their own. Some of them don’t even think autism is real.
The Conservative creed: I got mine, screw you!
Autism does not discriminate. So presumably half of all autistic children have conservative parents. Do they all throw their children to the wolves? Or do they turn to the government for professional help. I’m guessing they turn to the professionals since most of them can’t possibly afford to go it alone.
How do they reconcile that with their hatred of all things government? It’s easy enough to ignore all the stuff government does in the background. No one thinks about how clean the air and water is compared to 70 years ago. No one remembers that rivers used to routinely burst into flame from all the pollution. No one wonders what life would be like without firefighters and police. These services are essentially invisible to us and so the Right Wing pretends that they don’t exist or that they would be just fine if the government didn’t do it.
These are, of course, childish people putting their fingers in their ears and yelling “LALALALA! I HATE GOVERNMENT!”
But they can’t pretend the services for special needs is invisible. It’s right there, in their face, day in and day out. They KNOW that they need it and they KNOW that, without the government, They wouldn’t have it. Do they pretend that they are a special case? Or that it’s THEIR tax dollars, knowing full well that they’re receiving far more than they put in? Or do they just rationalize that they deserve it for being a good American and those lazy Negros welfare people shouldn’t get a dime for their welfare kids?
How do they choke down that kind of hypocrisy on a daily basis? How do they vote for politicians that they know, for a fact, want to cut the very services that they desperately rely on for their children?
Is it even possible to be that stupid?
So my question to you, the reader, is: Do you know any Far Right, Glenn Beck loving, Fox News watching, Tea Party loving parents that rely heavily on government services for their child and how do they rationalize it?
OK, so aside from some cringey language and painfully bad editing, this held up better than I thought. And the point still remains just as valid. Republicans still vote for the party of “small government” even as they claim to be a “populist party.”
This has been one of the greatest scams in my life and I’ve lived through Reaganomics, the Iraq War, the Tea Party, and NFTs.1 The right’s most willing accomplice, the mainstream media, has been more than happy to sell this lie:
Republicans have taken sharp populist turn in the Trump era: Reuters/Ipsos
Oh, get the fuck out of here. Trump has been spending the last month promising massive tax cuts and deregulation to billionaires for money. He’s quite literally whoring out the Oval Office. The only thing he’s offering his base is “I’ll hurt the people you hate.” That’s not populism.
Trump isn’t even pretending he’s going to fight the rich and powerful on behalf of his cult. The Republican Party isn’t, either. They’re too busy making sure hungry kids don’t get food this summer. Because, you know, “populism.”
When Betsy DeVos was Trump’s Secretary of Education, she tried to cut millions from the Department of Education and reduce services to special needs kids. Trump has promised to just erase the entire DoE and the billions in federal money schools rely on. Because, you know, “populism.”
Red states are, by and large, already wastelands for kids on the spectrum. The GOP’s charter school voucher scam has been draining billions from public education for years now. Imagine what it would be like if the federal government just stopped funding public schools altogether. Maybe it would all be vouchers and a massive focus on charter schools.
This is a big deal because charter schools are allowed to turn away special needs students. It’s part of the scam, you see. They get to cherry-pick their students and then pretend their academic scores are high because of how “good” they are. Republicans use this disparity to claim that public schools are “failing.” Then they strip away a few more billion in funding while crying that these lazy public school teachers just can’t get the job done with 30-year-old textbooks and three packs of bubblegum.
While all of this is happening, one is still forced to wonder about Republican parents with special needs children. Almost a decade and a half later, they still despise the government. City, state, federal. It doesn’t matter. They’re all “the deep state” and out to steal their feedumbs.
But they still desperately need that help. So few of us can go it alone. None of us should. Ever. In all this time, I never got a satisfactory answer from people on the right about how they reconcile their hatred of government with their demand for more services for their child. Hypocrisy is endemic to Republicans. One would think that having a child on the spectrum would pull them at least a little out of their bubble of selfishness. But, not really.
Just like with Social Security and Medicaid and Medicare and every other kind of government assistance, the right tells itself that they deserve help because they are good people. Good Americans. Decent Christians. While the rest of us? We don’t deserve help because we are being punished. This is a disturbing claim I’ve come across numerous times. That we “deserve” special needs children because of our alleged sins or wicked lives. This doesn’t explain why just as many upstanding Republicans have special needs kids of their own but intellectual or moral consistency is hard to find in the cesspit of the right.
It’s hard not to pity these people. More specifically, the special needs people suffering in their care. Their Republican parents continue to vote for cuts to the very services these kids and adults need. Republicans blindly cripple themselves in their desperate need to “own the libs” but the people they hurt most are the ones that they are responsible for taking care of. I can think of few things more despicable than that.
There are 140 days until the 2024 election. Vote blue like your life depends on it.
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Really, people? You thought a picture of a bored ape was worth millions? No, seriously. You really thought that?
As a speech pathologist with many years experience with ASD children, I can most definitely tell you that in my red state, special education students on the spectrum do not get the services they need. I worked in public & charter schools. Most of the kids were on Medicaid, & our GOP governor denied additional federal funds for Medicaid expansion.
I retired early due to burn out. I bought thousands of dollars of my own materials, & had caseloads of at least 65 students (& as high as 90 students!). It was so frustrating knowing that many kids needed intensive, 5 day per week therapy which was impossible to deliver. Many principals covertly resented the sole speech therapist in their schools because special Ed kids drag the school academic score down. I delivered therapy in many locations, in a storage closet with no windows. Now in my state any teacher or therapist can be accused of indoctrination, being woke, saying gay, or choosing a therapy book deemed inappropriate by any parent. I don’t mean to brag, but I am a gifted therapist, top of the heap. And I just couldn’t take the lack of care for my profession, & especially for our poor children & their families. I’m glad your child got the services!
As an Autustic adult over the age of 50, noone knew what the fuck Autism was when I was a kid. That's why I am a strong proponent of helping kids. I don't have kids, thankfully, but I strongly support public education, and making sure kids get fed at school.