I think you're underrating the significant intensification of eugenicist thinking on the far right, including from people who have connections to the administration. RFK Jr. certainly has sounded at times like he's paying attention to that discourse. And it's important to note that one of the differences between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is that this time around, the planners inside the administration have gone looking for underused legal precedents and fringe legal theories to provide cover for a lot of what they want to do, and the uncomfortable fact in this regard is that the legal backing for eugenicist policies from the first half of the 20th Century in the United States is still substantially intact, including Buck v. Bell.
But the people pushing back on getting the autism diagnoses aren’t MAGA types. It’s lefties. And keeping kids from getting diagnosed with autism is a HUGE bad thing. It will mean a whole lot of kids who don’t get appropriate treatments.
My point is that the lefties are not groundlessly fearful of where this administration--or RFK Jr. might be heading. Avoiding diagnosis or the medical establishment is not the right answer, but there's genuinely something ominous going on with the resurgence of eugenicist-inflected thinking.
And, another thing: Isn't it amazing that writing a post such as this one takes 45 min, but reading it only takes a fifteenth of that time...and flying off the handle about it can be done in just the time it takes for a few electrical and chemical signals to cross synapses?
I think you're underrating the significant intensification of eugenicist thinking on the far right, including from people who have connections to the administration. RFK Jr. certainly has sounded at times like he's paying attention to that discourse. And it's important to note that one of the differences between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is that this time around, the planners inside the administration have gone looking for underused legal precedents and fringe legal theories to provide cover for a lot of what they want to do, and the uncomfortable fact in this regard is that the legal backing for eugenicist policies from the first half of the 20th Century in the United States is still substantially intact, including Buck v. Bell.
But the people pushing back on getting the autism diagnoses aren’t MAGA types. It’s lefties. And keeping kids from getting diagnosed with autism is a HUGE bad thing. It will mean a whole lot of kids who don’t get appropriate treatments.
My point is that the lefties are not groundlessly fearful of where this administration--or RFK Jr. might be heading. Avoiding diagnosis or the medical establishment is not the right answer, but there's genuinely something ominous going on with the resurgence of eugenicist-inflected thinking.
Got it. Yes, agreed.
And, another thing: Isn't it amazing that writing a post such as this one takes 45 min, but reading it only takes a fifteenth of that time...and flying off the handle about it can be done in just the time it takes for a few electrical and chemical signals to cross synapses?
Valuable post, Laura. Thanks for piping up!
Thanks, John!