‘Something’s wrong.’ So said Donald Trump, about the rising prevalence of autism in children. It was in an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker, on the 17th of December.
It is not an implausible statement. Conservative estimates are that there has been a 1,000-fold increase in diagnoses of autism in children since the turn of the millennium, in the UK and the US at least.
One in 100,000 children with autism to 1 in 100 children with autism. In 25 years.
Yet Trump’s statement is controversial. So much so that the like of it is rarely made.
Welker’s eyes widened when she heard it. Their whites became clearly visible. We associate the look with a kind of madness.
And indeed a kind of madness ensued, as Welker eagerly parrotted the party line: ‘Scientists say they’ve gotten better at identifying it.’
As if autism could go undetected. As if autism must be winkled out. As if autism can ‘mask.’
‘Masking’ repackages the cultural autism against which we ought to rail with every fibre of our being, as the experience of an underlying identity.
If we feel that we must put on a face for other people and the world – and in our culture of the managed heart, we feel this all the time – we are encouraged to understand ourselves as ‘masking’ and to identify ourselves as at least somewhat ‘autie.’
And, insofar as we are somewhat ‘autie,’ far from objecting to it, we welcome it. Because it points to a truth, which requires only to be set free – Ahh, now I get it. I’m autistic.
Once again, we are deflected from trying to solve the autism towards trying to solve the masking.
I guess that we are all autistic now!! This is one way to say it is ok to not look for the causes, that is all it is. It is the same thing to say everyone is beautiful, which makes no one particularly beautiful, thus, destroying the idea of beauty. They are doing this with autism and normality. There will be no finding of the cause of autism if we let this bullisht go on. I hope Kennedy gives everything in his domain a good sharp examination for causes of autism.