People are prejudiced against Aspies and other people on the Autism spectrum. You do not have to be paying much attention to notice that. It is a little harder to notice that Aspies are not the only ones dealing with prejudice. The world has turned into a nastier, meaner place where people are looking for reasons to pick on others.
People mostly have to work more to earn less than they did last year, and the year before. More people are out of work and it is harder to get another job. We are told that we have low levels of unemployment with statistics to prove it. This is a fine example of, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", as Mark Twain said. The government fluffs up our employment statistics by not counting as unemployed, people who are not trying very hard to get a job anymore because of discouragement. They find reasons to leave other people out of the unemployment statistics as well. It just makes people feel worse about being unemployed when they see statistics that contradict their own experiences.
I used to live in a really mean town in California. The name of the town is Fresno. I expect it is even meaner by now. A news article said that the biggest homeless encampment in the USA is in Fresno. That is bound to make Fresno even meaner.
When I lived there I watched a blind man going across the street. He went across inside the crosswalk and waited until the chirping light let him know it was time for him to walk. He carried a white cane, which let people know he was blind. A motorist honked at the blind man anyway. The blind man was confused by the honking, so he stumbled and became a little disoriented and took longer to cross the street than he would have otherwise. Not only was it unnecessarily mean to honk at the blind man when he was crossing the street, it was also counterproductive and stupid. There is a lot of that sort of thing going on, and not just in Fresno. I have not seen exactly the same stupid thing done somewhere besides Fresno, but the general trend of meanness is spreading.
People who have Aspergers are singled out for bullying and blame because we can often be singled out as different and therefore are easy targets. It is also usually easy to spot a blind man and they are generally easy targets, but there is enough political correctness hanging around still to embarrass most people about picking on a blind person. People with Aspergers are not as embarrassing for people to be seen bullying as blind people. The same goes for people in wheel chairs.
Blind people and people in wheelchairs are favored disabled people, so they usually experience less bullying than people with other disabilities. This is not to say that people who are blind or who use wheelchairs do not experience bullying, they just do not get as much as people with some other kinds of disabilities right now. This also does not mean that people who are blind or who use wheelchairs will not experience even more bullying as bullying disabled people becomes more socially acceptable.
One big reason for unemployment is that technology is taking away more and more jobs from more and more people. This trend can be expected to continue indefinitely, or until we nuke each other back to the stone age with EMPs. Experiments are underway to give a livable wage to every member of a society regardless of whether they work or not. The reason for these wage experiments is because not much thought is needed to realize that the majority of people will end up losing their jobs to technology and they will not find another job to replace the lost jobs.
Not that many people are facing up to unpleasant realities like the inevitability of future unemployment for most people. Not facing up to unpleasant realities tends to make people cranky and go looking for scapegoats. We have a lot more unpleasant realities that most people are not dealing with very well lately and people keep getting crankier. That can mean more scapegoating.
I do not like that idea at all. I do not think we should let it happen. We need to open out our collective tunnel vision and work together with other people who are being bullied and stop the bullying.
People mostly have to work more to earn less than they did last year, and the year before. More people are out of work and it is harder to get another job. We are told that we have low levels of unemployment with statistics to prove it. This is a fine example of, "Lies, damned lies, and statistics", as Mark Twain said. The government fluffs up our employment statistics by not counting as unemployed, people who are not trying very hard to get a job anymore because of discouragement. They find reasons to leave other people out of the unemployment statistics as well. It just makes people feel worse about being unemployed when they see statistics that contradict their own experiences.
I used to live in a really mean town in California. The name of the town is Fresno. I expect it is even meaner by now. A news article said that the biggest homeless encampment in the USA is in Fresno. That is bound to make Fresno even meaner.
When I lived there I watched a blind man going across the street. He went across inside the crosswalk and waited until the chirping light let him know it was time for him to walk. He carried a white cane, which let people know he was blind. A motorist honked at the blind man anyway. The blind man was confused by the honking, so he stumbled and became a little disoriented and took longer to cross the street than he would have otherwise. Not only was it unnecessarily mean to honk at the blind man when he was crossing the street, it was also counterproductive and stupid. There is a lot of that sort of thing going on, and not just in Fresno. I have not seen exactly the same stupid thing done somewhere besides Fresno, but the general trend of meanness is spreading.
People who have Aspergers are singled out for bullying and blame because we can often be singled out as different and therefore are easy targets. It is also usually easy to spot a blind man and they are generally easy targets, but there is enough political correctness hanging around still to embarrass most people about picking on a blind person. People with Aspergers are not as embarrassing for people to be seen bullying as blind people. The same goes for people in wheel chairs.
Blind people and people in wheelchairs are favored disabled people, so they usually experience less bullying than people with other disabilities. This is not to say that people who are blind or who use wheelchairs do not experience bullying, they just do not get as much as people with some other kinds of disabilities right now. This also does not mean that people who are blind or who use wheelchairs will not experience even more bullying as bullying disabled people becomes more socially acceptable.
One big reason for unemployment is that technology is taking away more and more jobs from more and more people. This trend can be expected to continue indefinitely, or until we nuke each other back to the stone age with EMPs. Experiments are underway to give a livable wage to every member of a society regardless of whether they work or not. The reason for these wage experiments is because not much thought is needed to realize that the majority of people will end up losing their jobs to technology and they will not find another job to replace the lost jobs.
Not that many people are facing up to unpleasant realities like the inevitability of future unemployment for most people. Not facing up to unpleasant realities tends to make people cranky and go looking for scapegoats. We have a lot more unpleasant realities that most people are not dealing with very well lately and people keep getting crankier. That can mean more scapegoating.
I do not like that idea at all. I do not think we should let it happen. We need to open out our collective tunnel vision and work together with other people who are being bullied and stop the bullying.
