Go Lie In Grass With Me?

@pscentral event 26: minimalism THE MAMMA MIA CINEMATIC UNIVERSE + letterboxd reviews

THE THREE MUSKETEERS (1948) Gene Kelly as D'Artagnan

I don't know how people came to think that "the banality of evil" means "evil people are people too".

That's also true but it's not what the banality of evil means.

The term was coined by Hannah Arendt in her report on the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the architect of the "final solution" in the Holocaust.

It describes the way in which the Nazis at large and Eichmann in particular have turned the horrendous act of mass murder into just another job, disconnecting themselves morally and emotionally from their actions.

Before the death camps and gas chambers, Nazi soldiers simply shot Jews into mass graves by the hundreds of thousands. It was a lot cheaper and faster, but it caused great psychological distress for the murderers who pulled the trigger.

The leadership's solution was a massively upscaled version of the "gas vans" they used to mass murder hundreds of thousands of Germans with disabilities and mental health issues.

Shooting bound civilians in point blank range over and over is something you can't just pretend you're not doing or is no big deal. But if you're just the guy who sorts people into groups. Or just the guy that funnels them into a room. Or just the guy who opens a cannister on the roof. It's much easier to distance yourself from what you know is happening.

The same principle applies to much lesser evils, like soldiers operating drones from a distance, or insurance workers denying coverage for life-saving treatment.

I think it needs to become common knowledge that "inability to read social cues" can show up as overcompensating.

You don't know how much misbehaviour is allowed, so you become the perfect child who never tests rules.

You don't know if someone is irritated with you, so you'll be extra generous and self-effacing.

You don't know how much is expected of you at work so you'll kill yourself in a minimum-wage job and not notice that nobody else is working like this.

"Hardworking and quiet" should be as much of an autism red flag as "ignores rules and doesn't know when to stop talking". Or why don't we just start using words to communicate so i can stop tracking everybody's eyebrow twitches, that would be great.

Croissant manatee 🥐

if your response to "diagnosed autistics in the US are having HIPPA violated to have their names put on a list by the government" is "so happy i was never diagnosed!"... then you are actually not helping in the slightest.

most of us with diagnoses were diagnosed as children, we didn't get a choice. and now we are getting put on a list, with those who are high support needs facing the most danger from said lists.

rubbing it in our faces that you won't be on said list is hurtful. its not funny. its not cute.

seeing people my age talk about how scared they are of memory loss, which they only associate with old age, is so surreal to see as a 24 year old who has actively experienced memory loss for a long time now

there are causes for memory loss besides dementia and alzheimer’s, i hope y’all know that. dissociative disorders, trauma, brain injuries, thyroid problems, even just stress and lack of sleep can fuck up your ability to store, process, and access memory. and that’s just a few of the many causes i can think of off the top of my head right now.

please stop treating disabled people like some scary “other” that you might become only in the distant, decades-away future. we are your age, too. you may become one of us sooner than you know. stop acting like memory loss marks the end of a life, when so many of us have so much living left to do!

made another meme about my life. listening to this 6 times in a row now.

Imagine growing old with her. Imagine watching as the wrinkles come in, deepening the lines on her face that came from smiling, the frown line from when she concentrated, the crows feet from that devious look she’d get when she was going to do something silly and couldn’t hold in her giddiness. Imagine the way her eyes will soften as you grow together, and that fond exasperation she’ll look at you with when you do something she doesn’t really get but has accepted because it’s a quirk uniquely yours. Imagine that day you would’ve smiled a hundred thousand times together, laughed so hard you couldn’t stand, found comfort in each other so intense that a mere hint of them could ease all tension from your body.

What a privilege it would be to grow old with her.