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Probably the single most manipulative person I know has a documented mental disability (low IQ) in addition to her autism (which I share, which is how we met). She tried to manipulate my emotions to get me to be on her assisted decision team, which I know she will hector until they bow to her wishes and let her go to Disney World for a week instead of fixing her roof with the savings.
She has had her rights thoroughly and fully explained to her throughout her public schooling in Special Education. She insists upon them at every turn when someone says something she doesn’t like. She uses threats of suicide to summon the police Crisis Intervention Team to try to get her caretakers at group homes and even her mother to give her what she wants.
But her deficit is real. Attempts to explain, by people she genuinely trusts, go over her head and you can practically hear them whizzing by. Try to stuff into her head a concept not directly concrete or tied to her health and wellness, and you will find nothing but misery and confusion.
She has been convinced, in those terms, that literally every Republican wants to take away her Social Security and let her starve, and she was genuinely suicidal during Trump’s Presidency, and grateful that someone let her vote. No concept of the deep philosophical reasoning behind the right to vote, just a bunch of motivated reasoning.
I find myself remembering that IQ 100 is an average, and realizing how many more Americans like her I’ve never met because I never go where they are; my ingroup is clever talkers, and she is adjacently a clever-talker by the quirks of autism.
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