I am Autistic and I vote.
Let's go over this carefully, because it just happened again.
Autistic people are real people who are have to fight every day to make a place for ourselves in a world which is often hostile. Using "autism" as a insult shows a lack of empathy for us. People with real, actual empathy do not turn the word for a disenfranchised group into an insult to attack what they see as a lack of empathy in a political opponent.
Mitt Romney may have difficulty showing empathy in effective ways as a politician. That does not mean he has Asperger's syndrome, no matter how many liberals say he does (see here, here, and here).
This is one of the problems with awareness for awareness sake.
We get turned into an insult, like Paul Wallis does today in a piece which asks "Is American Conservatism a Form of Autism?"
Autism is described as a medical condition whereby people are self-centred, uncommunicative and at a remove from their social environment. There are many different types of autism and degrees of it. A type of “social autism” is also quite possible.
Autism ticks all the boxes for behaviour in relation to social issues by conservatives. It seems that there is no society except the one they choose to acknowledge. This is “social autism”, and it comes in many forms...
Can this possibly be considered anything but an autistic viewpoint? Even the lying is based on the same mentality as a 2 year old who thinks they can get away with anything. Apparently anything which doesn’t directly benefit or relate to oneself isn’t on the conservative radar. That’s autism, incarnate. There’s 312 million people in America, and evidently most of them are just nuisances according to this mindset.
Wallis is not a major figure, but current Democratic Maine Senate candidate Cynthia Dill has done the same thing.
This is bigotry against autistic people, and it also comes in many forms. And from both sides of the political divide.
People have said Barack Obama must have Aspergers, too.
And conservatives have said that striking teachers must have autism.
And every time we are used to score cheap political points, the likelihood that we will be treated decently decreases.