He was being a bastard, that's for sure.
For a child on the spectrum, what you saw there is actually more beneficial for development purposes than telling them to stop, explaining what they're doing wrong, and so on. As long as they aren't putting themselves or others in danger, best practices are to wait until the child is capable of understanding and comprehending how their behavior is inappropriate is a logical manner that, with their autism, they are unable to grasp from social cues as others are. Attempting to instill this before then can cause significant emotional distress for the child, who is completely incapable of understanding what they are doing is wrong.
You know where my perspective is coming from here, but particularly when he was on Elon's shoulders was a classic example of what is encountered when dealing with children on the spectrum. Elon came off as an enabling parent there without that detail, but ironically he was doing the right thing, at least relative to the child.
With all of that said that, there's no fucking way I'd let that go down as it did in that situation.
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curiousMInd101 (4565)
5 days ago
That makes sense. However, if that's the case, he shouldn’t be bringing his child into such an environment. It’s disrespectful to everyone involved.
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SemiAnimus (3245)
5 days ago
I agree completely.
I do wonder how much flack Trump would be getting now if he had snapped at the kid instead and I suspect that the news loop would be spinning the story towards Trump's lack of sympathy for disabled children if he had.
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curiousMInd101 (4565)
5 days ago
I really feel for Trump. He’s a narcissist — he thrives on being the center of attention, the most important person in the room. Having Elon Musk constantly steal his spotlight must be messing with his ego. Normally, in a situation like this, he’d tear the other guy down and puff himself up, but he can’t do that with Musk because of the corner he’s backed himself into.
Basically, he and Musk are locked in a game theory scenario of Mutually Assured Destruction. Trump has the power to ruin Musk financially and legally, but Musk has the power to destroy Trump’s reputation and turn public sentiment against him with a few tweaks to Twitter’s algorithm. For better or worse, they’re stuck with each other.
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SemiAnimus (3245)
5 days ago
That's an insightful take.
I'd imagine that both of them are highly aware of this is as well. Letting an autistic kid shit on an event like that would be like unleashing a kid and telling them to run up to the center stage of a wedding while vows are being exchanged. I'm sure Elon understands this, but even he has plausible deniability by being on the spectrum himself. It's like the Asperger's edition of Machiavelli's The Prince.
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curiousMInd101 (4565)
5 days ago
I really like this concept of Mutually Assured Destruction, so I decided to explore it further in a separate post. I titled it Trump and Musk: A Game of Mutually Assured Destruction. I'd be interested what the other denizens of Movie Chat think about my take.
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