It’s a heartache when autism renders your otherwise beautifully athletic, 6’5” 165 lb. son unable to compete at traditional sports. To compensate I’ve lived vicariously through the exploits of several close friends’ children, frequently joining my buddies in the stands to cheer on their kids’ best efforts. It’s wonderful, of course, but not quite the same. It has been particularly bittersweet recently, as Sue and I have regularly attended Marshall High School basketball games with Luke to root for a very competitive squad anchored by a couple kids we watched him grow up with. Often, we sit near their parents and absorb some of the thrill. None of this pity party means we’re not immensely proud of the accomplishments Luke doggedly pursues within his own parameters… it just is.
A debilitating deficit Luke deals with is an inability to carry over one experience to the next. That is, he can be bowling and roll a strike, react immediately to the achievement, and then seemingly fully discount it by the time we interact with him. I know he has recorded it in a file, but it’s most often stored away so fast we can’t enjoy the moment together…. he’s already pondering the next thing.
All of which made what happened several weeks ago unique and memorable. Luke plays on a Special Olympics basketball team at Marshall. They were invited to a local tournament held with hundreds of people in attendance, all enthusiastically cheering the players, restoring whatever chunk of my faith in community that may have frayed as part of our divided national condition.
When Luke’s game began he seemed particularly focused, loping from end to end and scoring repeatedly, to the point the mentors gently reminded him to pass off a bit more. Of course we were overjoyed in the stands, as a packed gymnasium cheered him on. When the game ended I headed to the bench to congratulate him, confident his response would be something like “now let’s go get chicken from Crispy and Juicy dad!” Instead he looked me in the eye and entreated “did you see it… I scored lots of points.” As astonishing as it was short-lived, the moment provided fleeting certainty of progress I grabbed a hold of. He may have simply been scripting a response he knew I wanted to hear, but I prefer the alternative explanation… the whole event excited him enough to break through his rigidities and express himself spontaneously. Around here we take our victories where we can get em, and thinking too much is just the way to give them back. Additionally, I was left to ponder how many other kids Special Olympics have hoisted out of their routines and inspired to another level, thrilling their parents. I doubt achievement is stingier with the exhuberance it provides the disabled versus typical kids.
Mick Mulvaney is a Tea Party creation with a brand steeped from the outset in the movement’s bitter pettiness. In 2011, buffeted by dark money and under the cloud of a financial scandal he has never adequately explained, Mulvaney came to Congress as a bean counter on a mission to take on wasteful Obama largesse. Whether it was lazy welfare queens or abortion mills like Planned Parenthood, Mulvaney was on the case, avenging beleaguered taxpayers and looking to whittle government down to size. As nasty and unempathetic as they came, John Kasich on meth, the idea of Mulvaney as OMB Director in 2012 was every bit as nightmare-evoking as Trump in the White House.
Now he wears three hats in a freak show of nihilist governance that cherishes nothing and holds even less sacred. And so it was that Betsy DeVos stared vapidly at incredulous House Members this week and shrugged her shoulders…. “we had to make some tough decisions,” she blankly acknowledged, taking responsibility for what had been initiated in the West Wing, but which she would be carrying the water for.
Tea Partiers have always equated the Department of Education with lib schemes to impose federal brainwashing on their children; they want it gone. Like most of Trump’s Cabinet, DeVos is a rabid fox guarding the henhouse, undermining the enterprise she heads. She’s certainly not doing battle with the West Wing to spare her department budget wreckage. Regardless, whether actually doing away with funding for Special Olympics originated with Mulvaney – he never met a set of numbers he didn’t want to crunch – or DeVos, seeking to subsidize as much charter school encroachment as possible, each had to know it would be both controversial and doomed to failure. Yet neither seemed to mind much, particularly DeVos, who appeared energized declaring Special Olympics, like other godsends for the disabled community, are a philanthropic not taxpayer responsibility. As a measuring stick for the true chaotic despicability of this regime, her casual cruelty clarified our worst impressions. As for Trump, he almost certainly was uninformed. But does he even care one way or the other? Clown question.
Not a day goes by during this Presidency we don’t witness what we’ve been fortunate enough to never have endured before it. That doesn’t make it any more palatable. Sometimes they really step in it, like this week, and touch a nerve not yet bisected by Fox talk tracks. After all, MAGAites have disabled children, too. Should we take heart that some corridors remain off limits, preventing Trumpie devoids from staggering through destroying all they can just because…. Obama? Perhaps. Moreover, taken together with another Mulvaney brainchild, a renewed idiotic determination to wreck the ACA, it seems a safe bet there will be more gifts coming the Democrats way as 2020 nears, so our horror can be tempered with increased opportunity to vanquish its malevolent creators. Yet and still, this wretched tribe targets our most vulnerable without second thoughts; that should cost decent people sleep. All of our children deserve much better. BC