Bernie's Son Looks Autistic to Me

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Here's the video I'm talking about. This is the full speech, so just watch whatever you can stand. I recommend skipping toward the end.



I was watching Bernie Sanders' victory speech from the New Hampshire primaries and the longer the speech went on the more certain I became that his son is on the spectrum. He's the guy over his left shoulder in the suit. I think he's a disability claims adjuster or something else completely normal like that. Normal as in, very middle class and not something you'd expect from the son of a presidential candidate.

He's holding it together at the beginning, but as Bernie drones on and on, I'm sure with stuff he's heard a million times before, he starts fidgeting. He smooths his hair, gets awkward with his hands, messes around with his nose, and so on and so forth. And his face is mostly expressionless. He'll randomly be like YEAH as if he's trying to look like he's paying attention. He just doesn't look like a typical family member of a candidate, more like a real person.

I really enjoyed him. It made me like Bernie more. I also liked the giggling stepdaughter on the other side of him.

I WANT to like Trump's sons because they stand like wrestlers in photos but I think they big game hunt and I don't like that. But I digress.

I think that is unfair arm chair diagnosis.

Bernie is the politician, not his son. The son may have not done much campaigning in the past, and Vermont is a very small state. Maybe all that was required of him in the past was to show up for much smaller crowds. It is very different talking to people at a senatorial re election picnic, than having your father stumping for a presidential nomination.

Very few people can handle that much national media glare. Especially if you do not have a job were you must be in front of a large audience all the time.

My husband's grandfather was a big deal politician on the west coast. He loved the campaign trail, his two sons hated it. One son bucked it up and could handle the crowds and nonsense, and the other was introverted. Making small talk to people you don't know from Adam is very hard. And people judge you. Every move you do is put under a microscope, and also what you say or didn't is over analyzed.

Bernie's son might have been not feeling well, and the handlers told him, "Tough s**t, get up there." To be in front of more than two hundred can be really unnerving, especially if you don't enjoy it. It is even harder to fake it.

His son isn't a professional actor or politician, so people acting squirrelly in a totally unnatural situation (running for the presidentual party nomination) wouldn't surprise me.

I understand where you are coming from, but you'd hate to have your character judged on a bad day. NTs have bad days, and believe me, we get nervous and do all the actions his son was doing.

To me, there's no such thing as "looking" autistic. Down Syndrome or CP might be easily noticed with a glance, but autism doesn't work that way--and that's a good thing, because autistic people (children in particular) would probably be even more stigmatized than we already are.

Curious but haven't found any evidence the man is autistic

That's part of what I do. I'm a sociologist who studies adults on the autism spectrum. I also study something call symbolic interactionism, which is (among other actions) scratching one's nose and folding one's arms and what those things mean. Part of what I'm interested in right now is autistic people in positions of power. Whether he likes it or not, Bernie is the son of a politician and that puts him in a position of authority. This position will be much stronger if Bernie is elected president.

True, I certainly can't know if Bernie's son IS autistic, but there is now something that can be referred to as "looking autistic". I personally hope he is autistic because I want a person in a regular job to be a positive example of autistic authority.

I'm not going to say no.

Between his singular focus on the issue of income inequality, his naïvete about all the ways that people will be happy to abuse and exploit expanded government provision, his repetition, and his general wonkishness, I have thought more than once that BERNIE might be autistic.

I really don't care. I don't give a damn what kind of wiring he has, what kind of wiring his kid has, or where his wife buys her clothes.

Those things, while they might be entertaining to the masses, have no bearing on his ability or lack thereof to function as the titular head of my country.

Whether I think his policies are functional in the reality in which they will play out if enacted does.

Has anyone stopped to think that "Bernie Sanders' son" might have a name?

It's "Levi", for those who care.

video wouldn't play for me