todd_bonzalez , 8 days ago

Look, I understand the line you are trying to walk here, but encountering a vehicle like this and thinking “this guy just has different ideas than me, but is otherwise trustworthy” is not rational thinking.

There’s a difference between believing in conspiracy theories and covering your van with warnings about the nanochips on your body that give you computer generated diseases.

If I learned that someone suffering extreme paranoid delusions like this were in charge of operating a passenger vehicle, I would be extremely concerned with the safety of those passengers.

This isn’t some unreasonable thing. I have a lot of compassion for those who suffer from mental illness, but I also think that public safety should take precedent when it is clear that someone is mentally incapable of being trusted with things like heavy machinery.

It’s not the ideas expressed on this vehicle that concern me. It’s that every part of this indicates a serious and untreated mental health problem. The only way my opinion could be redeemed is if the owner of the van came forward and said it was a joke, or a prop for a movie or something, because nobody with a connection to reality is going to write those things all over a truck and parade around town trying to spread the word if they aren’t severely dissociated from reality.

And I cannot stress this enough, nothing about this story has anything to do with Autism. Paranoid delusions are not a typical issue for Autistic people.