Subtitle: I hope not…
For the past two weeks I’ve been caught up in the whirlwind of the Democratic Party Primary elections, and while it’s been a real eye opener it has also sparked a passion in me that had been dormant for a very long time, i.e. political involvement.
Of the two remaining Democratic Party candidates, there’s only one that resonates with me based on their ideals, their principles, and most importantly making me feel like I’ve known them for decades. That’s Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Many of us autistics have a propensity to think logically, to be highly empathetic to someone else’s needs, but unfortunately we often believe almost everything we read or hear.
It could be construed as naivety but I think of it as an inherent characteristic of ‘trust’ and seeing the ‘good’ in everyone.
That particular characteristic, ‘trust’, can sometimes get us in trouble or sometimes can break our hearts.
Today was one of those moments. There’s a website called ‘Change dot org’ and I assume that it is noble in nature, but I learned a little earlier that some human beings take advantage of it for devious purposes. From what I can tell, there are minimal background checks if any on all new petitions initiated using their services.
I saw a new petition today from that site asking for the United Nations to step in and to investigate the apparent fraudulent activities occurring with the Democratic Primary election process. It was worded perfectly and included the name of Sen. Sanders’ right hand man, Jeff Weaver.
As a result, I assumed that it was legit and I immediately posted it in all of the related Sen. Sanders Facebook groups. I even went one step further and posted it again including my satire introduction which starts “Dear Hillary…” in order to get people’s attention.
I think that I may have helped somewhat because the last time that I checked, the number of signatures was approaching 15,000 and that was all in an eight hour timespan.
I’ve been so busy trying to help the effort by researching and posting articles that I think may be pertinent, and using my satire introductions, that I rarely have time to read the comments from others.
However, this evening by chance I did click to see the comments from this post in one of the groups, and someone mentioned that often those ‘Change dot org’ petitions are bogus and are simply trying to capture email addresses for future scamming or spamming.
Guess what? I think this was one of those because I failed to notice that the originator of the petition was located in some obscure town in Nepal. [Lightbulb finally came on]
Therefore, it appears to me that my autistic trait of being gullible manifested itself again and I was duped.
Fortunately Facebook has a pretty easy way to <delete> posts so I immediately deleted all of those related to that possible bogus ‘Change dot org’ petition.
I’ve learned a lesson but I have not lost my faith in humanity nor my preference of assuming that everyone is telling the truth, at least not until otherwise proven.
Regarding the two Democratic Party candidates that are still competing against each other, I have figured out who is telling the truth, and it’s based on a vast amount of research and analysis.
All I can say is, I apologize to my fellow Bernicrats on Facebook if I suckered you in along with myself, and I hope not to let it ever happen again while I’m in political activist mode.
And at my age, that may not be much longer. 🙂
Best regards,
David Moore Boulware
p.s. #FeelTheBern
The Mind of an Autistic Savant 