I maintain he's above 70, which is the threshold for being a legit sped, but below average. I think he has a staggering lack of critical evaluation skills that lead to do things like sue celebrities for not being his girlfriend and talent shows for not giving him special treatment. I mean, he can take care of himself, he knows you have to work to support yourself, he knows that legal disputes are resolved in the court system, but the details of those things elude him.
It's an interesting question, because most of our exposure to Russ is through his writing. Which, while pretty simplistic, is grammatically correct for the most part. So that gives the illusion of him being somewhere in a normal range.
And he also manages to live independently, hold down a job, understand what courts/PACs/police are for... mostly. Again, it's a bit misleading because he's not institutionalized, but he does seem to have a hard time maintaining employment and (up until Vegas) living arrangements. Meanwhile, he manages to file lawsuits that are at least technically lawsuits and aren't just random scribblings of "I SUE YOU" over and over. But I don't know that he really
gets it. I don't think he really grasps abstract concepts outside of punishing the people he doesn't like for whatever reason.
Like, look at his public transit PAC. He wants trains. He's even identified a few places he thinks those trains should go. So now he wants people to build trains for him. He knows what a PAC is -- someone's put it into his head that this is a way to bring about change -- so he fills in the paperwork for a PAC. So now it should happen, right?
He doesn't
actually understand the process, or urban planning, or fundraising (or web design for that matter). He knows how to fill in forms and articulate his desired outcome in very basic terms. You don't need to be much above 70 to do that.
And when the trains don't magically materialize, it's because someone intentionally stopped them from happening. Yes, I know a huge part of this is narcissism/entitlement/persecutory delusions. But I'm increasingly of the opinion that he honestly doesn't understand that there's more to it than just starting a PAC and waiting for the trains to happen. Like, he must know that he's going to have to talk to someone or something at some point, but his understanding of the process is so simplified that it's almost parodic.
A bit like writing a song and expecting immediate stardom. A bit like meeting a celebrity and expecting to be intimate. A bit like DMing someone on Instagram and expecting to become friends. It's not just that he's narcissistic enough to expect to skip steps. It's that he's wholly unaware of the existence of those steps.
Like I said, his actual level of functioning is an interesting question. What can be attributed to delusion and how much to simple low IQ is really hard to say.