It’s not clear to me who or what is directly responsible for this, but do you really think the American Agency for Making Sure Planes Don’t Crash isn’t involved when an American Plane Crashes… just because it happened somewhere else?

Three things are true:

1. People seek attention, and often lie to get it.
2. Seeking attention is not unique to GenZ. People screamed for attention in Pompeii and Ancient Greece, leaving graffiti on the walls and yelling arguments at strangers
3. Many symptoms of neurodivergence appear at first glance to be typical to the human condition. This is not a coincidence - neurodivergents are human, and therefore face many of the same problems that neurotypical humans do.

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The reason autism and other disorders are evaluated as a spectrum is because the human condition itself is a spectrum of experience. We are not simple creatures.

The reason people are diagnosed with a disorder is often because they have landed somewhere on the spectrum of human experience that involves an abnormal level of difficulty when faced with “normal” challenges.

Simple or routine tasks, time management, emotional regulation, conversation - humans universally face normal challenges in these areas at times, but neurodivergent individuals face greater challenges at higher frequencies, to the point where it can be classified as a “symptom” because it directly interferes with their life in a way that is not statistically normal - it produces unhealthy levels of stress or emotional instability, impairs social and professional engagements, interferes with their ability to reason or achieve their own desires, etc. etc.

These symptoms can often be managed or treated. Just as often, they can only be coped with.

In short, “invisible” symptoms, masking, misdiagnosis, and societal misunderstandings all contribute to this very common idea that the average neurodivergent is just an attention seeker.

Is it likely that you have come across someone who has incorrectly self-diagnosed? Absolutely. People will lie on the internet. People will lie to your face. People will lie to themselves.

But it is also incredibly likely that you have come across people with severe symptoms that you had absolutely no understanding of. People who have been driven to the brink of suicide because they couldn’t manage their own mind, people who can convince you they are okay but can’t convince themselves.

It’s a goddamn spectrum, and people who can’t function at all belong on it just as much as people who can mask, treat, or cope with their symptoms enough to blend in. You don’t get to write off their existence just because their struggles aren’t obvious to you.

Yet another unnecessary accelerationist in a world where the brakelines were cut years ago and the bus has been speeding up all on its own.

“I can fend for myself” is the extremely naive thought that cut those brakes. No human is an island, and everyone is connected to everyone, past and present.

And “good, they should suffer because they deserve it” is the extremely evil thought that placed the brick on the accelerator. It’s the same thought that drives decisions like defunding healthcare.

So, congrats on being a part of the problem. Enjoy cheering for the suffering of humanity.

I mean, being a manufacturing-based economy certainly didn’t keep oligarchs at bay in the early 1900’s US. On the flip side, a coder or a banker can strike just as well as a machinist.

It certainly did work against the oligarchs. Most of our labor laws, OSHA, etc were written in the blood of workers of the early 1900s. Blair mountain, steel workers, mass unionization… the oligarchs learned a lot of painful lessons that lead to massive quality of life improvements across the country.

Blue collar workers have to show up or nothing gets done. Their work happens in a physical location that can be picketed, and they all need to live close enough to that location to show up for work. The money of their employers is literally in the hands of blue collar workers on the job. Materials and bodies need to move in and out every single day or no money can be made that day.

The information, service, and gig economy does not run on the same principles. An Ubereats driver has never even seen his “employer” and the only real qualification is a drivers license. Coders can be fired or replaced with H1B’s or overseas contractors, and they often work remotely or in local satellite offices that the C-suite sees once a year. Physical bank locations are not headquarters or vaults - they’re sales floors for offering loans and credit cards.

None of these people can physically stop their employer from making money, and so they have much less power in the employer-employee relationship than traditional labor forces had until now.

The media will frame it as a barely contained pot about to boil over.

The media has already been framing US cities like this for quite some time. Do not let that stop you. If they do not have enough civil unrest to justify oppression, they will manufacture it. If they can’t manufacture it, they will fabricate evidence of it. Do not discourage protests for the sake of appearing civil and moderate.

I’m saying that the US has so many issues that mass immigration will never help when you can’t even take care of the people who are already there.

That’s the thing, though. You can take care of the people already here. There is more than enough wealth, natural resources, land, food, energy… you name it, we have more than enough of it and can make more than enough of it. The point is the people in power choose not to. One or one million, immigrants will not take away anything from the lives of citizens that hasn’t already been taken away.

If you could wave a magic wand and deport every last immigrant, how would that take care of the citizens here? Crime would go down? No, statistically they commit less crimes per capita. Taxes would go down? No, as a group they pay far more in taxes than they could possibly take back in government spending.

The immense amount of wealth being hoarded by the powerful is already not being spent on improving people’s lives, and every last dime of it will continue not being spent on improving people’s lives.

You won’t get another slice of the pie just because someone leaves. You won’t end up with more value to be shared among less people… you will just end up with less people. People whose absence will actually make everything cost more, meaning the slice of the pie you do already hold will be worth less than before.

And when you have one of the largest land masses on the planet, and some of the most valuable natural resources, and a declining birth rate and increasing childhood mortality, and the cost of your health care is entirely caused by artificial scarcity… hm. Maybe the problem isn’t immigrants.