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Why is the American right so obsessed with autism and discovering some unknown or suppressed cause for it?
Politicising medicine in general is baffling to me, like how Ivermectin is right-wing while vaccines are left-wing (and I remember 20 years ago most antivax people were leftwing). At some point it feels like American politics is about picking any conceivable topic and flipping a coin to declare one side Republican and the other Democrat.
It's simple, over the last decades, the left has succesfully taken over multiple fields through academia, including medicine, and there is a fear from conservatives that this political capture is tainting the quality of the science that comes out of it. In some fields of medicine, particularly those at the intersection of hard sciences and social sciences, for instance study of the transgender phenomena, it's hard to argue that the conservatives don't have a massive point. In more hard science aligned ones, such as which drugs are effective/dangerous, it's less legible, but the conservatives do have (IMO) a smaller point that the left relishes the power to force public policy and is not wielding it objectively. The gleefulness with which they they resorted to coercive methods to force people to vaccinate during COVID is a great example.
I’m not American so I’m not too familiar with what you’re describing. Where I live the vaccination enforcement and lockdown measures were significantly harsher than anywhere in the US, and there was broad social support from all political parties. Shouldn’t conservatives, i.e. the party of law and order, be a fan of measures which promote public safety?
And the right in the US, especially in its current MAGA incarnation, is just as gleeful in its authoritarian tendencies. It doesn’t even feel economically right wing anymore; tariffs, protectionism, anti-immigration, the government having ownership of major companies… that was all leftist policy 50-60 years ago.
I don't know how it went in your country, but in the USA, Lockdown measures continued in some places for a LONG time, even after the vaccines were widely available. I personally felt like the goalposts had been moved; all the pro-lockdown people around me had said they wouldn't stop demanding lockdowns until there was a vaccine; a vaccine became available, and the pro-lockdown people continued to be pro-lockdown and said they wouldn't stop until the vaccines were mandatory with 100% compliance, also we need vaccine boosters every X months for the new variant. They also didn't think that anyone gained any natural immunity from having gotten covid, even though that's exactly how the vaccines they were waiting for work, by giving you the benefits of natural immunity without you having to get sick first, because it turns out that the people who Believe The Science don't actually know the fucking science; they were expecting a 100% effective vaccine when even our yearly flu shots are only 70% effective. Masking and Taking Covid Seriously became a leftist cause because they saw a conservative not wearing a mask and hand to triple down on doing the opposite, until of course there was street protesting to be done.
They kept on looking for excuses to keep being afraid. I will neither forgive nor forget that those people trapped me inside, stopped me from dating, stopped me from engaging in my hobbies, stole three(+) years of my life, and when one of them who had been my friend threatened me with vague promises that one day soon I'd be a minority and get my comeuppance, called me a White Supremacist, then betrayed me and his other roommates, emotionally abused his girlfriend and tried holder her hostage, and attacked me with an axe, and suffered NO loss of reputation among his Leftist friends, because he was a Queer Marxist of Color and therefore could do no wrong.
I still see young-ish mask-wearing leftists every. single. day.
The MAGA conservatives in the US chase votes and approval by dunking on the left. The bases of both parties have been radicalized by a decade plus of propaganda that makes them think of the other side as an existential threat to the future; MAGA doesn't have to be consistent or effective on policy, it just needs to give the impression that it's fighting Wokeness, and Woke made a lot of enemies.
Are you on the left coast? Not disputing your claim, merely curious. I'm in flyover country and the only people I see consistently still masking are lib-left Boomers.
Chicago, west side.
Oh yeah that's a bad spot for those types lately. You've got to get good at giving off the "I'm nice but don't fuck with me" vibe, and that doesn't really work if you were enmeshed in those social circles before they went all the way off the deep end.
I don't quite know what you mean.
The west side of Chicago is bristling with brainwormed progs stuck in 2020. If you're deep in social circles with them where you're dependent on them for anything, you're just fucked until you get out and find better people, they'll put you through seven circles of hell just because it lets them feel better for a moment about their own psychosocial dysfunction. The only good way I've found to deal with social conflict with them is to give off the vibe of "I'm chill and don't want to escalate anything, but don't push me, if your implicit threats of force become explicit I will win the fight."
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