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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 13, 2026

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You're completely missing the point with this. Yes, autism as defined by the previous school of thought is maintaining relatively consistent numbers generationally. However, scope creep of the diagnosis combined with the weaponization of 'I have a disability give me free shit' from people tapped into the system inevitably gets downright rapacious when people who were considered able to have full healthy lives (albeit a bit weird) a generation ago now have a label which entitles them to access whatever societal privileges. I agree that the vaccination = autism correlation/argument is spurious and created by a series of underlying mostly-uncorrelated correlations. RFK's identifying something salient in that the modern system of privilege creates massive overdiagnosis of psychological conditions, even if he doesn't understand or wish to communicate that fact since he'd likely get sledgehammered from anothe direction.

The Data center point is a complete non-sequitur in this case and isn't really reasoned from any place other than 'I don't like data centers and I broadly like the environment, this is a good cudgel'. The same goes for discussing the Trans violence rate not being that high when you take out a vanishingly small chunk of sexworkers, yet yaddayadda Trans genocide.

You're completely missing the point with this.

No I understand the point, I disagree with you that it matters much. "Sure he's wrong but at least he's vaguely directionally correct in this particular interpretation" is just "he's wrong" to me. He's using all the government rhetoric and resources to target the wrong things when he has every opportunity and resource to have a better and more nuanced and more correct view.

He's actually worse than a similar person who believes the "autism epidemic" is real and doesn't use it to blame vaccines cause at least that similar person isn't going to be behind the deaths and sickness of tons of kids.

The Data center point is a complete non-sequitur in this case and isn't really reasoned from any place other than 'I don't like data centers and I broadly like the environment, this is a good cudgel'.

It's exactly the same. Something that people if they bothered at all could easily see the real facts (autism epidemic isn't real, data centers don't use much water, whatever) but not only refuse to update themselves on it and focus on actual issues, but get angry at the very idea of it.

The same goes for discussing the Trans violence rate not being that high when you take out a vanishingly small chunk of sexworkers, yet yaddayadda Trans genocide.

The trans issue makes everyone insane and stupid. There is no trans genocide epidemic and there is no trans mass shooting epidemics, violence is incredibly rare in all directions from most groups in the modern world. The only things that really kill you when you're young is drug overdoses, car accidents and by your own hand. If you don't get into trouble like gangs or hanging around the very few kill streets you're exceedingly unlikely to be murdered no matter who or what you are. Humans have always been like this to some degree, but ever since telecommunications allowed stories to spread from far away we can get flooded with a deluge of horrific but very rare examples that makes violence and crime seem far more common than it actually is.