>>172234, >>172235, >>172236, >>172237, >>172238, >>172239, >>172240, >>172241, >>172242, >>172243, >>172244, >>172245
DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican - I had this idea… “what if autism diagnoses are partially from fraudulent billing?” And then poked around a bit. And … turns out that the whole “1 in 30” statistic isn’t based on official diagnoses; ADDM has clinicians review school records and if the record fits then it counts as autism even if there’s no medical diagnosis.
Then that statistic is quoted to justify increased ABA centers, increased research, all kinds of grants.
I’m questioning literally everything now.
https://x.com/DataRepublican/status/2005092396011548983

DataRepublican (small r) @DataRepublican - Sit around while I tell you a long, sad story.
Men without God, crave an idol to worship. The most obvious idol is Communism/Marxism, which many wise men realize is an abomination.
However, there is an older idol than Communism. This idol launched the French Revolution. This idol launched the United Nations. This idol launched the entire post Cold War world order. This idol is called "democracy."
The idol promised, if every nations had a free market, then no war can be made again. The idol promised, every human craves freedom and no religion (including Islam) can ever be an impediment. The idol promised, fiat money is a source of endless prosperity. The idol promised, every ill in the world can be attributed to not having enough "democracy."
And like all false gods, the idol cannot be satisfied until it conquers all of the humanity. Until it conquers all of the world.
Because we live inside this idol, we were not able to see its shape. How does an organ know what its host body looks like? And so we spent most of our lives ignorant of how much this idol took place.
We blamed inefficient politics for not getting anything done, we blamed not enough Republicans holding office. When in fact the actual cause of gridlock isn't gridlock at all - it's that we did not notice that nation-state decision-making got sublimated into a global "democracy."
Nor did we notice how much the tentacles of "democracy," primarily financed by the US taxpayer money, had infiltrated every single country in the world. Our spending kept ballooning, but crimes and poverty rose at home; education and health quality plummeted. Our politicians told us that they were spending more than ever on homelessness. That they were spending more than ever on all kinds of social benefits.
When in reality, we were spending all that money on "democracy" - expanding it at home and in every country in the world.
PEPFAR/AIDS is only a tiny bit of spending that we have done in Africa. We have spent far, far more on "democracy" in Africa - especially Somalia. George W. Bush sent 28,000 troops to Somalia to aid them in their struggle for democracy. And also initiated the program which used US taxpayer money to fly enormous numbers of refugees here. And also relaxed rules around remittances in the name of enabling market reforms - which in reality went to funding the terrorists we fought against in Somalia.
Obama was not the cause. Obama merely continued the idolatry of democracy that GHWB, Clinton, and GWB launched.