Let me be clear here: There is no autism epidemic. There is no ADHD epidemic. There is no disability epidemic. There is no mental health epidemic. There is no homelessness epidemic. There is no drug epidemic.
The root of all of these things are largely the same: A culture, society, and systemic framework that works for very few.
Healthcare and therapy don’t address the root issue
Healthcare and mental health services are all geared toward making people fit into a capitalist system. But there is NOTHING wrong with these people – and in different paradigms, they would actually thrive.
Diagnosing and medicating them is PURELY for the benefit of the system – to ensure conformity and capitalistic productivity. The same goes for “fixing” disabled people. And, in much the same way, people who are in friction with the system turn to drugs laziness, suicide, etc. to deal with it.
The role of manufactured scarcity
Meanwhile, homelessness, starvation, poverty, poor health, and so on are all essentially manufactured. For instance: Houses, apartments, and other buildings MUST sit empty, because wealth MUST be extracted from the homeless. Food must be tossed out because wealth MUST be extracted from the hungry.
But it is a farce. We truly live in a largely post-scarcity world. Indeed, the rich have so much that they don’t even know what to do with it all – they CAN’T possibly use it all – so they sit on it.
Epidemics and Crises
To be clear, an “epidemic” implies something is the source of a problem – e.g. the measles virus is the source of the measles epidemic. But everything I’ve described is either not actually an issue (it’s actually capitalism that is the issue) or is our capitalist system working as intended. So to call them epidemics is disingenuous and obscures the actual problem. It would be more accurate to call these crises caused by a capitalism epidemic.
So I will say again: These “epidemics” are either byproducts of a capitalist system or actively manufactured for capitalist purposes. Don’t let Trump, RFK, or anyone else tell you otherwise. And protect our most vulnerable, if only to protect yourself downstream.