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by holyra 453 days ago
From my perspective, US culture is more violent in the current era because of several factors:

- A large portion of the population is incarcerated

- The population is weaponized

- Many people are dying because they don't have proper access to health care

- The economy leave a lot of people on the side of the road producing highly anxious people

- School shoot / police violence

- ...
1 comments
nine_k 453 days ago
It's autism that is said that it can be weaponized; the population is armed. But arming population does not necessarily increase violence within it: compare with highly armed populations of Switzerland and Israel.

The problem of the US is indeed with high incarceration rates, long sentences, bad prisons where more hardened criminals educate the newcomers to be more efficient criminals; this whole system is screwed, and needs to be replaced.

Lack of access to health care, while increasing mortality and decreasing morale, is not violence; rather, it's a lack of mercy, and lack of resources. That same lack of resources limits access to (quality) health care in EU, but in different ways: long wait times, limited prescription of expensive but efficacious drugs, etc.

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LoganDark 453 days ago
> It's autism that is said that it can be weaponized

is this a typo? I'm autistic and can't see how autism has anything to do with weapons or being weaponized. in fact, I usually see the opposite (sheer numbers being weaponized against autism), but I'm probably the most biased possible source for that.

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boppo1 452 days ago
"Weaponized autism" is a meme about passionate internet communities working together (and succeeding) to pursue goals "average" non-internet-overusing people would not think about much.

A good example is Paramount's decision to delay the first Sonic movie in response to internet backlash about Sonic's design. (Google old sonic movie design vs new).

Many people who participate in these things clearly do not have autism, but are spending a lot of time and attention on something broadly considered frivolous by society.

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nine_k 452 days ago
Please don't take offense. It's merely a meme reference, not some slighting of autistic people.

I'm saying this as a father of a girl diagnosed with autism; she's lovely, brilliant in some aspects, and... difficult in some other aspects. Life is harder for her.

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