I would argue that defining mental illness by the DSM-6 is a really bad way of defining mental illness.

The same DSM previously said homosexuality and female hysteria were illnesses, and still causes black people to be diagnosed more frequently as anti-social because black children get labeled with conduct disorders more often that white children (quite likely due to racism), and still categories people as narcissistic based on a Greek myth. The DSM is so malleable and fluid because it was never based on science to begin with. Yes, these writers are oracles and soothsayers with Ph.D’s, but anyone with enough time and money can buy credits for such an unrigorous “scientific” discipline.

It’s really mostly only useful as an insurance billing tool, and one day there will be universal health care and hopefully the whole glossary of tripe can be forgotten, stored in the rare books section next to the textbooks about phrenology.

In defense of insurance companies, medical costs are astronomical because doctor professional associations protect doctor wages. Why do I need a 400 an hour doctor to prescribe an antibiotic for a bladder infection? Many people want to doctors and don’t get admitted into medical school. Instead of delegating less difficult responsibilities to this interested group of people by creating a more tiered system of expertise, the AMA hoards all the decisions for the doctors, fleeces and extorts the public, then scapegoats the insurance industry which is trying to reduce unfair costs while taking a slice of the parasite pie. The gullible public eats the slop right up, blaming insurance companies, never batting an eye at the exploitation of the public by doctors.

never underestimate the rage of cult members threatened with the cognitive dissonance of all their cherished moronic views being wrong. the cult of mental health has spoken: down-vote

Plenty of people who are not scientologists believe psychiatry and psychology are corruption incarnate. Sometimes I wonder whether scientology was invented by psychiatry to discredit those who point out its lack of efficacy, cruelty, and financial exploitation of vulnerable and naive people.

I would say this would make the DSM of mental illnesses arbitrary, but the DSM also contains at least 1 mental illness based on a Greek mythological character.

Much of the mental health industry is an intersection of religion, new age mumbo gumbo, a dash of science, capitalism, and what society finds socially acceptable. It was only in recent decades that homosexuality and female hysteria (which required clitoral stimulation as the cure) were removed from the hocus pocus DSM, which pretends to have scientific rigor and never has and likely never will.

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Sometimes pretending to be too socially stupid to be deceptive has advantages. This seems naive.

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Your logic (“I can’t believe it so it’s likely untrue”) is flawed. “I can’t believe the world is round so Occam’s razor it must be flat because that I can understand.”

Putin is very smart and the KGB were smart and they bested US intelligence, according to the now deleted article, not in those exact words. Why is that so implausible?

There could just as easily be other bought or compromised US officials, not just Trump. The thinking “but this couldn’t really happen, it’s too sneaky and complicated!” is a pretty naive counterpoint.

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so fucking crazy and illogical that it’s just a distraction and not real

“look over here while we implement Project 2025! Beyonce! DEI! What’s your opinion?! Let’s engage in a racist and pointless debate about whether Beyonce deserves singing accolades while we ready the wall for women who get abortions.”

I am pretty sure he uses Linux because he said something once that seemed linuxy. I forget what. Does he seriously use Windows or is this more “edgy humor”?

With Linux so easy to use, it’s hard to understand why someone would use Windows unless they had a really low intelligence and struggled to learn anything new (like they had a brain disease, developmental issues, etc.) or if they were using it it in an enterprise or virtual setting.

It must be a joke.

Even if you are right, and you may be, other forms of austerity measures or balanced budgets etc simply haven’t been politically feasible to implement, otherwise they would have been done. My point is that Democrats could have prevented this whole mess by offering the poor a more more lucrative platform, so lucrative that perhaps they cared less about religion and moral wedge issues, but they clung to a more moderate platform, allowing wedge issues to become a large factor in how people voted, leading to the present situation.

The problem is decades ago Democrats did not make changes to help the poor and lower middle classes fast enough and extreme enough to show that they were the party of the common worker and get a dominant position for multiple election cycles, allowing them to put in policies to stop inflation.

Do you want Jesus/religion and extreme poverty for the lower classes?

or Do you want abortion and mild poverty for the lower classes?

Moral wedge issues resulted in a lot of lost votes because for decades Democrats offered only minimal or marginal economic benefits for the lower classes. Their platform was so conservative they lost power completely over moral wedge issues and now can’t get it back. Also, now the US is in so much debt that something like DOGE (which is covert austerity measures camouflaged as conservatism) is actually prudent and necessary.