Services Are Not a Zero-Sum Game

One of the classic tactics of greedy politicians, ever since ancient times, has been the divide-and-conquer strategy. Are your peasants getting surly? Not satisfied with the crumbs from their lord's table? Just convince the dolts that their real enemies are the peasants in the next valley, who are taking an unfair share of the crumbs. You can always make yourself look like a good guy with some bread and circuses, and keep the peasants distracted with a foreign war every now and again.

Although we're supposed to be smarter than that nowadays, the sad truth is, too many folks are still gulping the same old tired propaganda that the Caesars dished up to their conquered subjects. Today's politicians routinely play off various minority groups against one another, trying to make it look as if they're all competing for a tiny, fixed amount of resources and, if anybody ever gets something more, they're "stealing" it from the other groups.

Of course, that's a load of steaming bovine organic fertilizer; we're living in the wealthiest society in human history, and there would be plenty of resources to go around, if they weren't being slurped up by crooked politicians and their fat-cat CEO pals. The economy expands every year, creating more jobs and products and services. It's not a zero-sum game.

Most disability rights advocates understand that we shouldn't be fighting over crumbs, but there are some dumbasses like Lenny Schafer, who recently claimed that neurodiversity campaigners were "trying to steal autism from the disabled." In his narrow little warped view of the world, anyone who argues that there should be more respect and better services for everyone on the autistic spectrum is "stealing" a finite slice of resources from those with the greatest need.

I'm going to give Lenny the benefit of the doubt and assume that he is a genuinely misguided fool, rather than a traitor deliberately consorting with the enemy. But he does just as much damage either way. Our modern-day robber barons gleefully lick their big fat greasy chops when they see guys like Lenny swallowing every drop of their divisive propaganda. The crooked pols would like nothing better than to see most autistics redefined as not needing disability services, so that the pols could use more public money for their own purposes, such as handing out bloated no-bid contracts to their cronies.

Thankfully, we have some tough, determined folks on our side who are not going to let them get away with it.