Post by mdorman

There are links in the video itself if you want more detailed background, but the short-and-sweet of it is: FAA rules would ground pilots—commercial or otherwise—for an indeterminate time (possibly forever!) if there was evidence they suffered from mental health issues. Seeking treatment, it turns out, was considered evidence; as you can imagine, this gave pilots an incentive to not seek treatment.

Does that make you feel safer, or slightly queasy? Probably depends on how often you fly, and how likely you think it is you might have had someone in the cockpit suffering from untreated depression…maybe don't think about it too much.

Xyla Foxlin is, among other things, a creator on YouTube. In 2023, she posted a video discussing how a change in her birth control regimen led to depression. Someone duly reported her to the FAA, and she lost her pilot's license. I admit that I have mixed feelings about this—I believe it was a dick move probably motivated by envy and misogyny. Yet I also believe those rules exist for a reason, and no one should hold themselves above them.

It seems clear that the issue is with the rules themselves: how their black-and-white approach drove people to conceal what was going on with them for fear of losing something joyful in their lives, or perhaps their livelihood.

Xyla was reasonably fortunate—she regained her license in 2025. But she chose not to stop there: she allied herself with a recently started organization that was lobbying to change these rules so that pilots could seek routine mental health services without the expectation of immediately losing their license. She mobilized her followers repeatedly to raise money for the cause—largely to pay for lobbying, which I recognize a lot of people think of as as dirty word, but the video includes some discussion with their lobbyist that is kind of illuminating—as well as to contact their elected representatives to advocate for the bill when the time was right.

As you may have guessed from the tense in the first paragraph, they succeeded! H.R. 2591 passed the House, and according to the video, also passed the Senate, though that's not yet reflected in the link.

What's the lesson, as we stare down these very consequential mid-term elections?

It's your fucking government. If you give a shit—if you're willing to put in the effort and ally yourself with people who share your goals—your voice can make a difference. I'm not in love with the V for Vendetta, "People shouldn't be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people." construction, but I absolutely believe that people should be able to demand that their government listen to them and do what they need done—because the government is, ultimately, us. We, collectively, are sovereign and delegate that power to "the government", but the power remains ours.

Silicon Valley billionaires—and, for that matter, all the other billionaires, and multi-millionaires and other wannabe oligarchs—are under no obligation to give a rat's ass what you think, or want, or need. Remember that when you're thinking about who to vote for? Is that ultra-rich guy going to listen to you once he's in office? Is the guy supported by all the ultra-rich guys going to listen to you once he's in office? Odds are, no. Choose wisely.