Bwah ha ha ha!
Neither does “Hypocritical condescension.” It is characterized by offering priceless nuggets of unasked-for advice, chastising people who don’t deserve it, all the while participating in the very activity you claim they should be knocking off.
I’m a public schoolteacher in an inner city school… I could give a flying fat fug about popularity. I’ll speak my piece and if I’m wrong, I’ll own up to it.
We WERE talking about how some oppressed ethnic minorities get addicted to drugs in large numbers. I presented an explanation to help show why persecution, generational poverty and other factors working in combination (hence, the “+” signs) could lead to drug addiction as a means of escape among large groups of minorities.
I know other ethnic minorities besides black peoples have been oppressed, which is precisely why I cited some earlier and will again in this post. (Way, way, waaaaay down at the bottom, there – keep reading.)
I didn’t cite the Holocaust victims for one simple reason: I realized they didn’t fit my explanation. Their every movement controlled by Nazis – where in all of Auschwitz, Dachau, Jasenovac and Drancy were Jews going to get a steady supply of addictive drugs to help them escape from the horrors in the death camps in large numbers?
Squish read my initial thoughts and thought it was bullshit.
He cited the hardships of his Russian immigrant coal miner great-grandfather… and as soon as I read that he LEFT Russia to come here and was a landowner I responded: no, your great-grandfather doesn’t really fit the scenario because of the following reasons… (where I made my misstep is I began speculating without adequate facts as to reasons how his great-grandfather fled Russia, etc.)
Hoo-boy, that was dumb of me. Squish read that and gets mad. Fires back a loooong response where I got stuff wrong. He lists how his grandfather fit EVERY equation of my theory perfectly and he didn’t EVER get high or do drugs and how he was TOO STRONG of a man to succumb to that weakness, and how DARE I suggest he should have rolled over and given up because he was doomed and should’ve handed in his farm money to the local crack dealer and bought some gold chains and smoked a crack pipe and pimped his wife, blah blah blah…
(Smacking forehead.) Keeee-rist. That’s NOT what I was saying at all!
I said his great-grandfather didn’t fit my equation.
His great-grandfather was poor… but he owned his own land once and managed to support a family of 13 and worked hard to get some more. I honestly believe there’s something about land ownership that helps facillitates responsible behavior among temptation, even among the poor… so… doesn’t really fit scenario one.
His father faced ethnic oppression. But he went an OCEAN AWAY from where he faced that to start over. Doesn’t fit scenario TWO.
Okay, I agree he faced daily stress. I agree he definitely had personal injustices. It does not appear that while he may have been bitter, he wasn’t truly feeling trapped.
And as for having opportunities to get high… HEY. He worked in coal mining country. (East coast or Colorado or… where, incidentally?) But can Squish be reasonably sure his great-grandfather was an absolute teetotaler, never got blitzed from vodka as a temporary escape from his admittedly hard and, frankly, unappealing lifestyle?
Doesn’t matter. It seems that great-grandfather had enough moral turpitude not to let himself remain in his homeland under ethnic persecution and when he lost land in one country, he get some more somewhere else. I applaud that.
Guinstasia. I’m not making the mistake of post hoc, ergo proctor hoc, because that fallacy suggests ONE event produced ONE direct result when there is no evidence to suggest it, and one event merely followed after another… I am not saying that… I am suggesting many events and conditions, working together, probably DO. It’s more like the “domino effect”.
Let’s take a look at someone else.
I agree. Race doesn’t have anything to do with addiction. I’ve said ethnic oppression… and NO… I’m NOT using “ethnic oppression” as codespeak for “race,” either.
Guinastasia, do you think YOUR great-grandfather’s experiences in America fit the equation:
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use. If so, MIGHT IT NOT help explain why he drank?
What about the opium wars in China, and their spillover in America amongst the Tong and Chinese immigrants?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
What about the caste system in Brazil that oppresses millions of homeless young people and produces glue-sniffing thieves?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Native Americans and their long troubles with alcoholism?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Poor Appalachian whites and smoking, alcoholism?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Large numbers of blacks who do drugs, who were born into a cycle of generational poverty that BEGAN in slavery and continues?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Homeless runaways of all backgrounds in the Pacific Northwest who do needles, drink alcohol, smoke weed, etc?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Recidivist felons in and out of high-security prisons?
Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Alcoholism in India among the Untouchables (at least prior to the temperence movement there)? Poverty + ethnic oppression + daily stress + personal injustices + feeling trapped + opportunities to get high = temporary escape through illicit drug use.
Again, I’m not EXCUSING this behavior, just explaining.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I think my theory is compelling.