Spiritus already noted the switch of conclusions, from the emphatic, declarative, present-tense ‘leaders of gangs are the most vehement supporters’ (of the WoD besides politicians), to the weak, conditional ‘they would be opposed’.
That’s a world of difference. Lib’s new conclusion might prove true, in some hypothetical world where legalization was being considered seriously enough for your typical urban drug lord to pay attention. Or might not. Lib’s original assertion is either true or false, right now.
I don’t think humans fit very well into syllogisms. Among other things, we tend to get a lot of fallacies of equivocation involving people, since one thing is never quite like another with us complicated creatures. So rather than discuss Lib’s logic, let me explain why I felt a need to ask him for a cite to begin with, using the following thought experiment:
Take your typical urban drug lord, for instance. He’s black, male, let’s say he’s maybe 27 years old. He’s grown up amidst violence, and doesn’t really expect to die of old age. He’s a businessman, sure - but not exactly Jack Welch of GE. He got where he is not only through savvy and ruthlessness of a different sort than practiced in corporate boardrooms, where the loser gets a golden parachute rather than several bullets in the gut, but also through plain old physical intimidation: most of his contemporaries wouldn’t want to take him on with fists or knives.
His motivations are very different, too: he’s his own boss; he has no stockholders to dump him if earnings take a slow slide. He probably cares more about maintaining power in his part of town than about the money, as long as there’s enough money to suit him and maintain his posse. He’d probably rather have full control of his territory and be bringing in what he is now, than be sharing a financial pie ten times as big with two or three rivals that represent genuine threats to him. Different business, different risks, different attitude.
He’s been in the drug business since he was eight (he was just a courier then ) and Len Bias died when he was, what, twelve? - so the War on Drugs had been going on for most of his life. He figures it will go on forever; legalization crosses his mind about as much as the possibility of America becoming an English colony again.
Now how, exactly, can he be said to have a position on, let alone be ‘vehement’ about, something that likely never crosses his mind? He probably isn’t ‘for’ or ‘against’ legalization anymore than the typical Chicagoan is ‘for’ or ‘against’ the wind that gives the city its nickname. Vehemence about this issue is for Avenue-B Dude, not this dude.
Lib says ‘simple common sense,’ as well as syllogistic logic, leads to his conclusion. Well, there’s my ‘simple common sense,’ and it leads somewhere else entirely. That’s why Lib’s statement seemed improbable to me, and why I asked for a cite.
Now, my ‘common sense’ may be wrong too; in an earlier post on this thread (which vanished in the recent chaos), I pointed out that logic can only carry us so far in realms where we can’t be completely sure of what’s true - i.e. everywhere besides mathematics. The further we get from known facts, the more shaky the conclusions of ‘logic’ become. In our respective attempts at reason, both Lib and I are a long way from home. I would feel justified in asking for a cite even if I had no alternative model to propose.
“Living in this complex world of the future is not unlike having bees live inside your head.” - F. Scott Firesign
