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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30990 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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This story is a great example of no one ever updating, or even questioning the narrative.

In recent years, drug cartels have flooded US cities with fentanyl to meet demand for opioids created by rampant overprescription.

Ah, yes, the blame for the drug problem doesn't lie with the users; it's split between the cartels and "overprescription" (doctors and drug companies). Leave aside that if you dig down, you find opiate abusers may start with prescription drugs but it's usually not their prescription, we get this later:

As he spoke, he watched out his window as a homeless person clutching a glass pipe rifled through his trash cans.

Glass pipes are used to smoke crack or crystal meth. Who is overprescribing those? Are we going to blame stimulant abuse on ADHD overprescription? (probably yes, but it'll still be nonsense)

Adisa says Urban Alchemy has reversed 1,300 opioid overdoses in the two years he has worked there.

No consideration that reversing such overdoses may be part of the problem, much like being a medic in a gang war. The story of course only mentions examples where this is unambiguously a good thing -- a baby and a dog accidentally getting a dose -- but somehow I feel certain that a lot of those 1,300 were not in that category.

“Five years ago, a black guy with a pipe got arrested; now the police walk past a white guy with a needle in his arm,” he says.

Ah, yes, this is all about race.

Adisa calls it a “sanctuary city”, using positively a term American conservatives deploy as an insult. “Flower power kids came here in the ’70s to rebel against their parents,” Merlin says. “Now, kids come here to do fentanyl.”

...and that's a good thing, apparently???

Inequality is not a product of the internet era either.

Right, because the problem is "inequality". Not the absolute level of the homeless drug addicts, just that some people have a LOT more than them.

“From [Nob Hill], looking down upon the business wards of the city, we can decry a building with a little belfry, and that is the stock exchange, the heart of San Francisco; a great pump we might call it, continually pumping up the savings of the lower quarters into the pockets of the millionaires upon the hill.”

Technically this statement is referring to the past, but it betrays the author's belief as well -- that the rich in SF are rich because the poor are poor. This was probably false in Robert Louis Stevenson's day; it's certainly false now.

As long as the problems are maldiagnosed, solutions will not be forthcoming.

This worldview treats the oppressed as lacking in agency and an oppressed person is someone who has it worse than others.

It therefore makes sense to talk about drug problems as a result of someone other than the users because the users lack agency.

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