Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic

Re:Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic by ansible on Thursday July 02, 2020 @06:40PM (#23718941)

> It's a nationwide disaster that people are simply not ready to deal with. Many people here have no idea what suffering is and therefore, they don't know how to suffer or how to get through such times. Suffering is externalized onto minorities and other unwanted people in society so that the well off don't have to deal with it. Now everyone's suffering and many simply can't cope with the suffering or with the additional suffering.

These are hard times, for all of us.

My background: grew up in the USA, with typical public school education. When I was a kid in school, we (briefly) covered times like the protests against the Vietnam War, the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Suffrage, and such. But it all seemed distant to me back then. I knew, at an academic level, that the people fighting for change had a hard time... but we (as a nation) got through it, and made things better (well, maybe not really, but that's another discussion).

We are living through history, right here, right now. I can now see it from the other side. I can see a little more clearly what those people in the history books were going through. I now don't have the benefit of reading in a book that it all worked out in the end (that women got the vote, that civil rights laws were passed, etc.).

It may seem like it will never get any better. That the struggle for a brighter, better future for everyone is futile. That hate and stupidity will drag down this country, and that we'll never recover.

Do we all have the courage to continue on? In the face of unfairness and injustice? What will the history books say about us 50 years from now?

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Re:Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic by mythrwy on Thursday July 02, 2020 @07:47PM (#23719382)

It's possible the history books in 50 years will say a bunch of kids with unarticulated and poorly thought out grievances tried to burn down the country after being cooped up for 3 months and ingesting too much propaganda from Reddit and the public school system resulting in the re-election of Donald Trump.

One never knows when one sets out to be a hero what the end result will be.

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Re:Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic by twsttest on Thursday July 02, 2020 @07:59PM (#23719475)

We try to recreate the archetypes from the past. Our heroes. Their struggles.

What about when we try to fit those archetypes over a reality that is inappropriately matched to them? What about when we seek out grievances where there are none just because they have a hint of resembling the past?

The past shapes the present in this way.

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Re:Drug overdoses are soaring during the coronavirus pandemic by dwaltrip on Thursday July 02, 2020 @10:25PM (#23720484)

Well, that is certainly one way to express support for the further entrenchment of racial inequities we find in our society today.

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