It's weird that everyone points to the opiate epidemic as somehow signifying something major, when it's just the same drug epidemic that has already ravaged the inner cities decades ago. The only difference with the opiate epidemic is the drug dealer is the neighborhood doctor, so the risk barrier has been lowered to fit the middle class more subdued risk palate.
Same weird thing as will the mass shootings. Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up.
>Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up.
Inner city "mass shootings" are phenomenologically distinct from the more modern mass shootings you blame on middle class kids and adults. The former are born of gang warfare, with specific targets and associated collateral damage, while the latter are much more random and difficult to explain. It's dishonest to group them together as certain groups do, particularly those who cite mass shootings as evidence for the need for gun control. The two problems have different causes and different solutions.
That novel was written at the height of the War on Drugs, and meant to describe that then-present situation. I suppose there's some novelty in how it unintentionally predicted that widespread drug abuse would continue to be a problem even in a high-tech future. And given the twist at the end of A Scanner Darkly, perhaps there's some extra resonance there?
Same weird thing as will the mass shootings. Mass shooting has been going on for a very long time in the inner cities, but it's only a big thing once middle class kids and adults start shooting everyone up.