Did George Floyd Die A Death Of Despair?

At this point, you have almost certainly the following Tweet from America First Students founder Jaden McNeil:

Congratulations to George Floyd on being drug free for an entire month!

For this, Kansas State University has recently talked about expelling McNeil, which I do think crosses a line. Even if you find his comments awful, racist, or not funny, a student should only be punished for what they do while in an academic environment — which Twitter is not.

However, I would like to go over some arguments made by McNeil’s defenders real quick:

• Yes, I’m perfectly aware it’s a joke. It’s a joke I didn’t find particularly funny, but I do realize it’s a joke nonetheless. The definition of a joke is “something done to cause laughter,” after all, not “something that causes laughter,” or “something that cannot be criticized for any reason whatsoever.”
• Yes, this joke has been made by other people — odd such a common joke is considered “edgy” (which is now a good thing despite being an insult for the past decade or so) but okay. Still doesn’t make it funny though.
• Yes, Floyd was on meth when he died. Mind you, the autopsy found he had not overdosed on it (we’ll come back to this) nor does that mean he deserved to have his neck knelled on.
• Yes, some people overreacted to what McNeil said. Welcome to life, sometimes people are irrational. However, the Matt Walsh types trying to sound tough by pretending all criticism is an example of “a mob” if so childish its laughable. McNeil’s worse punishment is being expelled from school — which, if it happens, should result in many people Tweeting “Jaden McNeil just escaped the liberal indoctrination center that is our University system.”
• No, Jaden is not being “silenced.” Tons of new people now know who Jaden McNeil is, and his Twitter is still up after this whole incident. Seems like he was given a megaphone if anything.
• No, McNeil is not in trouble for “criticizing George Floyd” or “being against Black Lives Matter.” He’s in trouble for a very specific statement some have deemed as racist. Considering McNeil has always been against Black Lives Matter and Kansas State University is just now talking about expelling him, it seems the issue is slightly more complicated.

However, one sticking point for McNeil seems to be that George Floyd was on drugs at the time of his death. For one, he keeps mentioning it on Twitter:

[In response to a Tweet saying Floyd was “trying to change his life around [sic]] Turning his life around on drugs and still committing crimes. Gone too soon. — 5/29/2020

In 2012, Conservatives were calling BLM a terrorist organization. In 2020, “Conservatives” are kneeling to BLM and mourning a drug addicted armed robber with multiple felonies who resisted arrest, had fentanyl in his system, and died of a heart attack. — 6/9/2020

People are more upset about this tweet than they are about George Floyd robbing a pregnant woman at gunpoint. BTW he died from overdosing on fentanyl and meth. — 6/25/2020

[In response to someone saying “If you could spend 24 hours in the shoes of George Floyd . . . you’d be singing a different tune.”] Yeah if I was in his shoes I wouldn’t be high on meth, committing crimes, and resisting arrest. — 6/26/2020

[In response to someone telling him “you should take ‘christian’ out of your bio”] I forgot, if you’re not burning cities in solidarity with a drug addicted porn star that robbed a pregnant woman at gun point and died of a drug OD then you’re not a real Christian. — 6/26/2020

One I could not find, which is sad because it’s my favorite, was when he said it’s just “common sense” not to do drugs when you have a heart condition. Again, in spite of an autopsy finding that, while he was on drugs, it was nowhere near enough for him to overdose.

I remember this same line of argumentation being used with Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown. Ignoring other facts (the person who killed these three men had no way of knowing that and the crime for doing drugs is not the death penalty, among other things), it’s just a line of argumentation only used with people of a certain race.

You more than likely have heard the term “death of despair.” According to Wikipeida (short notice):

The diseases of despair are three classes of behavior-related medical conditions that increase in groups of people who experience despair due to a sense that their long-term social and economic outlook is bleak. The three disease types are drug overdose (including alcohol overdose), suicide, and alcoholic liver disease.

One thing I find funny is, despite the term being “deaths of despair,” this article states slightly below that:

The factors that seem to exacerbate diseases of despair are not fully known.

Anyway, “deaths of despair” seem to be a big issue in politics today. Especially as politicians spend more and more time trying to figure out how to stop the prescription opium epidemic — despite the fact over 80% of people who die of heroin overdoses were never once prescribed opium.

I mention this because the overwhelming amount of people who die of opium overdoses are white. Many reasons for this exist (mostly notably, many doctors think black people can handle more pain than white people) however, that’s besides the point.

Here’s my question, what do you think would happen if a liberal commentator made the same joke about a white guy who died of a heroin overdose. I mean, if George Floyd was stupid for being on meth then the guy who overdosed, meaning he took much more, must be really stupid if he took so much it caused his heart to stop. Am I allowed to create a Twitter bot saying the number of white American’s who died of a heroin overdose “became sober today” — as someone has since done with George Floyd?

This is why people are calling McNeil a racist. Because he would never even consider making a joke about a white person in a similar circumstance — meaning he holds different races to different standards.

You know what Jaden, here’s how you proof you’re not a racist. And do you know what the best part is? You won’t even have to apologize for your previous comment.

All you have to do is clearly state that you do not give a shit about anyone who’s addicted to drugs. It doesn’t matter if it’s an black man on crack or a white man on heroin, once they do drugs, in your mind, they no longer deserve our sympathy. As such, we should not even be attempting to reduce rates of drug use in this country, because there’s give reason to give a shit about anyone who does drugs.

State that as your unapologetic position and, while there may be new things to call you, racist will not be one of them.