On Today's 'New York Times' cover: a Conversation

1st article: "Are opioids the next anti-depressant?"http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/05/opinion/sunday/are-opioids-the-next-an...

This article is as fatuous as it is predictable, even aside from being morally wrong and offensive. For example: "Millenniums later, during the American Civil War, the Union Army used 10 million opium pills to treat wounded soldiers. And then there were the two Opium Wars fought between China and Britain. Unquestionably, no other psychoactive substance has played such a central role in human affairs." This is a very theatric line. 

What it doesn't share is the well-known fact that the Civil War was unusually horrible- and our medicine was at such a primitive state that, as in many situations today, denying pain relief to valiant young men who followed your system into horrible pain, struggle and likely death...  would have been a great moral wrong.

Aside from the opioids, let's go to your insulting and condescending attitutude toward those who suffer from even deep 'weak' depression because these include Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchhill who foresaw and actively prepared for the Nazi Blietzkrieg while the likes of you were poking journalistic sticks at him.  Back to opioids: they are a serious issue.  Injuries and death are serious...  Much of our great work is aided by opioids whether that's President Kennedy's resolute and strategic work on the Cuban Missile Crisis, the music of The Beatles, or the literary work of John Keats the greatest of poets who lived on opioids and died when they allegedly tried to cure him through abstinence.

The horrible suicide of the beloved composer and singer Elliott Smith also occurred not due to overuse of medicine but during a time of 'abstinence.' Also, it should be noted that regarding the relief of mental illnesses like schizophrenia, extensive scientific work done before such became impolitic show that they relieve and cure such ailments on par or better than any other available medicine.  Opioid use has been a constant throughout civilization... part of our humanitarian obligations, and our highest achievements as well as our troubles.  The authorities don't mind dispensing methadone, by far the most addictive of medical opioids by a large difference, to people who will show up every day and do their bidding.  It shouldn't be denied to free thinkers and those who question authoritarian practice.

"A Weekend in Chicago: where gunfire is a terrifying norm"  http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/06/04/us/chicago-shootings.html?...

Regarding the headline, where was all this concern about gun-fire in oppressed areas of Chicago when much of it was coming(entirely unreturned, from police officers?)  What we've been having in our nation is a true renaissance, a rebirth of liberty and true civilization, a possible and largely pacific revolution.  But what happened in Chicago was necessary? 

Everyone needs to understand that people of all classes are people.  They do have principles and they will stand, even against their own self interest, and be martyred by your hand. We heard it again and again: 'the people won't stand. the people won't stand.' 

The People will stand: they answered your dismissal most eloquently in their sacrificed blood.  This is a true renaissance of humanity and civilization... a democratic forging or 'giving' of new much more authentic law and order...  a doorway to a better world, for which people of diverse classes have shed their life blood.  "Change and hope" must be actualized; You must not shut this door on us.  The world is watching very closely.