Quote Originally Posted by bad manners
joysof, it is you who appears to have been deserted by logic. I made one very simple statement: 'The Jews in Germany were labeled, and that label entitled them to less rights and more suffering than those non-labeled. Replace "Jews" with "Russians", and "Germany" with "Latvia", and hopefully you shall see that the rest applies verbatim.' Is there anything in this statement you want to dispute? (You need not mention 'less' again.)
Why, yes. But today I'm not going to play your well-worn 'contradict my statement' game - it's a punt at sophistry in your part. Rather, I'll approach the matter as I see fit, thanking you kindly.

Your mentioning some other nations and states is more of that stinky red herring. I do not eat it, thank you very much.
We do like to discuss things on our own terms, don't we? By we, of course, I mean you. You're an obfuscator-supreme. As well you know, the 'some other nations and states' mentioned are very much to and of the point: they illustrate plainly that ethnic minorities (or, indeed, majorities) can endure suffering within a nation without the laws of that nation necessarily being directed specifically towards that end. I have never sought in this thread to defend Latvian government policy: Russian-speakers should, of course, be able to see their geometry textbooks printed in Cyrillic. In truth, I entered the fray only to challenge a flight of fancy. You, let the record show, haven't responded straightforwardly to anything I have written here

In essence - because I'm sick of this - there is a difference between sanctioned persecution and the bastardry, to coin a phrase, of circumstance. Ethnic Russians in Latvia bear the brunt of the latter, not the former. German Jews - a whole 'nother story. No fish.