Woj, you probably know there is such a thing as opportunity structure in US society, right? The array of opportunities available to a poorer person is not the same as for the wealthy or well-connected. Sure,
[WS:] Did not I just say that? But we are not discussing opportunity structures here, but choices made within those structures. To use Milgram's experiment as frame - the participants obviously could not redesign what was presented to them as the "testing" set up, but they could make several choices - leave the room, stay and refuse to press the button and see what happens, or go with the authority figure.
The problem is that most people did not like that range of choices - they did not want to hurt someone else, but they did not want o disobey the authority figure either - so they try to shed that responsibility by claiming that somehow they did not have that choice, that someone "made" them do it, and they should be excused.
It is a situation similar to that from Moravia's novel _The Conformist_ in which the protagonist, and exiled Italian intellectual, succumbs to the pressure of Mussolini agents and becomes a fascist agent who betrays their comrades. However, uncomfortable with the responsibility, at the he blames the person who recruited him for this "job" for his actions that resulted in the death of his intellectual mentor.
You would certainly agree that there is a difference between an exiled intellectual agreeing to be a Nazi agent, and say, a Gestapo prisoner betraying his comrades under torture. The first is choice, the other one is compulsion. In my view there is a clear distinction between the two, and everything else being equal, most reasonable people would agree with it.
People tend to obscure or deny that distinction mainly to evade responsibility and produce excuses, either for themselves or for other with whom they identify. That is a part of the human nature, I suppose, but let's just be honest about it.
Wojtek