Homelessness, despite its explosive increase in the past 30 years, still feels like an exception, an anomaly in the grand, prosperous and self-righteous tableau that is America. How can so many be living “on the street,” basically, in a country with so many resources and so comprehensive a political infrastructure? Liberalism causes otherwise rational people to defend the RIGHTS of the mentally ill, weird or addicted and largely uncivilized people to sleep in public places. Eventually, their rights to urinate and defecate in public places are also “recognized.” Due to some dislocation in the logical thinking of other liberals who consider themselves civilized (living in houses, indoor plumbing, decent ‘human’ activities and some form of productive wealth), residents of the same jurisdiction are permitted by virtue of the existence of other “rights,” to make their ways around the city, including eating in restaurants and entering various other businesses, in the nude. Once good sense is breeched, the uncrossable lines of civilized decency become harder and harder to discern.
To varying degrees, many municipalities have descended into some form of what San Francisco has become a leader of. Prior to the last 20 to 30 years western civilization, largely founded according to Judeo-Christian beliefs and ethics, was endeavoring to advance in terms of human civilization, habits and public, interactive, practices. That direction has reversed. That reversal seems to be centered in and controlled by liberals, leftists and socialists. Conservatives are distinctly unimpressed by these trends, if not disgusted – as seems Prudent.
This accelerating retreat from good sense makes almost every “civilized” resident very uncomfortable. It has seeped out into criminal justice to the point that criminals are coddled while ultra-liberal prosecutors expand the list of crimes for which punishment and retribution are no longer very important. But the trend started with rampant and financially-encouraged homelessness – all of which programs have failed despite the millions of explanations of success by those same liberal politicians. Liberal “government” has foresworn any moral judgment to the point that anywhere it can insert some “public” monies must also eliminate morality as a shared ethic.
The Prudent approach is to recognize that life is better, safer, cleaner, more productive and successful when the vast majority of the population – and its “governors” – share a basic morality. In such a civilized environment certain behaviors and practices are not allowed for sensible reasons of health, public safety, compassion and cleanliness. We can begin the return to civilization by ending the “root causes” of homelessness. This will require the enforcing of laws despite the chagrin of some who are incorrigible – both homeless and “normal.”
Block by block, street-sleepers have to be rounded up and held in temporary – emphasis on temporary – facilities for evaluation. Which of them are addicted? Which truly mentally ill? There won’t be any free needles or free drugs… only compassionate detox, physical clean-up and healthy food. Every person will be required to adhere to rules in order to eat, hunger being the universal motivator. Those who are clinically determined to be mentally ill will be treated, possibly medicated if it will help, and housed separately… depending on the nature of supportive bonds with others, mentally ill or not. Instead of spending tens of millions of dollars on better tents or other free stuff that facilitates living on the streets, every person will be rehabilitated to the best degree possible. Vocational training will be offered within controlled circumstances. For many this will be a refresher for skills that used to support them before addiction took over. Each will have to work in some way to earn his or her room and board. Each should also be offered contact with religious people, ministers, or others. There is always hope.
In a sense it is a program of second chances, but not a second chance to live on the street. For those whose mental illness can’t be controlled, proper institutionalization is needed – not “warehousing” of humans, modified assisted living. Nearly every state has a history of terrible handling of the mentally ill. It always offended Prudence to hear about bad treatment and terrible conditions that seemed to go on and on… for years and decades. Were those the only solutions human beings could come up with? Was there someone else who could be blamed for the cruelty and stupidity that marked so many mental hospitals?
No, it was us, the same people who threw up their hands and closed the awful facilities and “mainstreamed” mentally ill people. Every person living “homeless,” can be helped, rehabilitated made more healthy and given / offered new direction and opportunity to take good care of themselves. If your politicians don’t agree, get some new ones. Politicians who are willing to run on a platform of honesty would be the best place to start.
Leftism, global socialism, in fact, is transforming America’s national unity and our local states, counties, cities and towns. It is insidious. Because of George Soros’ financed groups, for example, several counties are suffering under prosecutorial regimes that refuse to prosecute “small” crimes. Unfortunately, the definitions of the nature of crimes that fall in the “serious” and “minor” lists, are subjective, and proving to be dangerous by their very existence.
Every major metropolis, at least all the ones run by liberals… but I repeat myself, is turning away from public order. Several have District Attorneys who campaigned on platforms of “criminal justice reform,” which is Orwellian newspeak for leniency toward criminals. In Boston, which is mostly in Suffolk County, the new D. A., Rachel Rollins, ran with a list of “petty” crimes her administration would not spend time prosecuting. This was so that “they” could concentrate on “serious” crimes. One might suppose that every petty criminal – particularly those that enjoyed doing those crimes, or who felt a right to the proceeds of those crimes, or any of their relatives who thought it unfair that their otherwise “good” sons, daughters, nieces, nephews or grandchildren should be hassled or incarcerated when, after all, life has already been unfair to them, voted for Ms. Rollins… all in the interest of social justice. The D. A., it is fair to say, has never made a living running a convenience store, or an auto-parts store or small grocery. She has never paid the increasing insurance rates for small businesses victimized by thefts deemed non-serious; she has never paid the extra-high prices for the products those stores’ neighbors must pay to cover the no-longer-sanctioned thievery.
She represents the very odd, even twisted logic of
liberalism: people of certain skin colors and economic circumstances are not
responsible for their actions, since they are largely RE-actions to (pick all
that apply) racism, systemic racism, institutional racism, heritage of slavery,
social injustice, police brutality, departmental (police) racism, lack of
education resources, having to pay for Transit rides and poor housing. In fact there IS systemic racism and it is
the outrageously expensive welfare racism that has destroyed the family
structure of inner-city populations – mostly of color – since the “Great
Society” began. Regardless of what
people of any color may think about
brown-skinned people, even if their thoughts are racially vile – and they’re
out there – it is only the actual impact
of “racism” that truly matters. It is
safe to say that only an infinitesimal fraction of “racist” or prejudicial
thoughts have any impact on anyone besides the ignorant thinker.
Racism is as natural as breathing, otherwise, today, there would be no ghettos forming. People, however, prefer people like themselves: those who look like, sound like and “live” like themselves… even those who eat the same foods and attend the same churches. It’s as natural as breathing. What each ethno-centric group thinks about the others is mostly inconsequential. Should they think nicer thoughts? Probably, but it’s not anyone’s business what thoughts they think unless… unless they take some negative action because of them. Burning down or looting some Korean’s store because of racial hatred is racism that actually matters. Stealing from any store because you think life has been unfair to you because of “racism,” is actual racism that matters.
Consigning 4 or 5 generations of black and brown people to
welfare dependency, and now “legally” enabling them to be more effective
criminals, that is real racism that matters.
To help counter black welfare hopelessness, the same liberals promote
and finance abortion-on-demand as some sort of civil right, and, as evidently
intended, it reaches 60% or more of its pinnacle of “success” by killing off
black and brown babies. What a country.
San Francisco, formerly under the guidance of Gavin Newsome, now the winsome governor of California, has, in the span of less than a decade, converted itself from a city of beauty to one where humans are enabled, if not encouraged, to live more like animals, thanks to new “rights” afforded to those so inclined, to camp out in public spaces, take illegal drugs in public, commit certain levels of crimes to support their “oppressed” life choices, fornicate in public, and relieve themselves wherever the fancy strikes them, now amounting to 20,000 or more defecation “rights” in public places, including sidewalks, parks, playgrounds and schoolyards, each year! Uptight “conservatives,” San Francisco authorities discovered, have no right to impose lifestyle choices on others not as fortunate.
Dogs and other animals at least endeavor to cover up their
feces. Once public nudity was found to
be a “right,” was public defecation far behind?
Once public defecation was ensconced among constitutionally protected “rights,”
was defecation in a super market far behind?
That’s where the toilet paper is, after all. The astronomical property values in San
Francisco are starting to slip, and segregation from public areas is growing
for those able to afford it. Dystopia.
Liberalism appears to have partnered with global socialism
on the path toward destruction of “Western” culture and North American culture
in particular. A very effective way to
accomplish that goal is to disrupt cultural norms, one of which has ALWAYS been
that laws mean what they say, those who break those laws deserve legal
sanctioning for those criminal acts, policing, prosecution and adjudication
shall be, BY LAW, unbiased, fair and based only on the law. In other words, no individual in the chain of
justice has the power, logically, to decide the resolution of cases outside of
the lawful process – certainly not on the premise of some sort of triage due to
“limited resources.”
Who represents justice for victims? Isn’t justice the key reason for
relinquishing personal sovereignty to a government? Where does ANY law convey authority to an
individual to judge some people’s justice as more valuable than that of others?
None does, in fact, but many are deciding that justice somehow varies based on skin color. This is not to say that injustice hasn’t been
meted out by white authorities based exactly on skin color. It was shameful then, and is shameful,
now. But how is injustice for most
citizens able to correct, or balance, injustice meted out for some others in
the past… even if the past was yesterday?
It isn’t, of course, unless perceived in a certain level of hatred…
hatred spawned in racism, a terrible way to conduct public safety and other
policies.
Public safety is attacked hourly by the growing hordes of “homeless”
people accumulating in major cities, all liberal bastions of victimhood. Clearly, feeling sorry for people who, in the
vast majority, choose to be how and where they are, neither improves their
condition or living circumstances, nor their health or humanity. Victimhood requires someone to be “oppressing”
those in uncomfortable straits, and liberals/socialists, never exhaust the
reasons that misfits, criminals, drug addicts and otherwise “homeless” denizens
are not responsible for their situations.
Indeed, it seems more cruel to perpetuate – practically promulgate – living
“on the streets” rather than forcing those who do so to “shape up.”
Public vagrancy laws have, in some liberal jurisdictions, been set aside as somehow un-Constitutional. In other words, “society” has no right to require either living or sanitary standards. Drug addiction and public urination, defecation and lewd exposure are now civil rights. “Crimes of survival” are to be tolerated by the more fortunate in order to balance past – possibly current – oppression of “the homeless.” Cultural standards, norms, are now simply suggestions. By extension, then, one is left to decide which laws enforcing standards are worth obeying: very poor statecraft, to be sure, helping, steadily, to dissolve social and political unity. The natural result will be imposition of social order by a police state. The mindset of modern liberalism is creating, or has created, sets of problems that are insoluble by democratic republicanism.
A woman in Seattle was brutally raped at a car dealership by
a “homeless” man. Her screams brought
help too late to prevent the consummation of the assault. She has spoken out as loudly as she can
against policies that foment Seattle’s growing homeless/lawless
population. Liberals, at least those who
still feel sorry for poor, victimized, homeless criminals, attacked the victim for spreading a story that might reduce public
sympathies for “homeless” people!
In Los Angeles many homeless people “live” in the terminals
at LAX international airport. They cause
problems, of course, including filth, lewd and lascivious exposure to both
adults and children, stealing of small packages and purses – generally discomfiting
the traveling public. Some keep
themselves clean in the restrooms, some don’t.
Some avail themselves of indoor plumbing, some don’t. The situation is tolerated.
Liberal administrations shrug at the existence of these “intractable”
problems. Cities spend tens of millions “addressing”
the homeless problem, basically in trying to contain it. But they cannot, or will not, contain the
drugs, the diseases, the “petty” crimes or the human failure. Liberalism is incapable of creating or
imposing order and standards in urban centers.
Does this mean the problems are unsolvable? If liberals declare a condition as “normal,”
does that stop consideration of ideas for its solution?
To correct the
conditions, or causes of homelessness and addiction, requires changing the
beliefs of those who cling to that way of life.
This is not to say that most, or even very many of those living on the
streets intended to live this way or even want
to live this way, but they cling to it out of fear. It is their life and their comfort. It is where their co-sufferers live, their friends
and drug dealers, some quite petty, sharing more than selling. To be torn away from them is the most
grievous outcome imaginable. They help
one another and bond with one another. “Arresting”
them is no solution, since the penal system cannot provide what is missing. Individual cities cannot simply “place” them
in housing: their beliefs won’t have changed and their habits and life-choices
will immediately resume. For most of the
“street” people, a new belief in both themselves and in their legitimate place
in civilization, must be learned – inculcated, if you will.
OMG! Do you mean “re-education
camps? You fascist!” Yes.
The loudest screams will come from leftists, for whom the
entire country is a well-orchestrated re-education camp – but let that go for
the moment. There is no long-term, or
even short term solution to rampant,
growing homelessness, other than changing the beliefs of those who cling to
that way of survival. Pursuit of
happiness, indeed. They need a new happiness,
and not one drug-induced. A test-city/county
needs to be selected and a tightly defined state of emergency declared. The resources of a wealthy nation, and its
brain-power, must be applied to a new community where survival depends on
learning and practicing the skills of construction, farming, sewerage
treatment, fire-prevention… every single skill and craft needed to operate a
small town. Every homeless or addicted
person in the test region will be brought there.
Removed from filth and literally forced to be clean, in
every way, and drug-free, our test-community will rise from a tent-city to a
constructed one. Individuals will be
detoxed and then taught nutrition and self-care and then their old skills or
new ones will be employed – as will they – to create a model community. These people are not worthless, they are lost
or trapped. If they do not work they
will have meager sustenance. If they
work and contribute and grow, they will eat better, live better, perform
better. Much like the American legion’s “Boys’
State” and “Girls’ State” programs, they will form neighborhood groups and
eventually town or city councils. They’ll
elect leaders and establish schools for themselves and their children. They’ll learn how to build and furnish houses
in the most eco-friendly ways, and they’ll produce goods or foodstuffs to sell
to others so that their town can afford fuel, electricity and so forth. From completely subsidized they will become
completely independent, a program that will probably take 4 or 5 years. With success, every drug addict, homeless or
not, could be sentenced to “New Life Town.”
To accomplish this will require military discipline and
regimentation, and a domestic “Peace Corps” to assist relatively backward
people to learn to be civilized, to live well through self-discipline and
responsibility, rather than enforcements.
They are the wayward children of America. We know how to effect adult maturity and responsibility,
we do it all the time with our own children.
For how many more decades and ruined lives will we refuse to “raise”
these people?
