So fucking sick of people like this. They genuinely believe that every single homeless person in America is a hyper-visible, unmedicated schizophrenic who's too mentally ill to want to get off the street. Never mind that the vast majority are members of the working poor and live in cars, friends' places and transitional housing—doesn't get more invisible than that.
Universal housing would effectively solve the homelessness crisis and every counterargument is actually a supporting one if you have half more than half of a braincell. Yes, a lot of homeless people need additional (i.e. psychiatric) help, BUT THEY ALSO NEED HOUSING because poverty literally exacerbates mental illness. Yes, libraries shouldn't be treated as homeless shelters, which is WHY HOMELESS PEOPLE NEED HOUSING. Yes, a lot of people who're forced to live in squalor on a literal street corner smell, which is why THEY NEED HOUSING so they can have basic dignity and access to a shower.
Even if you fucking hate the homeless, you should support housing for them, because then they would just be home.
A lot of people imagine that housing and government services are available and that people are choosing to be homeless. Many middle class people are under the impression there is some kind of 1950s style welfare state that still exists for the poor and is simply overwhelmed by people that refuse to help themselves. It’s incredible the kind of roads that denial and ego-defence can lead down. I mean this is why Mao tried to do a cultural revolution- because some people just cannot learn except through personal experience.
roughly 50% of leftists are social workers who start their first job and realize that they have no services to provide and are basically just shuffling people in crisis between 20 different punitive and un-funded non-profits while they wait for someone to die so they can get into public housing.
This is my mother. A mostly kind person, and she won't go as far as these redditors, but she just can't accept that THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT ON THE STREET BECAUSE THEY "WANT TO BE THERE". Sure there are programs, not enough, but there are shelters and programs. Problem is they are all flawed and underresourced and not very good at actually getting people into housing. I feel like I sort of got through to her when I said I trusted the experiences of the homeless people who have to deal with those institutions, and that people don't simply not go to them for no reason (they don't want to lose all their posessions, pets, get robbed, etc. which is rampant in shelters) and she seemed sympathetic to the fact that "normal" people don't have to give up drinking and any other substance use "vices" to have a place to live. But she still called the city when someone was camped out a couple blocks from her home, not bothering anyone. She insisted it all went to a special department that helps people get off the street but honestly I'm willing to bet any outcome that doesn't promptly result in the homeless person leaving town results in the police being called.
This isn't related to your point, but I'm not sure if you're new new or just swapped accounts, but I like your screenname. That's all.
Conservatives are die-hard essentialists. It's evident in their policies on everything from race to gender. In their view, if someone's homeless, it's proof of some innate and immutable trait that will always cause them to be one of the "bad people" no matter their material circumstances.
Why yes, this is a view that very easily lends itself to genocidal thinking, why do you ask?
I tried to take my daughter on the bus because she loves trucks, vans, and busses
This person was generated by an AI.
Not the post. I mean everything they've ever said and done, every opinion they've ever had, their entire life was assembled via algorithm for marketing purposes.
That entire thread looks like a copy from subreddit simulator but they're all based on r/conservative
No-one wants to understand that homelessness is an intended product of the economic system. Just as neoliberalism demands unemployment and a pool of reserve labour to keep wages down, so too those at the bottom of society have to be punished with special cruelty as a warning to everyone else. I would imagine it is mostly middle class types absolutely blinded by ideology that hate the homeless.
Just as neoliberalism demands unemployment and a pool of reserve labour to keep wages down
more generally than neoliberalism this is a core feature of capitalism
neoliberalism demands unemployment and a pool of reserve labour to keep wages down
Very strange to see a direct paraphrase of Marx but "neoliberalism" where it should just say "capitalism"
Some of the post-war Keynesian countries had policies of full employment, or at least they genuinely tried to achieve full employment. It’s probably true that capitalism itself demands unemployment even then, although of course their will be people that can’t work for health reasons under any economic system, and they should be looked after too.
These sick fucks need to talk with someone who's homeless. I used to provide services for many of them, and I honestly found more hope in humanity and soldiery in homeless people addicted to meth with schizophrenia than your average lib. These people's hearts, hopes, dreams, and desire to lift other people up was awe inspiring. Meanwhile, some lib "friends" of mine make comments about "our tax dollars".
I spent a few years as a homeless wanderer and I met more homeless people who were generous and loving than in the rest of my life put together.
I really think there's something to when a person is "laid low" and humbled so to speak, that connects us to a more devine nature in us. I really feel if someone is looking to see where God is in this world, they should take a stroll along some railroad tracks, or under bridges.
I feel like it should be a requirement for public office
Yeah absolutely. We got a little local socialist clothes bank going, but now a lot of it is helping out with toiletries and stuff regularly for some of the same people. Honestly a lot of the people we support are more optimistic and less doomer than I am. Maybe because of how directly transformative even a bit of cooperation and solidarity can be when you're living on the streets.
A pet peeve of mine is that a just society ought to have a form of national service where everybody at regular intervals were required to go and do work for the common good, like helping people with addictions or the mentally ill.
Its like the argument that people make that everyone should be required to work food service and/or retail for like at least a week so that people would stop mistreating minimum wage workers who's jobs are hell. Sometimes empathy has to be forced. A national service thing seems like a great idea to me.
This got me thinking. The middle class sees the existence of the homeless as an imposition and burden on them.
But they are utterly incapable of reflecting on the way that their very existence is an imposition on every single person on Earth that is below them socioeconomically. Agricultural workers have to provide their food, truckers have to ship them their goods, cooks have to cook them their meals, sanitation workers have to carry away their shit, industrial workers have to manufacture their goods.
Beyond even that is their attitude. I work retail in a pretty nice, middle class area. It would take every single homeless person on Earth charging up like a Super Saiyan for a year in order to equal the Hitler particle output of the average middle class person. Demanding, entitled removed who have been handed everything they've ever "earned" by inscrutable and horrifically violent circumstances far beyond their control and understanding, yet they DESERVE things because they have money.
It's not homeless people demanding I perform the emotional labor of reassuring them that I'm actually super happy serving people who deserve nothing in a job I hate. It's not homeless people demanding I bend over backward to accommodate them because they're the world's most specialest little protagonist. I don't think I've had a single homeless person come in just before closing.
And that's just one tiny slice of one industry. Extrapolate that into every aspect of society, and then factor in the global division of labor. The homeless could never--in their wildest dreams--aspire to be as much of a black stain on the Earth as the average middle class American.
Agricultural workers have to provide their food, truckers have to ship them their goods, cooks have to cook them their meals, sanitation workers have to carry away their shit, industrial workers have to manufacture their goods.
Beyond even that is their attitude. I work retail in a pretty nice, middle class area. It would take every single homeless person on Earth charging up like a Super Saiyan for a year in order to equal the Hitler particle output of the average middle class person. Demanding, entitled removed who have been handed everything they've ever "earned" by inscrutable and horrifically violent circumstances far beyond their control and understanding, yet they DESERVE things because they have money.
It's not homeless people demanding I perform the emotional labor of reassuring them that I'm actually super happy serving people who deserve nothing in a job I hate. It's not homeless people demanding I bend over backward to accommodate them because they're the world's most specialest little protagonist. I don't think I've had a single homeless person come in just before closing.
And that's just one tiny slice of one industry. Extrapolate that into every aspect of society, and then factor in the global division of labor. The homeless could never--in their wildest dreams--aspire to be as much of a black stain on the Earth as the average middle class American.
agree.these petty tyrannies that so-define american life must be a product of the "job creator" mythos. in america, being hungry and wanting somebody else to make you something to eat means you are a job creator. your needs and wants are basically the miracle of creation and others, the workers spending time in their lives to satisfy you, are expected to be grateful for the opportunity. it's completely ass backwards. lately, when i want to rail against it IRL, i say something like, "if i take a shit on the floor, does that make me a job creator? because somebody's gotta clean it up. i'll give them 50 cents. are they going to thank me for giving them the opportunity?"
i think there's something to pointing out how making work for other people isn't a praiseworthy virtue.
Liberals tend to have a worldview where bad things are simply intrinsic to reality itself and have no root cause beyond certain individual consumer choices. One time a friend of mine told me video game addiction is to blame for homelessness. Another told me it's a lack of masculine father figures.
Even more pronounced during the pandemic and economic slow-down. It's so in their face but they adamantly refuse to see it in any angle that questions the behavior of "the market".
But the vast majority of visible homeless people in my town have mental issues, addiction issues
Wow I thought Reddit really cared about mental health and progressive drug policy. I'm absolutely shocked to find out that only applies to depression and anxiety and cannabis, never would have guessed.
This is a dark thought but it seems like homeless problems have gotten worse with the distribution of Narcan. I don't want anyone to die but keeping more addicts around has negative effects on society.
Remember it's very uncivil to make fun of billionaires dying in an unregulated submersible, but being pro letting drug addicts die en masse is a necessary evil for the betterment of society
I think I found the American suburbanite most in touch with reality:
If you’re living this way, you need to get out of there by ANY MEANS NECESSARY. I mean I don’t care what you have to sacrifice to get out of the city. You need to start working on it. This is not normal whatsoever and you’re endangering your children and having your whole family’s life be miserable. You realize that you can have a normal happy family life surrounded by a safe community of good people ? And that’s not something special, that’s actually the bare minimum normal way just how things should be. You’re living in a hellscape for no reason. It’s insanity really to keep tolerating that. Surrounded by filth and disease and removed. I hope you get out.
Get out and go where? Small towns where there's more crime, more violence, and more homelessness per capita? The utopias you're talking about don't fucking exist dude. The worst places in the world are small rural meth towns. They make the worst parts of SF or Portland look clean and inviting.
I’m not sure what you’re talking about. I live right now in Glen cove Long Island. It’s like a vacation paradise. Most towns around me are more or less like this. There’s basically no crime around here to speak of. None that I’ve seen or heard of happening. I know it’s there in some of the worse towns, but obviously stay away from those ?
You live in the suburbs on Long Island, that adds a lot of context to your comments lmao
Of course it does. Just like any other good suburb. There’s some other good suburbs I am considering moving to as well. I get it suburbs kind of suck. But it’s a million times better than any major city will be. And that’s only going to become more true. Cities are worse than 3rd world countries right now. You can go to many 3rd world countries and you won’t see the removed and homelessness that we have.
I think that's enough of that thread the Hitler particles are off the charts and I feel that I am going to become the Joker
Seeing "mental health" increasingly just mean someone's personal homeostasis and ability to be selfish.
oof that second one tho. "this is a dark thought but we should do genocide" fucking despicable
A generalized "we need to do something about the homeless" has the same function and vibe as "we need a final solution to the Jewish question" on reddit.
Ordinary people shouldn't deal with homelessness because it's a systematic issue that has systematic causes that cannot be dealt with by individuals or small groups. Ordinary people can no more end homelessness than they can end climate change or wealth inequality.
In order to end homelessness, the existing unhoused population needs to be housed, given access to medical and psychiatric care where appropriate, and reintegration into "normal" society over time. Moreover, to end the problem you also need to end the systematic causes of the problem, including drug abuse, the fucked up housing market, and capitalism itself.
I think looking at the things people say about homeless people is one of the best litmus tests for seeing who's really a reactionary. I don't care if you consider yourself a progressive or a leftist or even if you claim to support policies to help homeless people, if you're talking shit about them it's obvious you're a reactionary at heart and I will not trust you.
Absolutely. Liberals are as deranged as fascists when it comes to the homeless. They'll barely hide their contempt for homeless people while covering every flat surface with spikes so homeless people can't soil a ledge with their homeless asses.
I don't get these people. Like in their tiny mind they need to personally be friends with every homeless person to deem them worth helping.
Like you don't have to personally like people to believe they should have rights and protections.
Also it doesn't make any sense like they approach the problem with analysis at all. Even the most chronically homeless person is the result of the system failing allowing them to get into that position in the first place. Do they think some people wake up and think "I want to be a completely broken person living in constant danger on the streets"?
They aren’t interested in reality. They spend hours every day bitching about how SF is a liberal shithole where it’s illegal to be white because they are so completely unopposed in mainstream politics that even their imagined “””oppression””” is just being uncomfortable.
I don't understand it at all. I don't get why so many people have no compassion or concern for anyone they don't know personally. Like you'd think at least that extending that to humanity in a general sense would make sense because if everyone was better off your lvoed ones would be better off too, but apparently that's too much of a reach.
I have sympathy for them. I really do.
yfw you just spent three paragraphs dehumanizing them and pretending that the only solutions proven to be helpful to them don't actually work and then say this shit
Anyone who views housing as an "investment" should not be allowed to complain about homelessness. They are the direct cause of this.
Even some of the smarter
s are horrified that we aren't building homes, and then complaining about homelessness. Like what does society expect when housing is decided to be a luxury for the rich?“This is why I’ve moved to the right politically. Very unpopular opinion but if you don’t have law and order you don’t even have an economy.
The right isn’t perfect but the left is so lenient on those who are breaking the law. Why let repeat offenders free for example?”
Cause liberals are so lenient with repeated offenders I moved to the left. Bosses, capitalists, landlords, fascists all of them are repeat offenders and are coddled by the liberal state.
Meanwhile we live in one of if not the most incarcerated society in human history, with extremely inhumane and draconian prison sentences. I cannot emphasize enough how shocking it is to go back and read about prison sentences for pretty serious crimes back in like the 60s-70s and see the sentences the US used to hand out before the War on Drugs and "Sentencing reform".
Meanwhile we live in one of if not the most incarcerated society in human history, with extremely inhumane and draconian prison sentences.
This is Joe Biden's America
Stuff not changing includes all the accomplishments of his entire horrific career. Didn't he also claim credit for drafting the Patriot Act?
if you don’t have law and order you don’t even have an economy
Why do they always get super close to reality then proceed to extract the dumbest conclusions?
/r/truepopularopinion is low hanging fruit. That sub is to the right of Genghis Khan.
just nerding out about Genghis Khan's reputation
read a book about it once that was pretty interesting and suggested Genghis was pretty progressive for his time
The book suggests that the western depiction of the Mongols as savages who destroyed civilization was due to the Mongols' approach to dealing with the competing leadership classes. The Mongols practiced killing the ruling classes in order to subdue the general population, a technique used by other cultures as well. Survivors of the upper classes wrote the histories and expressed resentment of Mongol brutality toward them. Weatherford explores the Mongol treatment of the general population (peasants, tradesmen, merchants) under Mongol rule. He suggests their rule was less burdensome than that of European nobility due to lighter taxes, tolerance of local customs and religions, more rational administration, and universal education for boys.
For some context to understand the awfulness of his Empire:
On The Tatars - Ibn al-Athir
For some years I continued averse from mentioning this event, deeming it so horrible that I shrank from recording it and ever withdrawing one foot as I advanced the other. To whom, indeed, can it be easy to write the announcement of the death-blow of Islam and the Muslims, or who is he on whom the remembrance thereof can weigh lightly? O would that my mother had not born me or that I had died and become a forgotten thing ere this befell! Yet, withal a number of my friends urged me to set it down in writing, and I hesitated long, but at last came to the conclusion that to omit this matter could serve no useful purpose.
I say, therefore, that this thing involves the description of the greatest catastrophe and the most dire calamity (of the like of which days and nights are innocent) which befell all men generally, and the Muslims in particular; so that, should one say that the world, since God Almighty created Adam until now, has not been afflicted with the like thereof, he would but speak the truth. For indeed history does not contain anything which approaches or comes near unto it. For of the most grievous calamities recorded was what Nebuchadnezzar inflicted on the children of Israel by his slaughter of them and his destruction of Jerusalem; and what was Jerusalem in comparison to the countries which these accursed miscreants destroyed, each city of which was double the size of Jerusalem? Or what were the children of Israel compared to those whom these slew? For verily those whom they massacred in a single city exceeded all the children of Israel. Nay, it is unlikely that mankind will see the like of this calamity, until the world comes to an end and perishes, except the final outbreak of Gog and Magog.
For even Antichrist will spare such as follow him, though he destroy those who oppose him, but these Tatars spared none, slaying women and men and children, ripping open pregnant women and killing unborn babes. Verily to God do we belong, and unto Him do we return, and there is no strength and no power save in God, the High, the Almighty, in face of this catastrophe, whereof the sparks flew far and wide, and the hurt was universal; and which passed over the lands like clouds driven by the wind. For these were a people who emerged from the confines of China, and attacked the cities of Turkestan, like Kashghar and Balasaghun, and thence advanced on the cities of Transoxiana, such as Samarqand, Bukhara and the like, taking possession of them, and treating their inhabitants in such wise as we shall mention; and of them one division then passed on into Khurasan, until they had made an end of taking possession, and destroying, and slaying, and plundering, and thence passing on to Ray, Hamadan and the Highlands, and the cities contained therein, even to the limits of Iraq, whence they marched on the towns of Adharbayjan and Arraniyya, destroying them and slaying most of their inhabitants, of whom none escaped save a small remnant; and all this in less than a year; this is a thing whereof the like has not been heard. And when they had finished with Adharbayjan and Arraniyya, they passed on to Darband-i-Shirwan, and occupied its cities, none of which escaped save the fortress wherein was their King; wherefore they passed by it to the countries of the Lan and the Lakiz and the various nationalities which dwell in that region, and plundered, slew, and destroyed them to the full. And thence they made their way to the lands of Qipchaq, who are the most numerous of the Turks, and slew all such as withstood them, while the survivors fled to the fords and mountain-tops, and abandoned their country, which these Tatars overran. All this they did in the briefest space of time, remaining only for so long as their march required and no more.
Another division, distinct from that mentioned above, marched on Ghazna and its dependencies, and those parts of India, Sistan and Kirman which border thereon, and wrought therein deeds like unto the other, nay, yet more grievous. Now this is a thing the like of which ear has not heard; for Alexander, concerning whom historians agree that he conquered the world, did not do so with such swiftness, but only in the space of about ten years; neither did he slay, but was satisfied that men should be subject to him. But these Tatars conquered most of the habitable globe, and the best, the most flourishing and most populous part thereof, and that whereof the inhabitants were the most advanced in character and conduct, in about a year; nor did any country escape their devastations which did not fearfully expect them and dread their arrival.
Moreover they need no commissariat, nor the conveyance of supplies, for they have with them sheep, cows, horses, and the like quadrupeds, the flesh of which they eat, naught else. As for their beasts which they ride, these dig into the earth with their hoofs and eat the roots of plants, knowing naught of barley. And so, when they alight anywhere, they have need of nothing from without. As for their religion, they worship the sun when it rises, and regard nothing as unlawful, for they eat all beasts, even dogs, pigs, and the like; nor do they recognise the marriage-tie, for several men are in marital relations with one woman, and if a child is born, it knows not who is its father.
Therefore Islam and the Muslims have been afflicted during this period with calamities wherewith no people hath been visited. These Tatars (may God confound them!) came from the East, and wrought deeds which horrify all who hear of them, and which you shall, please God, see set forth in full detail in their proper connection. And of these was the invasion of Syria by the Franks (may God curse them!) out of the West, and their attack on Egypt, and occupation of the port of Damietta therein, so that Egypt and Syria were like to be conquered by them, but for the grace of God and the help which He vouchsafed us against them, as we have mentioned under the year 614 (A.D. 1217-18). Of these, moreover, was that the sword was drawn between those who escaped from these two foes, and strife was rampant, as we have also mentioned: and verily unto God do we belong and unto Him do we return! We ask God to vouchsafe victory to Islam and the Muslims, for there is none other to aid, help, or defend the True Faith. But if God intends evil to any people, naught can avert it, nor have they any ruler save Him. As for these Tatars, their achievements were only rendered possible by the absence of any effective obstacle; and the cause of this absence was that Muhammad Khwarazmshah had overrun the lands, slaying and destroying their Kings, so that he remained alone ruling over all these countries; wherefore, when he was defeated by the Tatars, none was left in the lands to check those or protect these, that so God might accomplish a thing which was to be done.
It is now time for us to describe how they first burst forth into the lands. Stories have been related to me, which the hearer can scarcely credit, as to the terror of the Tatars, which God Almighty cast into men's hearts; so that it is said that a single one of them would enter a village or a quarter wherein were many people, and would continue to slay them one after another, none daring to stretch forth his hand against this horseman. And I have heard that one of them took a man captive, but had not with him any weapon wherewith to kill him; and he said to his prisoner, "Lay your head on the ground and do not move," and he did so, and the Tatar went and fetched his sword and slew him therewith. Another man related to me as follows: "I was going," said he, "with seventeen others along a road, and there met us a Tatar horseman, and bade us bind one another's arms. My companions began to do as he bade them, but I said to them, "He is but one man; wherefore, then, should we not kill him and flee?' They replied, 'We are afraid.' I said, 'This man intends to kill you immediately; let us therefore rather kill him, that perhaps God may deliver us.' But I swear by God that not one of them dared to do this, so I took a knife and slew him, and we fled and escaped.' And such occurrences were many.
:our-tax-dollars:
:our-toothbrush: 🪥
