Robert Crumb Was Right About Covid Too

 

              I bleeped out the curse word so Google won't take this post down.

I saw a comic online and realized Robert Crumb agreed with me about Covid. 

You can see part of the comic here.

This comic is on my list of things to order. There's always the money thing but I have seen snippets online.

Crumb questioned Covid, just like millions of others who refused to take the Covid vaccine and thought something was fishy about the whole affair. His wife Aline sadly took it. She would die of pancreatic cancer soon after.  The cancer diagnosis came before the vaxx based on the comic but I doubt it helped her. Crumb probably tried to talk her out of it like many others with their family and friends. The ill or those with chronic disease were under more pressure to line up. I was very glad to read his daughter agreed more with her father on this issue.

 Crum went through what many independent thinkers during this time did, Crumb got called "paranoid" by his mostly liberal readers. This has happened to me. I usually avoid Covid discussions except with the like-minded but there's been a few rare occasions where I have gotten friends to start questioning things and talk to a few about it though we have disagreed.

This week I learned another old friend is going blind where she lost vision in one eye and another eye is bleeding. She isn't on Ozempic and has no history of diabetes. She is a regretter that blames the vaxx. Another friend has a brain tumor and seizures. Sometimes I just don't understand how people cannot see these patterns. I do have empathy that facing the extent of this evil is a big ask of anyone. 

Crumb had a high IQ and was a reader. The man had faults, don't get me wrong, but I've read his comics since the 1990s, I also read Aline's comics too and one of my major hobbies is the alternative comics world. So I know the Crumb saga pretty well and seen the movies made on him. Yes his views of women sucked and I didn't agree with other stuff he drew.

However he figured out what went on, doing the research. Too bad he thinks he's paranoid. I know people who didn't wake up to the real state of the world until Covid, and it tilted their world. Some never had questioned things before and told me. I've been a conspiracy theorist since the 1990s, we talked about planned pandemics 25 years ago on message boards and obscure newsletters. We may not know every detail, but he names people in this panel that most people have never heard of like Ralph Baric. Many see the front runners, Trump who spewed a lot of garbage and fake conspiracies and Fauci who lied every time he opened his mouth, but some dug deeper like me and Crumb and found the name of the other players that were involved.

Here's some more Covid links about these other names.

Douglas Valentine Interview - How The COVID-19 Police State Was Born In Vietnam

Read Doug Valentine if you ever get a chance to understand what is happening.
"In a 2020 interview, author Doug Valentine linked the U.S. COVID-19 pandemic response to historical covert operations like the Vietnam-era Phoenix Program, arguing that similar surveillance, control, and “public safety” measures have deep roots in Cold War–era intelligence work"

Covid-19 and the curious case of the conspicuous furin cleavage site.

Some suggest that the Covid virus had markers of bioweapons research right in it, like the furin cleavage. There's actually more than that as markers.

Fauci’s preemptive pardon goes back to 2014, when gain of function research was paused—Robby Soave

I noticed years ago very few people knew about Ralph Baric

Five Hundred Pound Peep: Search results for Ralph Baric

More here on Baric's ties to Eco-Health. Peter Daszak was associated with Eco-Health

HOWARD & HASLAM: Football gets an investigation; UNC’s COVID questions get silence – The North State Journal

FOI documents on origins of Covid-19, gain-of-function and biolabs

COVID-19 Origins

Ralph Baric feared COVID rebuttal could be used for 'nefarious purposes'

"In summary: Baric’s Senate statements and documents show he was central to a DARPA‑funded, EcoHealth‑linked gain‑of‑function coronavirus project in 2018, which included engineering a furin cleavage site — a feature later associated with SARS‑CoV‑2 — and has been a focal point in the ongoing debate over COVID‑19’s origins" [From Rand Paul's website, google this one]

Inside the risky bat-virus engineering that links America to Wuhan | MIT Technology Review

Fauci’s diary sheds light on the EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan lab -Capital Research Center

A Closer Look at the Dubious Peter Daszak and His Role in the COVID-19 Sham

here's the role Neil Ferguson played. 
“So the real scandal is: Why did anyone ever listen to this guy?” | Statistical Modeling, Causal Inference, and Social Science

Christian Drosten
Christian Drosten - Wikipedia

It was weird to encounter reactions to Crumb, he had a lot of angry readers though I suspect there were a few like me. He read about these different players with Covid, and listed them all along with agencies that were involved. I wish he didn't call himself "Paranoid". We live in a society that the people who ask more questions can be labeled wrongly. I've written before how the phrase "conspiracy theorist" can be abused. You can see some investigative reporters on this list. I miss that profession, we need more of them back!

There are manufactured conspiracies and lies out there, don't get me wrong but many clear-thinking people knew there was a lot of fishy stuff about Covid and the social engineering and all the other stuff that followed. I don't think the full story will ever come to light to the general public. With the latest "plague from Russia" news, I don't know if that's just a hanta virus, monkey pox scare or a would be rerun. The sad thing I think about is they could do this again. 

If you ever get a chance look up BSL labs, where bioweapons are produced and where they add "gain of function" to deadly viruses or some would say experiment with these viruses to "protect us". You can judge for yourself how you feel about that, but anyone here ever read "The Stand" by Stephen King? What about that Russia lady who dropped a test tube? Is that panning out to be anything? Has it fizzled or is it continuing?

. You will see the full extent of insanity among human beings. They have these labs all over America by the way. I don't think Crumb was paranoid. Whether Covid was planned or not [I think it was], think just alone about the risks being taken by themselves. I looked up how many BSL-4 labs there are in America alone, and the number some biology website said was 13. 

Mainstream Press Continues to Go to Bat For Estranged Parents Instead of ACONS

                                   source: from Esther B. Strong on social media

  11 questions to ask yourself before going no contact with a family member | Family | The Guardian

More Adults Are Cutting Off Family. Expert Reveals Surprising Consequences - Newsweek

Do you think in a society like this one, they are going to admit, the realities of narcissism when this society is run by malignant narcissists? Look at the Epstein Files! The Cluster Bs are the ones in charge of the insane asylum. ACONS who are the truth tellers aren't going to get a fair shake in a society full of lies. These mainstream press articles always have that Estranged Parent apologist Joshua Coleman being quoted in them with far more sympathy for the estranged parents. Are there a few innocent estranged parents?  Sure, there are. He ignores everyone else though. He always blames the adult children and says they "expect" too much of their parents! Look at these quotes:

“One of the hardest psychological tasks is distinguishing between what someone should be and what they’re capable of being,” says Coleman. “Many adults understandably long for parents who can become emotionally attuned, validating or apologetic. 

Why is it too much to expect someone you spent many years with in the same household to have basic validation for you? Is the bare minimum that someone is capable of apologizing or validating their child? Does this mean we are to accept complete invalidation? Many of his quotes have these double meanings. It always amounts to minimization and invalidation of ACONS who talk about abusive parents. It's also not a decent quality to be a human being who is completely incapable of apologies. I understand other generations having different qualities. Older people were taught not to share troubles especially among the Silent generation but there's always this underlying message in his words, that the parents could really do no better. They simply weren't capable. This takes any accountability out of the formula. They supposedly weren't to blame!

He repeats this message over and over. I have seen this guy in multiple articles, he is one of the pundits they interview the most about estrangement and he shows his bias for the parents all the time. He is definitely is not batting for the ACON team.

In the first Guardian article, they have another expert who repeats the same message, telling the adult kids they basically "expected too much" and that their parents were "not capable".

Phil Lane, a clinical social worker and psychotherapist who has been estranged from his father for eight years, adds that it’s “important to consider if the other person is willing and/or able to provide what you need. This is not to suggest that we should cut someone off if they don’t meet our expectations, but rather it can help us determine if our expectations are reasonable and if we, not the other person, need to adjust.”

I find these experts clueless in that they seem to deny even the extremes of abuse, and don't realize how far things went for those who went no contact. Many of us adjusted for decades when we still were low contact. At least this one has been no contact before, but I found it weird he concentrated on that idea that we shouldn't cut someone off if they don't meet our expectations. Why do they always question the expectations of the adult children and not those of the estranged parents? Notice it is always the adult children told to adjust and not the parents. They won't even do the middle ground message of telling BOTH to adjust. 

Coleman does his usual dismissive stuff, claiming most families aren't harmful, implying that those who faced "real abuse" must be rarer than Hope Diamonds. See how this works? Tell the estranged adult children they were cruel to people they made too many demands of who simply weren't capable and then continue with the invalidation that most families aren't abusive implying that your family probably wasn't either.

Coleman says: “Most families are neither entirely loving nor entirely harmful.” Therefore, it’s useful to take a second look through adult eyes, which allows us to “understand pressures our parents were facing – mental illness, financial hardship, divorce, trauma, cultural expectations – that were invisible to us as children”. Crucially, though, Coleman adds: “Context doesn’t excuse harmful behaviour.”

What about the adult children's pressures? They have far more financial hardship by the demographics. They have trauma and other problems too. Why is all his concerns only for the parents? Obviously for those who go no contact, the concerns of their own children are invisible [or willfully refused to be acknowledged].

The first article isn't all bad, they have some comments about low contact, that are positive and have people ask if they feel safe. There's worth there, I just wish it was more balanced. The second article has a shocking statistic, that one out of four people are estranged from a family member. This does not surprise me as division in family is increasing. Sadly the Newsweek article quotes a psychologist that blames therapy culture or people going no contact: 

Among them is Richard L. Blake, a psychology Ph.D. and author of new book Cut Off: How Therapy Culture Is Fueling the Parental Estrangement Epidemic, available from Amazon US.

Blake believes the conversation around family estrangement has shifted dramatically in recent years, particularly on social media, where posts about "toxic" family members, trauma and going "no contact" have become increasingly common.

“One of the main myths you hear is you need to cut off toxic family members to protect your mental health,” Blake told Newsweek.

This feels like the usual invalidation of ACONS. Many ACONS have talked about how no contact was necessary for their mental health and the extreme problems they encountered due to narcissistic and other abuse. Are there some cases where things could be worked out? Sure, there are, but why do they minimize what people have gone through? He seems to deny what people are talking about too. As I have written, my own experience was having the therapists stress reconciliation to the point I ended my first no contact to my own detriment. I'm older and don't know if things changed in therapy after I stopped going, but from my own experience I never encountered therapists that pushed no contact.

 He obviously sees no contact as a negative. One thing I find odd about these psychologists, is they ignore the utter rejection that many ACONs had already faced, the "They left me before I left them" phenomenon. They just seem to ignore multiple basics. Why are they always playing defense for the toxic or abusive family members? One odd thing with these articles, is these psychologists make endless assumptions about family based on their own experiences. They even wrongly surmise that all the abusive parents are pining for their adult children's return. With many of these families, the scapegoat walks, and no one cares, they just find a replacement for them. 

One thing I notice about articles like this is they'll throw in a line or two to cover the very abusive situations but the whole tone of the article is that the wayward "bad" grown up kids are the ones in the wrong and not being understanding or giving enough to their parents and other family members. This one got even more odd as this psychologist claims that mental illness wasn't affected by abusive parents. This too goes against endless messages from ACONs who have suffered from anxiety, depression and worse from abuse.

"What surprised me was that the assumption that parents are causing someone's mental illness doesn't seem to hold up particularly well when it's tested in people who actually go no contact," Blake said." I don't know what world this guy lives in to ignore endless situations where mental health is adversely affected directly. I'd love to sit down with this guy and tell him how narcissistic abuse affects severe anxiety disorders.

Blake goes on talking about how family is forever and other older tropes about family. Doesn't he realize family has changed? Family is not the same. Many who went no contact were already outcasts. I've talked about the changes in finances, distance and other social impacts in my "Demise of the American Family" articles.

Five Hundred Pound Peep: The Demise of the American Family: The World of Regretful Parents

Five Hundred Pound Peep: The Demise of the American Family 2: So Much Horrific Abuse!

Five Hundred Pound Peep: The Demise of the American Family 3: The Economic Chasm is Causing the Estrangement Too.

Five Hundred Pound Peep: The Demise of the American Family 4: Distance Was Part of It

The Newsweek article gives a caveat too, "Not everyone agrees with that assessment. Many therapists and mental health experts argue that estrangement can be a necessary response to abuse, neglect or ongoing harmful behavior." but why are they quoting all these psychologists and others who say otherwise and stress that "no contact" is a harmful or overreacting trend?

 Why are they quoting psychologists that blame therapy culture? Where are the representatives being quoted who are supporting ACONS? It's not like they couldn't find one, there's multiple therapists online who warn about narcissistic abuse and who support ACONS. Why didn't they ask Rebecca C. Mandeville who wrote Rejected, Shamed, and Blamed: Help and Hope for Adults in the Family Scapegoat Role for an interview? 

Instead, we get these psychologists and other professionals who minimize the effects of abuse. I don't care if they interview innocent victims or talk about situations where there could be reconciliation, but they do true abuse victims and ACONS a disservice in these articles. Do you think mainstream press is biased about these things? I do. Hmm, maybe they fear the populace casting a jaundiced eye upon the Epstein Class and realizing how many in power act like their abusive parents. 

Blake in this article too, talks about the extremely abusive situations, "People justifiably should be cut off," he said. "[Those] who are abusive, criminal or genuinely dangerous." but have they taken a look around lately? Do they know how bad things are getting? Why do they always stress those who have minor disagreements? From my own experience, no one goes no contact for years and years over minor tiffs. There many be disagreements and fights in normal families, but it works far different. Sometimes I find the mixed messages of these pro-estranged parents articles annoying to the max. They cover their butts to not tell the "Child Called It" level of abused people to go racing back to cruel parents but the whole article tone is minimization of what multiple people are going through. How many of us were told "It's not that bad, your mother loves you!" That's the tone of these interviews.

There's an obtuseness with these articles. They don't understand how narcissistic personality disorder works, they make the assumption that the parents are all "reasonable" people who want to work things out and who "care". "When people feel heard and understood, even when you disagree with their interpretation of events, that's often where healing begins," he said. Doesn't he understand, we are talking with most who go no contact, there's been decades of not being heard or understood? He also doesn't realize that the truly toxic simply do not care. 

We deserve better than these biased articles. I get tired of the "we are so reasonable, you can work it out crowd" who have no idea what ACONS have been dealing with. They seem to understand nothing about narcissistic abuse and ignore the endless societal changes that have led to family estrangement too. 

We All Hate Your Books!

 Men Don’t Hate Reading. They Hate Your Book

I hate their books too.

Wealthy liberal women in NYC took over publishing and it shows. To find anything decent to read at the library nowadays, I've had to go to all old and classic books. That was the reason for my reading list.  It was borne out desperation and disappointment with the "new" stuff.

All the fiction seemed to be about professional wealthier women, there never was anything representing my life. You don't see poor people in fiction very often unless it's a specialized niche. The fiction is all marketed to the "middle class" plus bourgeoise. Well, they are the ones buying the books but the quality has sunk like a rock. One odd thing I have noticed is the emotional tone of old books is different. The characters are cook-cutter in comparison.  Abstract Truth is right about the formula.

"There are all sorts of creative variations on the story. She opens a bookshop, a dress shop, a bakery, or an inn on a Greek island or Nantucket. Maybe a distant aunt dies—Great-Aunt Millicent Pendergast—and leaves a fortune to the heroine because she once saw a spark in her as a little girl. The narrative is flowery and nauseating and full of feeling and description. Or perhaps she returns to the town she swore she would never return to and meets a rugged carpenter who is tortured but secretly wealthy and has chosen to work with his hands because money never brought him happiness.

By page 287, she discovers that she has been living for everyone but herself and has finally liberated herself from the horrible oppression of patriarchal submission."

Everyone in these books is rich, and their family is loving too. For years, at a Lutheran book club, I got the Christian variations of these secular books. In those the rugged carpenter always married the female character at the end of the book, and he got saved or she did. There usually was a Grandma character and a "sassy" friend who always set her straight too. Even non-evangelical churches were reading these books. Oddly most of the settings were in the 1800s-the 1940s before society got too degenerate or something.

It's interesting he talks about how Steinbeck appealed to people of all politics. Yes, that's stands out. Authors could bring in many different types of people as fans. People wanted to see how others thought not just get preached to. It's weird like a majority of the fiction books are only written for middle class or above "ladies who lunch". The men are being left out. What's a man supposed to read old Western novels? I find myself looking for fewer in number books that are written for a male audiences, because I know they'll be better. 

 Who really can relate to any of these boring characters. How come there's never a book written about a fat woman? I know of ONE, "She's Come Undone" by Wally Lamb and I like Wally Lamb but still feel pissed the character lost weight at the end and became a thin person. Check the link to see what I said about it in 2011.

You never see books on poor people either. Sometimes, once in a while there will be a book about suffering people overseas or ethnic fiction that explores poverty, but you rarely ever see any poor Americans. Lionel Shriver wrote about future poor Americans in The Mandibles: A Family, 2029-2047 but that book would be an exception.  Disabled characters are rarer than Dodo birds. There are a few books about old people like the "A Man Called Ove", but they are uncommon. I find myself reading more African American authors, who faced the world of hard knocks more often. There was this really good fiction book about a black school teacher I read months ago, where he left a prep school to teach in the inner city some months ago. The title is evading me right now but once I remember it, I'll post it. So, I still find some good fiction but it's getting harder.  I relate to books like these far more then Sherie writing about her European vacations and endless long lines of lovers while she solves mysteries about missing antiques. 

One thing about me is if I see something that is self published, I grab it off the shelf and try to go to independent presses for decent reading material when I can afford it. There in that world you will find a few things different from the norm. My reading adventures have been vastly enhanced too, going to the world of older and classic books. 

Not An Easy World for the Disabled

 Source: Tom Kindlon's ME CFS page on social media.

The disabled seem to have become more scapegoats than ever before. Capitalism has made it so all our worth as human beings is only seen as monetary especially as religious and spiritual outlooks decline in number. I don't agree with the Ventilator comment, stay away from those when it comes to Covid, but I do with the rest. A lot of people get sicker at the early stages of their illness because there's often no help and people end up working in insecure jobs with hours not conducive to health because "better jobs" openly discriminate against those with moderate health problem. The work world needs to be massively changed in how they hire and fire people. It shouldn't be nepotism city or being hired based on looks. 

 Those in the early stages of disability often don't have insurance or medical care they need. People are being thrown off disability, I'm seeing it all over. In my case I am very visibly disabled, but when you see friends being thrown off that you know have very bad health problems, that's scary. One got thrown off for her part time job but she was only working due to monetary stress and was always in the hospital from the rigors of the job. The inspiration porn thing can get very old too, you aren't seen as a human then. That's happened to me when I have been told I was an 'inspiration". Even with the art thing, one worries about "savant" undertones.

My body is scaring me again. My sugars are good, weight is stable as far as I know but other stuff is getting harder and worse. I have gone deafer. Both ears are at very bad level. I had a hearing test recently done. They were talking to me about a cochlear implant but know there's complex health risks with that. Getting old with severe Lipedema is not for the faint-hearted. I'm friends with enough people with high stage Lipedema online to know how their lives have gone. Many died young. There's a lot of pain, injuries, lost mobility, infections and economic chaos from having a body that turned on you. The unique qualities of severe Lipedema if it hits early and severe enough seems to bring poverty and multiple autoimmune disorders. 

I need to go find some way to exercise again beyond the daily neck exercises that fight stenosis and other new PT exercises. 

 I'm was in a "flare" from hell, to point the pain was making me teary, I got a hand injury from trying to open a can while having one of those barely can walk weeks. Why did my elbow hurt one night, I didn't do anything to it? Having to wrap a bag around my hand to shower too isn't easy. Showers and daily life were hard enough before. The hand is getting better now, but it made for a rough week. Typing was nearly impossible.

Does anyone notice the extreme austerity that seems to have affected Americans where they don't seem to desire any joy or happiness in life, where everything is about work?  Are our lives now all about bowing before the billionaires and putting the economy above human life? That is affecting the disabled and those who value us less. 

 I was able to shower the other day with a bag over my hand duct taped on, and collected some trash sitting on my walker trying to do what I can but this kind of mentality seems to be growing. Empathy is in short supply for the disabled and chronically ill. The healthy are deemed more "holy" especially those who are "productive", the mentality of the eugenicists seems to have taken over. What is the number of people with disabilities that are scapegoated in families? The rate is far higher.

 I finally was able to get some supplements my doctor wanted me on, so hopefully can maintain those and added other things like Magnesium and vit E. My blood sugars have been in the 90s most days despite worse health in other arenas. I get weighed soon too. My state is trying to pass pro-MAID laws. It's anger inducing.  Some friends got angry from euthanasia protests on my Facebook wall and ignored my information that people in Canada are being pushed and pressured into it. They are already pushing MAID in places on the disabled. That's a way the disabled will be told they are burdens and it would be better if they weren't in the way. 

Things have definitely changed for the worse towards the disabled and sadly both parties are failing us, the left pushes assisted un-aliving and the right pushes into the gutter with you, like Matt Walsh. The underlying cruelty seems to have expanded. Disabled people have to cloak pain like higher function autistics cloak autism. In America, weakness of any kind is seen as a fault. This is one really sick place now regressing and the good stuff is disappearing. There are still good people out there, but the monsters seem to be in charge. They don't have much love for the disabled. When they tried to add public executions to the roster to join MMA fights on the White House lawn, I was even more disgusted!

Blaming the Homeless Instead of Admitting the Economy is Trash

 

Sometimes I get tired of these pundits, they always seem to give messages that help the ruling class. Matt Walsh, is busy rising up the young against Social Security. No one thinks ahead to their old age or possible disability. Throw everyone in the street! That's what he seems to want!  Matt Walsh is just controlled opposition for the ruling class. Too many of these political commentators for decades have done smear campaigns against the poor and to get people to lick the boots of billionaires and accept their economic destruction. The left wing isn't innocent here, too many with money just ignore the poor. 

 I've been reading and watching Kevin Dahlgren for some time. I agree with some of what he writes but I worry about other messages and ones I see from other commentators. He writes and comments about homelessness. He gets a few things right. Why did they close all the mental hospitals? Why is there no help for people. He was right with this statement.

Personal responsibility has limits. Someone suffering from severe mental illness, cognitive impairment, profound trauma, or overwhelming addiction may not be capable of consistently making rational decisions without intensive treatment, structure, supervision, and long-term support. In those cases, simply demanding better choices may accomplish very little. A person who is psychotic, profoundly impaired, or completely consumed by addiction cannot always be treated as though he or she is making decisions from the same position as a healthy adult.

He is also right that many big cities have become open air asylums. When Reagan closed the mental hospitals in the 1980s, he really screwed society over. 

 I agree with him about the fraud, and other matters. 

My problem is many of the messages why does he say they are all drug addicts? Why does he ignore the dire state of the economy so much? It gets frustrating to see these messages out there constantly that all the homeless are at fault. He claims the homeless are being loved to death. 

 I can give some concessions here:  Portland is a messed up place. Maybe it's become a Mecca for homeless drug addicts, but his opinions about overall homelessness disturb me. They are common among other "conservatives". Do these conservatives all have so much money and secure jobs they can't imagine that could be them one day? How many started the drugs or drinking AFTER becoming homeless? No one ever talks about that. Does he realize how many non-substance abusers are becoming homeless now?

 I have two sober friends dealing with it. One lost Social Security and fortunately the other found a friend to live with. He acts like there is endless help but is there really? Maybe in Portland.  Does he expect that woman in a wheelchair with amputations to go get a job as a barista or something? How come we don't have job placement programs anymore. The guy with "Forever Alone" tattooed on his arms, you know he's a trauma case who probably has been "left alone" since childhood. Obviously, there's no family to go live with in that case.

In the disabled world alone, you will run into endless people who have been homeless. Why? Because the money is so little. So I've talked to people who have been homeless. Many have told me about the shelters, the crazy rules, the cruelty, the systems that make it impossible to function. I've been in tears over crazy crap they told me, like one lady being forced to go in her wheelchair too long of a distance just to eat or having all their meds taken away and then losing all access to them. 

No one ever addresses the fact America is a sick wealth extraction society that only allows the super-stars to live in a stable fashion, and now many are sliding through the cracks. I am in danger of homelessness if something happens to my husband and he is too for the opposite. We have talked to friends about this. You won't see those issues addressed. The social services system is in collapse. I told a medical professional yesterday about how Medicaid cut offs in my state are at the same level of the early 2010s. We were discussing how I cannot afford a hearing aid. I've lost more hearing, both ears are now equal in hearing loss [both profound]. I have written on this blog about housing issues, and food issues, and how social services is failing. 

When it comes to poverty, many conservative and well-off people judge the poor a lot. Too many liberals patronize them and ignore the facts of their lives too especially those that neo-liberalism has rewarded. A director of a homeless charity hauling in 6 figures from government money being poured into the coffers, doesn't have motive to "solve" the problem. They do not relate or understand the lives of their consumers. In this article he is angry that so much is done for the homeless, but does he realize if you have no money you are not going to be able to copy and obtain paperwork or take endless buses across town? Do they expect that people should starve in the streets? Where's all those homeless shelters and drug addiction clinics Trump promised? Billions are being sent for wars no one wanted. None of them seem to understand how poverty life works, so they talk about passivity and "dependence", They don't realize you need money to get things done in America. Money is everything here. Cash brings independence but they ignore that part.

Dahlgren is right about some terrible aspects of the homeless industrial complex, they rake in millions, where does the money really go? Probably super high salaries. The grift is off the charts. The leftist elites in places like Portland and San Francisco where rent is 3,000 a month or more profit too. Sadly, he doesn't talk about this, he thinks this economic system works. I would be homeless today in both towns. If you dropped me there tomorrow, I'd be in the streets with the rest of them.

Of course, among the right wing it's "socialism" or "communism" or some BS like that, for wages to match basic housing prices. I think all the bougiecrats don't care if the streets are full of the homeless.

I was on Substack and wrote some responses to his articles. He tried to assure me that people CHOOSE to be homeless. Oh, that choice thing again, they love to lob that one ignoring the fact Money guides all choices! I hope he can rethink some of this stuff. 

He responded:

I answered:

It's sad, he really thinks homeless people want to be homeless. Maybe he only talks to drug addicts, I don't know. The drug addicted may dominate the homeless population there but there's other forms of homelessness happening. There are worrisome messages the ruling class wants pushed.  Don't pay attention to the collapsing economy where the bills make you cry, or you notice all your friends slipping through the cracks doing Go-fund Mes to stay off the street, just blame all the homeless and tell everyone all of them are drug addicts that deserve it! Tell people they all choose it! Are there amoral drug addicts, sure there are, and there are traumatized ones and ill ones and people who needed AA and NA years ago. However, claiming the homeless all choose their circumstances, in this type of economy is insane!

He later posted this article stressing that Homelessness is a Choice.... [Sigh!]

The Biggest Lie We Tell About Homelessness

There is the truth you can't just throw an apartment at someone who is sick and penniless and can't furnish or maintain it but I wouldn't call that a choice. Not at all. If they know no money is coming in or they have spent 40 years being unemployable maybe they expect to lose it ahead of time. Maybe some fear being all alone in an apartment especially in a dangerous neighborhood. Why are they giving apartments to the most ill who cannot function? As a disabled person I can't even get help with cleaning, I'm trying to set up a barter situation with some art to get help but haven't heard back from the person yet.  Why are the drug addicted all lumped in with the sober so the sober people all suffer who could have a real turn around with help? [that's what I meant in the last comment] Dahlgren says he worked in Social Work, why isn't there any common sense in the decisions being made at these agencies?

Read the reader comments on his last article. A lot of these middle class and above people do not understand basic things about poverty. They think everything is a choice and all adversity can be overcome if you "do the right things". All those "right things" cost money of course. They may not realize that for those who could not function in the regular world, the long termers may adapt for psychological survival and may even tell him, "I choose this!" to avoid shame and the stench of failure or the very fact for many of the homeless they do not have families or other social structures others take for granted. So, I wonder about that given his discussions with the homeless. the way life is, with such impossible standards and heavy hitting bills on little money, maybe some are just giving up. That's one thing the stupid, debauched technocrats and billionaires don't get, you have trouble when the population loses all motivation and hope. Maybe that rests behind some of the seemingly irrational "choices". If nothing you do works and the system has pulverized you to nothing maybe some check out for good. I still don't consider that a choice really just more the result of life long desperation.

There have always been "travelers" and hoboes riding the trains and those who "drop out" but when your cities are filling with the homeless, there's a bigger problem. Society is not working anymore but none of these pundits will admit the deaths from despair or what happens when basic lives are unaffordable to more and more people. 

I am more and more disturbed at these responses in this miserable of an economy. I can see one town I used to live in for 8 years is getting a very severe homeless problem akin to Portland. I went to college in this town, and lived there 4 years after, and experienced extreme poverty there. There was no help there in the 1990s so what is the place like now?  The resources would all be stretched thin there. Also these right wingers are proud their communities are free of the homeless but they have been pushed out to somewhere else. We are going to have far more homeless people, how could we not?

Work on "Fat Pat Fights Covid" Continues

 

I'm slow on projects with chronic fatigue and health but I haven't given up on the "Fat Pat Fights Covid" zine!

 I did get some color panels done but have decided to redraw the black and white panels. Always use a non-scannable or xeroxable pencil! Do those blue pencils get picked up on scanners? Anyone know? Where do I get one? 

 I probably will have to use my tracing light tablet with my old drawings or draw them fresh in pen with no pencil lines. A technical snafu has affected things. My tools are from the 2000s or 2010s, I don't have one of those fancy graphics programs. I use an old bamboo tablet, a light tablet, Paint 3D and drawing in pencil and pen. If you were one of the ones who bought "Fat Pat Fights the World", that's how that zine was made. My budget hasn't allowed a rerun of that zine yet, but I hope one day I can do a reprint.

They ended up Publisher too. Yes, Publisher the program, I learned how to format zines and booklets on since 2020. This kind of thing should be illegal. I still have to check if the program will work on my computer but not sure how this will affect my Cloud. Keep paper copies of all your work in case the internet goes down. We may all have to go back to the xerox machines and hand drawn work. 

I'm doing a small art show, just hobby level, so been working on that too and plan to put a few items in area art shows. I'm slow at art too, but dedicate enough time to get some projects done. There's one water color I've been hacking away at for months, but that's not in this show.   One painting I am putting in is from 2021. When I'm not in bed, I'm either cooking or doing art work, though I figured out a style of art where I can do major components of it while laying in bed, kind of like Frida Kahlo. 

Future Fat Pat titles I am hoping for:

Fat Pat Fights the Great Depression 2.0 [I have tons of comics even from the past dealing with economic issues and life as a poor person]
Fat Pat Fights the New World Order [hey you all know I'm a conspiracy theorist! This one would be fun, where I can share a lot of my real opinions, it will include UFOS and chemtrails]
Officer Pat Fights the Surveillance State [I used to have a character where "Pat" was healthy and she had become a cop, but the joke was she went easy on everyone and did things her own way!] 

Remember I have 30 or so comic books of my diaries kept in comic form so the art and ideas for these is already down somewhere on paper. 

The Working Class Face a Class Ceiling

The Working Class Face a ‘Class Ceiling’ in Elite Occupations - The New York Times

"So important is class, the paper found, that the effect on one’s career prospects appears to loom as large if not larger than that of race or gender. For example, Dr. Stansbury and Ms. Rodriguez found that women who earned Ph.D.’s and stayed in academia received tenure just as often as men, once the researchers controlled for research output. Black scholars were less likely to get tenure than white scholars, but didn’t pay a price in terms of the prestige of their university.

Only the children of working-class parents appeared to experience a kind of double jeopardy — not only did they get tenure less often but at less prestigious universities.

Some of the gains for women and nonwhites appear to reflect efforts to combat discrimination or provide greater opportunity to members of these groups, interventions that are less common when it comes to class."

This doesn't surprise me. If you don't have the right clothes, jewelry, look, mannerisms of the wealthier classes, often they won't hire you. Academia seems the worse in this too. I noticed myself certain behaviors were expected from more upper-class people. My own personal experience is they are far more reticent. This doesn't mean "bad" just something I noticed. There are definitely "class-codes" that affect things out in the world. I noticed in the teaching world years ago, middle class women often who were married to men with good jobs, had a far easier time finding full contract/better school district teaching jobs.