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?
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