Homelessness dehumanizes Us all

“I think everybody is at the edge of their frustration.
You can say, ‘My gosh, that’s heartless.’
Well, maybe that person gets up every day
and sees human shit on his front door.”
Greg Gutfeld defends inhumanity

"Yeah Oscar, you're a grouch..." 

"Bitch! I live in a fucking trash can, I'm the poorest mutha fucker on sesame street".  Dave Chapelle (2000) before his descent into NIMBY coarseness 

I exit the Ike at the infamous and decidedly racist Oak Park Harlem and Austin exits (center of the highway) from time to time.  There is often several homeless persons on the roadway with little more than half-a-foot between them and the voluminous traffic.  We've been trained as society to ignore them or worse become antagonistic towards them.

America is a pauper Nation.  I don't mean in terms of material goods we have so much crap in this country to fill any number of giant "fulfillment" centers.  No we have a lack of basic humanity which is galling and certain level of coarseness brought about by the political pressure from Rich assholes.

The Coarsening of America is of great benefit to the  Plutocracy and it's guard dogs;  they want a desperate underclass and a mean and hungry working class ready to acquiesce to whatever vicious political onus the 1% puts upon those struggling with a variety of problems. 

Make America Great Again a return to Wage Slavery, short lives, scant job security, and no retirement is favored by the 1%.  To do this, the middle class is made to fear and hate the poor and the homeless.  They are taught to equate homelessness with crime and drug addiction and to support authoritarian crack downs and dehumanization of them.

I think a major reason is that charity was pushed onto religious institutions is the Christian Churches in America could not give a fuck about poor and homeless people.  Not one little fuck.  Joel Osteen is merely the largest example of the so-called Unchristian Prosperity Gospel.  In 2017, Houston was inundated by Hurricane Harvey, the first thing Man of God Joel Osteen did was lock his Mega-Church doors because The fuck if I'm going to let those poor, mud covered, desperate people inside my money-making machine.  Osteen's "Christianity" is facade for making Joel Osteen rich. 

And then Individuals are supposed to pick up the slack and that is too great a burden for any one person to bear.  Tending to the poor is far too overwhelming for an individual.  Think back to semi-mythical life of Saint Francis of Assisi.  Do you know why he's a Saint?  Because he took on the task of actually helping the poor and spreading Christ's message.  It killed him.  The powerful and very wealthy Church was already wary of so called holy men preaching poverty and brotherly love, the Transalpine region at this time was in midst of actually adhering to Christ's teachings and would soon find the French King and Pope allied in their destruction, genocide, and seizure of lands (The Albigensian Crusade).

Trying to tackle homelessness as an individual is certain to get most people heartbreak and an early grave from the pressure and emotional stress.  I want to point out there are in fact individuals of singular ethical fortitude, strength, and compassion who have taken upon themselves to fight the scourge of homelessness by themselves despite the hardships, obstacles, for instance Zoomers The Backpack Project and Pack the Kindness.

But, placing the onus of dealing with it on Individuals also affords the Coarse American Right the opportunity to gainsay and target anyone who voices concern over homelessness and hasn't started a 501(c)(3).  The attacks usually involve gotcha charges of hypocrisy 'Oh so you care about the homeless? Then sell everything you own and let every homeless person live in your house!' and a kind of dishonest Socratic Questioning; i.e. 'Fine we don't know you tell us how to deal with homelessness.'

This has lead to paralyzed inaction, a Newtonian-esque cessation of movement, and an entrenched political opposition which all serves the Moneyed interests and moneyed interests are overwhelmingly allied with Republican politicians. (Please, don't try and both sides it since rightwingers are adamant that taxes not go to actually helping anyone in the country and Republicans routinely refer to unhoused persons as animals).  Because for decades the Right in America has been steadily undermining the concept of We, the People for a Everyman for himself meanness.  This manifests, for instance, in people buying bigger and bigger cars which keep them safe and kill the person in the other smaller car, or the pedestrian or with which they run their own family member over.  Or the whole insanity with keeping a Gun in the House for "self-protection" when guns are overwhelmingly used by the gunner to kill themselves (usually after killing their families).

On top of this, Conservatives have for years advocated and aided Republicans in transferring the burden of society and taxes onto middle and working class people as the GOP slashes taxes on Rich, helps them shield their money through byzantine tax codes, and lowered the Corporate tax rate to the point mega companies get away with paying nothing in taxes.

Worse still the Right propagates this theory that UnHoused persons wish to remain homeless and of course, everyone deludes themselves that every person they see panhandling is actually a well-off grifter and the ubiquitous Republican tactic of equating poor and unhoused people with wild animals.  This has led to treating the Unhoused and desperately poor as another NIMBY problem , an unsightly annoyance to be legislated away so I don't have to see it.

The new Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass has announced the unhoused will be moved into hotels in Los Angeles in a program called "Inside Safe".  

Bass said the initiative would not involve clearing out encampments where unhoused people gather, and said that in four years, a metric of the city's success in tackling homelessness would be if there are little to no encampments left.

This is good but, will require a lot of bureaucratic oversight and monitoring, which means funding and taxes.

The Christmas 2022 deep freeze and blizzard killed more than 50 people, many in Buffalo, New York.  Councilor Marc Silvestri of Revere Massachusetts got into a heated exchange at a Town Hall over using a Senior Center as a nighttime warming shelter.  One women blithely threatened his elected position, 

"You're forgetting about the seniors and you want us to vote for you?"

Silvestri responded, "You want to know what? We're talking about people's lives here. And you know what? If I have to lose some votes to save some lives, then I will do so!

This is the end result of the constant sensationalism around CRIME CRIME CRIME!  And the dehumanizing refrain and stigma directed at the Homeless and illustrates that, even though there are numerous ways to combat the housing crisis and even though there really is enough physical buildings, many Americans are okay with the unhoused dying in the streets.