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.

The Woke Mind Virus

"The only thing that matters, is the individual, clearly..."  Tucker Carlson.  E Pluribus Unum, indeed...

It's always important to understand what a Republican actually means when they say something; when Republicans or rightwingers denounce "Woke", understand they are attacking basic human compassion.  The simple dignity of calling someone what they'd like to be known as becomes the biggest affront to conservatives.  "Woke" is simply the latest rightwing talking point disseminated to every conservative automaton who dutifully absorbs and retransmits en masse the totally original idea of anti-Wokeness.  You see this expressed all over social media where uniformly and ironically every conservative calls liberals "NPCs" or "Sheeple" as they celebrate their individuality by all telling the same damn unfunny joke; My Pronouns are...

"This is what happens when you swim in warm baths of wokeness..."  Ben SShaprio complaining about Twitter.

The real end goal of being "anti-Woke" is the coarsening of American society and weakening the bonds of shared humanity between Americans.  This is not a new effort, we saw it clearly post-911 with the Republican mistreatment of Muslims and we have seen the brutal rightwing Government violence directed at immigrants coming to the Nation.  Previously, gay people were targeted for violence from conservatives and concerted violence from Police across the Nation.  Remember the incident which led to the SCOTUS Lawerence v. Texas (2003) happened 25 years ago.  Rightwingers are hoping to get the chance to dust off criminal charges for "deviance".

Never forget Rightwingers always lie about what they supposedly believe in.  Conservatives don't believe in freedom or liberty or individuality those are just phrases right-wingers intone as shibboleths as Republicans have shown time and time again they are more than willing to use the awesome power of government to harass, harm, and kill individuals whom they have deemed as engaging in unAmerican activities.  One need look no further than the coordinated and murderous effort to eliminate the LGBTQ community.  Chaya Raichik and her Libs of TikTok site produces daily false outrage to goad conservatives into acts of stochastic terrorism and elected Republicans like Attorney General Ken Paxton have used their office to prepare lists of Transpersons.  Why would Ken Paxton want to create a database?  Well... Republican rhetoric towards LGBTQ persons has been eliminationist for a long time, in response the Proud Boys have attacked queer businesses, Matt Walsh fans threaten to blow up Boston-area Hospitals, and a Lauren Boebert inspired gunmen committed mass murder at Club Q in Colorado.

Republicans & Rightwingers have undermined the concept of American society through a steady barrage of propaganda designed to divorce people from unity and community.  Now, several generations shell-shocked by Republican efforts to slash the Social Safety Net and consistently fed agitprop of Makers&Takers 24/7 have turned their backs on The American Melting Pot and adopted the phony Rugged Individualism Republicans were offering. 

Much of this goes back to money and destroying the middle class (a goal of Republicans since the 1960's) It was a brilliant maneuver to slash taxes on the Ultra-Wealthy and Big Businesses thus shifting the bureaucratic burden of the US Government onto the backs of the White Working Class and then following up that legislative coup by incessantly telling White people that they are poor and broke because of lazy you-know-whos, illegal immigrants, drug users, and liberal activism instead of the true causes, namely Republican economic policies.

The overarching arc of Republican propaganda of phony Rugged Individualism is one in which, You, the Real American can only rely on yourself, you should only care about yourself and maybe your immediate family, anything which helps someone else hurts you, there is a limited pie of wealth and benefits and anyone who gets something (say Obamacare) means you don't get it.

The current anti-Woke Mind screeds by Tucker Carlson, Jordan Peterson, Dennis Praeger, Shapiro, Elon Musk, Tim Pool, or whatever rightwing propagandist you can cite are designed to create the Pavlovian Fear & Anger response in their rightwing drones. Eventually, the goal is to afford the conservative the shorthand of saying "Woke" derisively the same way they say "Socialism".  Then the term can be applied to everything and anything Republicans wish to scuttle or complain about, no matter how inappropriate or paradoxical the claim is.

Of course, the coarsening of American society doesn't just harm the enemies of MAGA.  The targets of the propaganda campaign the White Working Class have absorbed these messages of Fear & Anger and turned it upon themselves as well.  In 2019, Jonathan Metzl called this Dying of Whiteness.  And since these segments of society can not have compassion for others they in turn end up not being able to have compassion for themselves and engage in self-abnegation, self-medication, and suicide.

It's Atheists not Catholics or Christians who are responsible for Child Abuse and Violent Rhetoric

"No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered as patriots. This is one nation under God." - George H. W. Bush, 41st U.S. President.

Sorry atheist scum the continued and rampant exploitation and abuse of children stems not from catholic priests but from atheism. Even though, Philadelphia prosecutors have brought a case against the Archdiocese of Philadelphia to determine how the Church dealt with abusive predatory priests.

Monsignor William Lynn is the first U.S. church official ever charged over his handling of abuse complaints. Prosecutors also allege the Church kept kept secret files dating back to 1948 showing a long-standing conspiracy to cast doubt in the minds of sex abuse victims and protect priests.

How dare the Government infringe upon the rights of the religious! Hey Obama, We have a thing called the 1st Amendment here!

From the AP story,

A Roman Catholic church official conceded that some "pretty sick individuals" were on a 1994 list he compiled of 35 priests suspected of sexually abusing children in the Philadelphia archdiocese.

Monsignor William Lynn took the stand in his own defense Wednesday in the groundbreaking child-endangerment and conspiracy case. The blistering cross-examination he endured is expected to continue Thursday.

Prosecutors blame Lynn for helping keep the priests on his list and many more in ministry, where they were had access to countless other children.

Lynn testified that the late Cardinal Anthony Bevilacqua wouldn't let parishes announce the real reason an accused priest was being removed. Parishioners were often told their priest had health problems when he left for sex-offender treatment, according to testimony over the past nine weeks.

"The cardinal wouldn't allow us to announce in those days why someone was leaving. But mental health was health," Lynn said.

Lynn also said the head of the archdiocese forbade staff from telling accusers their alleged abuser had other victims.

Bevilacqua died Jan. 31, two months before his longtime secretary for clergy went on trial.

A Brilliant Defense! I was just following orders! I was just a cog in the gears of the Church! Lynn is a scapegoat! With the added bonus of blaming it all upon a Cardinal who is dead!

But never forget that Religious Freedom is paramount. Back when the President announced bigots and religious zealots could not restrict the freedoms of other American's Timothy Dolan speaking for the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops proclaimed the President’s plan will require “careful moral analysis” and hoped "our religious freedom are not harmed by these regulations."

"Moral Analysis". What a joke. The same day the Religious Authority of the U.S Conference of Catholic Bishops was frightened loose women would get contraceptives, this information was released in the Bankruptcy case of the Archdiocese of Milwaukee,

Sealed documents filed in the Archdiocese of Milwaukee bankruptcy identify at least 8,000 instances of child sexual abuse and 100 alleged offenders - 75 of them priests - who have not previously been named by the archdiocese, a victims' attorney said Thursday.

But Peter Isely of the Survivors Network of Those Abused by Priests speculated that some are likely members of religious orders, such as Capuchins or Franciscans. Order officials do not typically make public the names of their accused members, and the archdiocese claims it is not responsible for them, though they have historically helped to staff its parishes and schools.

One would think that USCCB Cardinal Timothy Dolan would have his hands full dealing with the documented 60 years of cover-up of abuse but instead Dolan has been focused on keeping American Sluts from getting Birth Control. And in his fight to keep Women Oppressed Dolan has brought out the Mafiaoso card of, It'd be an awful shame if I had to hurt some people,

“If these mandates kick in, we’re going to find ourselves faced with a terribly difficult decision as to whether or not we can continue to operate,” Dolan said. “As part of our religion — it’s part of our faith that we feed the hungry, that we educate the kids, that we take care of the sick. We’d have to give it up, because we’re unable to fit the description and the definition of a church given by — guess who — the federal government.”

Oh dear! Do as the Church says, or we will starve children and let sick people die.

But, lest you think it's only the Catholics, two Pastors out of North Carolina, have recently justified Christians beating and killing off Homosexuals.

Pastor Charles L. Worley of Providence Road Baptist Church in Maiden, N.C. told his congregation he found "a way out" of the gay problem.

"I figured a way out, a way to get rid of all the lesbians and queers but I couldn’t get it past the Congress: Build a great big large fence, 50 or a hundred miles long. Put all the lesbians in there, fly over and drop some food. Do the same thing with the queers and the homosexuals. And have that fence electrified till they can’t get out. Feed ’em. And you know what? In a few years they will die out. You know why? They can’t reproduce."

At least Pastor Worley found a use for all those Obama Stimulus FEMA-camps which are lying fallow!

Meanwhile, it's not just enough to round up the current gays and stick them in concentration camps to die, it's imperative we interdict and quash any new gays from being created. In steps North Carolina pastor Sean Harris with a plan.

“So your little son starts to act a little girlish when he is four years old and instead of squashing that like a cockroach and saying, “Man up, son, get that dress off you and get outside and dig a ditch, because that is what boys do,” you get out the camera and you start taking pictures of Johnny acting like a female and then you upload it to YouTube and everybody laughs about it and the next thing you know, this dude, this kid is acting out childhood fantasies that should have been squashed.

Can I make it any clearer? Dads, the second you see your son dropping the limp wrist, you walk over there and crack that wrist. Man up. Give him a good punch. Ok? You are not going to act like that. You were made by God to be a male and you are going to be a male. And when your daughter starts acting to Butch you reign her in. And you say, “Oh, no, sweetheart. You can play sports. Play them to the glory of God. But sometimes you are going to act like a girl and walk like a girl and talk like a girl and smell like a girl and that means you are going to be beautiful. You are going to be attractive. You are going to dress yourself up.”

You say, “Can I take charge like that as a parent?”

Yeah, you can. You are authorized. I just gave you a special dispensation this morning to do that.”

Much of this was brought on by the rhetorical stylings of Stan, the owner of Atheism-Analyzed, from whom I learned:

"In fact, the biggest hazard to gays is other gays, from their violence and their diseases, and from themselves through suicide..."

"The reason that Atheists are placed alongside rapists and child molesters in recent polls is a mystery to them. Trust requires that a fixed moral system exist and that behaviors match the moral theory, not the other way around. That Atheists do not understand this requirement makes them even more suspect to those around them."

Of Richard Dawkins Stan wrote, "Then he absolutely berates anyone who is not Atheist, wishing to eradicate them from society."

And "Theists are more easily evaluated for trustworthiness because they have a defined standard against which to compare their behaviors and to develop a predictor for future behaviors."

So, yes we know the Lion by it's Claw and we know the Christians by their deeds and actions. So, I'll just retreat to No True Scotsman Christian could be guilty of these allegations, it's probable that these priests and pastors were actually atheists.

LAPD Sheriff Deputy punches mentally challenged woman in the face

"Not all cultures are equal. Not all values are equal." ~ Michele Bachmann

Memo To Rahm Emmanuel: When the Police are your only tool everyone becomes a Perp. Video emerged of an LAPD Sheriff's Deputy punching a woman who is developmentally challenged. I try not to come to a conclusion of what the incident, in and of itself means, or judge the Deputy involved prior to all the facts coming out. The incident came about because the woman reportedly alarmed other people on the bus who dialed 911 because who else are you going to call?

Image is important.

Every Police Officer should be aware a punch oft times is not a good technique for handling a situation, punches aren't designed to get compliance from people. In almost all cases, punches appear to be abuse or an over-reaction. Read what the witnesses said the incident appeared like to them,

"Like they're tired of dealing with her..."

"I can't believe he didn't try to diffuse the situation at all..."

But, why is the Officer in this position at all? Because rich psychopaths who control the Government have deemed spending on Mental Health facilities to be SOCIALISM! Confrontations like this are are the result of the 1% Austerity programs which directly target facilities which are best suited and staffed to help people like this woman.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel's 2012 budget eliminates 7 of the 13 mental health facilities to save a few million bucks. Why? Because the 1% wishes it. They don't need society. The rich are Pyschopaths. So they especially hate mental health workers.

As Bachmann stated not all cultures are equal. Bachmann and her Republicon Ilk have spent decades coarsening American Society in the viscous pursuit of the Ayn Randian Dream-land, the elimination of programs and facilities to aid Americans, for their Plutocratic Masters. Now 21st century American society is the "richest nation in the world" where the poor and unfortunate are left on the other side of the river.

Police Officers should not be the ones tasked with regularly dealing with people suffering from reduced capacity or mental problems. The Mental Health of members of society needs to be addressed by that society. It's a measuring stick of the level of civilization.

And Our Civilization is rapidly declining thanks to the evil 1%, their Republican Marionettes and Austerity programs.

So, Chicago be prepared for more and more incidents like this as CPD is called in to handle mentally disturbed individuals and the Officers don't know what to do so they Taze him and he dies of excited delirium.