On Homelessness

[David Horn]

(06-26-2018, 10:25 AM)beechnut79 Wrote: ... Do we really know what we want? Often I doubt it. Do we have the political will to tackle homelessness and other related issues regarding the disadvantage? Again I believe not. For the past 25+ years we have been taught that we need to be acting on our own behalf and, like in the classic Smokey the Bear commercials concerning forest fires: ONLY YOU can make it happen. Applies on much more than preventing forest fires. While on one hand we are often taught that we should use our time to tune-in to what makes you feel alive; the weight of all that is happening in our world produces the opposite result and leaves us feeling weak and tired. In the late 1970s many spent numerous nights in bars and discos as an escape valve from weighty issues such as Vietnam and Watergate. Today we seem way too tired to explore what really turns us on and the higher purpose it can serve.

We're at the end of a long road .. at least that's my hope.  The issues you raise started in earnest in the mid-70's, but got turbocharged in the early 80s when Rush Limbaugh arrived on the scene.  Hyper-individualism is just another version of 'I got mine and screw you'.  All the 'successful people' began a campaign to shame anyone unable to do everything for him or herself … and to quit relying on them to help!.  Like most movements, it appealed to people who wanted to feel themselves better than someone, and the Welfare Queens or <insert the degrading reference of your choice> need to suck it up and be like us!  Of course, they couldn't do it either, but they tried their best to fake it.

That's when latchkey kids, galloping personal debt and the 2, 3 or even 4 job family started in earnest.  It started to unravel in the late 90s, and two or three recession later, the middle was hollowed out as planned.  When you're living on the edge, it's nearly impossible to get off the treadmill and oppose poor treatment.  The PTB couldn't ask for more than that.