Twangbanger
Grandmaster
- Oct 9, 2010
- 7,107
- 113
Yep, a bit of a slippery slope if you ask me. Sure, things aren't too bad now, but I bet there are cities in CA who thought the same thing years back. Now they're in the situation they're in. If we keep allowing this type of thing, it'll get worse, because that's the way it works. Just like there are certain times and places where your first amendment rights don't apply, or apply fully, to me it's the same here. For the sake of a civilized area where you can shop, eat and walk without being accosted or seeing bums with their hands out, those bums are not allowed to beg. Yes, we need to follow up the prohibition with helping the homeless, the mentally unbalanced and others who end up this way. For those who are grifters who do this just so they don't have to do any real work, I have no sympathy.
I agree with you, solutions need to be found.
Here is the problem, though:
...I pray I never have an opportunity for a better understanding of their situation. There, but for the grace of G_d, go I.
This is, for the most part, simply not true in America. People feel they need to give money to these people, because life is all a big crapshoot, and we all "roll out numbers" then stand back and see what we get. And, you know the drill...the people on the sidewalk just rolled bad numbers. So, I need to pay him, because if I had simply rolled different numbers, I would be sitting right there and I am no different than him (*Note: did you notice that it's always a "him?")
Sociology shows us this is simply not true. If you stay in school and out of drugs and trouble with the law, get a job, and get married and stay married, you almost certainly don't end up there, unless you're mentally ill. Now, I know not everybody can do these things. But let's focus on the real root cause: someone is either mentally ill, or they are making a string of bad choices. If we know that bad choices are a primary root cause, does giving someone $20 make them make better choices? Or does it just make _you_ feel better to be the object of gratitude?
We need to get back to proper institutional mental health care in this country. Not giving someone a prescription for antidepressants and sending them out to pee on the sidewalk. We do not want the horrors of a century ago; but most of the worst of those were in facilities designed for people with severe cerebral palsy and other maladies who could not function on any kind of level, something which was more prevalent in the time before birth control. Today we are dealing with more individuals who are higher-functioning, just not able to be totally on their own.
The ACLU has acted vigorously in the courts to make any kind of institutionalization highly problematic and controversial, and simultaneously, the pharmaceutical industry invented a class of drugs (antidepressants) which was seen as a one-size-fits-all substitute for institutional care for all mentally and emotionally disturbed people.
The result has been school shooters, and the streets of California (and soon to be _your_ city) filled with sidewalks teeming with tents and raving lunatics. That is not the place for them.
And if you're giving these people $20, you are sustaining them there. Ask yourself: Am I really solving the problem? Or do I just want the emotional lift of being the object of gratitude today?
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