Many of today’s social ills can be traced to, and laid at the doorstep of, well-meaning intellectual dwarves who were naive, smug and opinionated. In other words, the boomer generation.
I know. I’m one. Things we thought obvious turned out complicated, and the simplistic solutions we advocated created more problems than they solved.
Take marijuana. Please.
Or the homeless swamp. Our leaders keep shoveling money into it, hoping to drown the recipients in programs, funding, free housing and drugs, thinking maybe they’ll disappear, or at least go to Nevada.
How’s that strategy lookin’ so far?
We lose sight of reality: the seeds that sprouted this many-headed homeless monster were planted by us. California started the big weed patch when it forbid new home construction for low and moderate income families.
An exception: Government-built “affordable housing” projects, multi-story petri dishes that cultivated and nourished crime, misery and poverty.
At about the same time, Californians came under the collective delusion that the mentally ill really weren’t mentally ill. Our view, and it quickly became prevailing wisdom, was that inmates at places like the Mendocino State Hospital in Talmage were just free-spirited eccentrics.
They were merely out of step with conformity which translated into the occasional social faux pas like wearing mismatched socks or whistling on the bus.
And for these sorts of transgressions they were all locked up and given lobotomies. We railed at the injustice. Beguiled by dishonest rhetoric and sentimental lies, we began to advocate for a new brand of treatment for the mentally ill.
Our leaders in Sacramento listened and acted.
On a parallel track, Hollywood and other dispensers of mass culture began to depict mentally ill people as harmless. Ken Kesey’s “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” in both book and movie, made clear who were the good guys and who were evil tyrants who enforced capricious rules and dispensed electroshock punishments.
The book “Flowers for Algernon” was renamed “Charley” as a movie and its most memorable scenes were of a cheerful, childlike, middle-aged man on a children’s swing at the park. “Rain Man” gave us the winsome Dustin Hoffman as a befuddled but competent fellow who was a real good driver. Forrest Gump.
So California’s legislature passed the bipartisan LPS Act; Governor Reagan, imagining the aroma of budget savings, signed the bill into law. Doors swung open at Mendocino Hospital and others around the state unleashing an army of zombies onto the streets. We were surprised, weren’t we, when those mentally ill ex-inmates proceeded to sleep on park benches and doorways, defecate in parks and sidewalks, drink, take drugs and do violent things?
We should not have been surprised that street drugs, exponentially more powerful and plentiful than in our day, exacerbate mental problems. But most of us were indeed startled to be told by social workers that the homeless are victims in need of our respect and our resources, but none of our rules and responsibilities.
Homeless, Inc., advocates warned us that expecting someone to help clean up the kitchen after dining (for the hundredth time) at Plowshares is demeaning. Work “dehumanizes” an unsheltered victim, strips them of their free will and robs them of their dignity. This idiotic bullpucky ignores that hard work is ennobling and feels good, and that the lifestyle of some homeless individuals inconveniences and endangers the lives and freedoms of the rest of us.
And having learned nothing from the disasters of emptying mental hospitals, Governor Jerry Brown unilaterally “cured” prison overcrowding by releasing felons back to the streets. The influx of jailbirds has brought more disease and violence to the cities.
Yet as filthy, mean and miserable as our streets and cities have become via policies cooked up by those we hire to solve problems, the worst is yet to come. An echo from medieval times has sounded.
Plagues and diseases not seen outside the third world in hundreds of years now haunt the streets of America: Typhus, tuberculosis, Hepatitis A, dysentery, shigella and other horrors are making a comeback. Remember, this was all created and carried out by our elected representatives. Remember, this won’t get better.
So listen up when politicians and Homeless, Inc., advocates tell us we need to spend billions more to staunch the wound they opened 50 years ago. We need a lot more money to buy the homeless more hotels, give out more needles, provide more meals and programs and shelter and shopping carts and job training.
(In the meantime let’s get to work on a tsetse fly vaccine.
Another component to this homeless mess is that we’ve made it lucrative for so many nonprofit agencies, social workers and program administrators who will not relinquish their easy income without working levers and pulling strings in Sacramento. Tom Hine is in North Carolina at the moment if you’d like more advice. TWK is in his imagination.)
You leave out the fact that school districts are not funded equally. At Coronado High School the students have two sets of books, one for the classroom, one to leave at home so they don’t have the burden of ferrying then back and forth on their ebikes. They have the choice of music, dance or sailing classes. Do the children of East LA, Oakland, or South Fresno have the same choices? Your shallow comments are just that.
And then they were the good old days, Ronnie, Reagan, Mendocino State Hospital (hmm, a state run motel with help for the alcoholic, addict and the mentally ill?’ Just a thought.) Charles Manson, and his family, and the massive motorcycle runs of the Hells Angels. Now we are supposedly going to solve the problem of homelessness by purchasing hotel and motels with no mental health services and pass out needles. Dreamer. It’s just creating an out- of- sight, out-of mind mind set that can’t accept the reality of the fact that there are those who will never get better in free rooms or hospitals. I guess you are to young to remember the 60”s and 70’s other than what was was printed in black and white. On the streets of Ukiah we’re the alcoholics of San Francisco and Oakland who were given one-way $5 bus tickets to Talmage that were wandering our streets because they wouldn’t go through the gates and self-commit. We had a forward looking Chief of Police Donn Salisbury that put them back on a bus to return to the Bay Area instead of housing them in a small city jail. A few of the locals who lived on the streets and under the bridges, whose names I’ll omit in respect for their heirs, would go into court in November for being drunks and addicts and actually ask for long enough commitments to jail to make it through the winter. Judge McCowan always accommodated them. The alleys of San Francisco were full of alcoholics and admits begging for dimes. Did you forget the unromantic days of the Haight-Ashberry and Golden Gate Park’s and the hundreds and hundreds who fled the city to hide on the streets and communes in Albion and multiple other places in our county. The mentally ill were hospitalized where they got help although not all could ever reintegrate into society. Anyway, just a reminder that a wheel goes around and the real world. Many of our street people then and now were Vietnam vets. I don’t care which political party was in power, both would and still do just sweep in under the rug and blame the other because no one wants to accept their own failure and they think we are stupid enough to believe anything they say so long as it is blaming someone else. Anyway, there is so much more I could say but let’s end with “Happy Fathers Day”.
I lived a fairly problem free existance on West Mendocino Ave in Willits until the uber compassionate, social working powers that be, bonded with with the clueless overly “kind hearted” hipster owner of a 6 unit apartment complex working through H.U.D. to house a felon granny directly across the street from my front door. Felon Granny was a resident of Fairfield, living in a decaying farmhouse with her old man ,both were enthusiastic users of drugs n’ alchohol,nothing much better to do in flat farmland Fairfield apparently .Felon Granny and broken down old farmer hubby befriended a neo-nazi biker gang for fun and good times, throw in hearty employment in meth, heroin and cocaine dealing etc. and a picture starts to form.Inconveniently ,a previously trusty customer went bad, using more drugs than the payment plan allowed, creating bad feelings all around,something must be done and Felon Granny and wastrel hubby stepped up to the plate and plotted murder to help out their neo-nazi biker buddies,apparently Felon Granny was hyper efficient at plotting.Unfortunetely Grannies phone conversations outlining murder and the sales of large amounts of addictive substances were being eagerly listened to as the D.E.A.had tapped their phone and even more unfairly, arrests followed before nonpayment drug user scoundrel was dispatched.conversations were taped and drugs found aplenty in the moldering farmhouse ,court appointments followed and an angry prosecuter insured a 9 year prison sentence awarded for drug dealing and conspiracy to murder charges,Felon Granny found alternate housing in a state pen for an allmost decade long staycation with like minded individuals and became institutionalized.Felon Granny came from a long line of authoritarian hatin” hillbillies and felt no remorse for her activities,only sorryfull vitriol towards her jailers,she fit in quite well with that portion of the incarcerated population who seek not rehabilitation, but schooling in the best ways to screw both law enforcement officials And civilians (such as hapless neighbors) Felon Granny: broke and homeless, aided by compassion driven social workers ended up Directly across the street from my front door, escounced near the sidewalk in a cheapo. Walmart white plastic chair,chain smoking nonfilter camels, and drinking pots of highly caffienated beverages was a hyper loquacious, intensely lonely, hard as nails product of a i dont give a blank life experiences and 9 years in prison,Felon Granny was a vituriptive hater of all nonwhite races, “You see that guy driving a foriegn car?” she would shrill “He’s a Traitor to all thats American and its values!!!” Stuff like that was the meat of the mind for this hardened hillbilly hag who sported a dark, slick, greasy ring around her mouth from nonstop cigerette consumption.She hated any form of liberalism, alternate sexuality,or men say whose hair style wasnt in a military flattop or shaved, like her new friends= a group of old style skinheads the next street over who she traded her opiate based pain meds with for cash.The old bag sported a three stooges type “Moe” bowl cut in a mousey brown grey hue, had extra abundant bloated bag o’ oatmeal cheeks,her pointed chin curved up to meet her downward pointing nose in a virulent pincher manuever, like a cartoon witch (this topped off by a Classic shrill cartoon witch laugh) she had the eyes of an angry boar-sow and a disposition to match her chronically downcurved mouth from which detailed descriptions of her abherrant bowel movements erupted on a regular basis,Her name was” Drexell” and she Lived to disseminate hatred it seemed.I living directly across from her, i was subjected to constant pleas to come over and talk like old” friends”,she had huge plastic horse teeth like dentures she never cleaned and yellow cottage cheesey clots of smelly plaque clung to them along with a tobacco spitoon smell that was unsurpassed in its odiferousness,and it was as if an invisible string connected her hyper talkative mouth to my face! every time i backed away she moved automatically forward.At first i had this instinctive witless” we should all get along with our neighbors mentality” which soon enough became a “Oh No! Theres that old B%&#H Again!” inner response.This toxic hag was a blankin’ demoness of sorts! if i ignored her pleas” to come over and converse” i was subject to over the top volumn screetching and curses on a level i had never experienced before (which was highly embarrassing) Due to the fact that i could allmost Never exit or enter my front door without being pinned, i installed a back yard ladder and hauled my Trek touring bike over the 7 foot tall deer fencing to escape unharmed,of course the black hole, lonely hillbilly hag figured that out and started making numerous personal appearences on my front door with accompanying loud and persistant knocking, wanting ready conversation and to borrow money for Pepsi and ciggies as she had sadly lost all her money at the Black Bart Casino.Things came to a head when this foul creature made an intent and smelly physical pass on me in my kitchen,i peeled the odiferous old hag off of me, and pushed her out of my home.That didnt go over well! One of Drexells revenge tactics swas to make up stories about me= i was stealing neighbors pootches and vandalizing cars etc. decent neighbors then imformed me about this nonsense.Lots of other Really Bad Stuff followed courtesy of this demented Felon Granny theres way too much to chronicle here -but point being the compassionate and clueless do gooders at various social agencies can make your life a problematic minefield glossed over with feel good intentions and no real knowledge of the pathology of the person you may end up being forced neighbors with/and shortly after moving in this miscreant: Manzanita Social Services moved in another psychopathic drug addicted.bi-polar etc. female to joblessly roam the neighborhood freely creating psychological mayhem for undeserving locals.
Wow! Quite a story….