My progressive, leftist burg has an ongoing “problem” with transients. To clarify, transients are not necessarily homeless. I mean, yes, they are homeless in the strict sense of the term. But they are “travelers” living a mobile subsistence lifestyle, sometimes by choice, sometimes not so much. In the ’70’s it was far out. But things have changed.
There are a lot of them. And there are many stories of aggressive panhandling, intimidation, drunk-in-public and other generally bad behavior at our parks, at the freeway off-ramps, at the fast food joints, at the grocery stores, etc., leaving the city fathers feeling the need to do something. So they’ve had the Chief of Police on a mission to research the problem and come up with measures to make it less comfortable for the transients to choose our burg as a regular stop on the tour.
I joked with my Councilman, a self-identified progressive who called Obama “His President”, that it seemed odd to me that the City would act so belligerently to people simply exercising their freedom to move about and live a life of their own choosing. I pointed out that our local tolerance of medical marijuana was, in reality, a world-wide stoner-beacon that attracted every dope-head on the planet. When you figure in the generous Social Services benefits and the staff only too happy to assist them with every benefit they can possibly qualify for? Well, you have created a certain environment.
Perhaps by trumpeting our acceptance of mush-minded stoners and signaling our submission to the drug culture, and by making it easy and comfortable accept food stamps and welfare and social assistance, and by de-stigmatizing the people who use those taxpayer force-funded charities, we’ve sent a very strong message that these leeches are welcome and their behavior encouraged.
Some of us tried to tell you. But you said “shut up”, because neanderthal.
So, they can spare me the feigned surprise that there is a high population of this particular socio-economic group that they’ve suddenly discovered is unsavory and undesirable (and violent). The pretense is insulting. Now that they have achieved the desired progressive results, progressives are attacking the very people they’ve worked so hard to attract and who’ve worked so hard to get here.
Not really so progressive after all.