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The systems in place to "help" them are typically also there to control them in some way, and may also be blind to the new risks they may be creating. The few
by logfromblammo 9y ago
The systems in place to "help" them are typically also there to control them in some way, and may also be blind to the new risks they may be creating.
The few genuine charities that offer help with no strings attached, and with sensitivity to potential unintended consequences, are frequently underfunded and subjected to frequent attacks by the powerful. For instance, the city might pass an ordinance criminalizing the act of giving away food gratis, if it was not prepared by trained personnel in a commercial kitchen with a current health inspection certificate, just to shut down a group that gives away sandwiches that were prepared in a church kitchen.
I don't think that "society" hates the homeless, but its self-appointed lords and masters sure seem to hate how they don't play the grossly unfair games that seem to have been set up just for them to lose. And there's my tinfoil hat, creeping back onto my head.
There is a vein of Puritan/Calvinist/Prosperity sadism running through the US. Adherents believe that those people are in the gutters because God is punishing their poor character with unfavorable circumstances. So in order to solve their financial problems, they must first accept that it is all 100% their own fault, and that random chance has no role in success or failure. People become rich only through hard work and public virtue, therefore poor people are all lazy degenerates. This twisted logic poisons public policy, because some rich people like to believe all their money makes them better than other people, and they spend a significant fraction of it on politics.
Those who genuinely believe in charity and "as you treat the least of you, so you treat me" may have greater numbers, but they have lesser funding, and therefore smaller political influence in the US. They can't seem to pass any public program to help people without someone amending it to punish the poor in some way for the sins made obvious by their financial condition. This leads to homeless rejecting official help.
From the outside, it just looks like institutional cruelty. I just cannot fathom the type of thinking that would spend thousands of dollars installing unnecessary armrests on park benches, just so that poor people derive less benefit from them. It is embarrassing for a supposedly advanced and modern society to have the human detritus of its public policies on display for all to see. But instead of fixing the broken policies, or accepting responsibility for those that were hurt, the evidence of brokenness is swept under the rug.
- throwanem 9y ago> I don't think that "society" hates the homeless, but [...] > There is a vein of Puritan/Calvinist/Prosperity sadism [...] Where are you seeing this?
- logfromblammo 9y agoI have seen it personally in my spouse's godparents. I have heard it secondhand about the Uihlein family (Uline company). For the most part, it is twice-removed hearsay regarding wealthy people and families based around the Chicago-Milwaukee corridor. Some of those people are apparently real shitheels--constantly getting detained for drunk driving, but never being held accountable for it. They're super racist, too. It's likely all an intrinsic part of Chicago's endemic corruption problem. I don't live there any more, but am acquainted with a lot of people who still do, and they occasionally like to tell horror stories about their clients/customers/employers/blind-dates/random-encounters from hell. Some of it could be exaggeration or whole-cloth fabrication, but I can believe it easily. This is because I have overheard with my own ears a serious suggestion that it would be acceptable to vanish homeless people in the darkness of night and turn them into dog food, to be sold at a premium. Some people are just evil, delude themselves into thinking they are good, and they have far more money than a just world would ever allow them to touch. Maybe you don't hear that kind of thing often in places where the rich folks are mostly hippy-dippy liberals, but hearing it from even one pair of lips, without an iota of shame, is unsettling--like seeing one cockroach in your kitchen. What is being said when I'm not around to overhear it? I also detect signs of it in written legislation and political discourse, particularly with regard to amending welfare programs to include work requirements or blanket consent to arbitrary searches by state officials. It's as though the default assumption is that recipients are out to cheat the system for a free ride, and spend all their benefits on illegal drugs. I can't imagine how anyone could become so rotten and yet live, but from the anecdotal evidence, they do exist, and for bizarre and unfathomable reasons, their opinions count more than mine, even when we have the same number of votes to cast.
- webnrrd2k 9y agoI think of this as attitude as "Rich white trash"... The thing about being rich is that you can afford to isolate yourself for a long time, wrapped up in a community of similarly isolated people. Those attitudes grow and fester without being challenged by different opinions. That isolation creates ideologically-driven people who just don't see how hurtful thier ideas truly are.