Joseph Gallivan’s straight reportage is more honest than Nicole Hayden’s melodrama.
The problem remains that the media have helped turn homelessness into a lifestyle. This profile of "Utah," as well as an earlier profile in the Trib of a woman who helps homeless and housed drug addicts obtain food and other stuff, makes the lifestyle seem normal, even sustainable.
Utah's story, frankly, is more interesting than that of a mini-mart store clerk who spends his workday watching guys like Utah come into his store and take whatever they want. Utah is having an adventure. The store clerk? No adventure for him. None of Utah's freedom, either. The clerk works for a living.
On an unrelated note, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" has been on my mind, courtesy of the abortion fight. Subsequent journalists tracked down the children of the poor, white sharecroppers to see what their lives were like. The boys fared better than the girls. Some of the boys made it into the middle class. The girls? Their lives were defined by pregnancy. Pregnant with poverty.
I pick up the litter in my 'hood partly because I'm a bit of a do-gooder. It's an old-age hobby that affords me a perspective on the human condition I can glean from talking to the drug addicted and mentally ill. Perhaps the keenest insight I've gained is that most drugs make people very stupid and when they're not inebriated, they're much more sensible. Everyone has a story, of course, which is usually a mix of self-pity and anger. Few people are unscarred by their childhoods and parentage. Still, it's always a choice how we cope with our unhappiness. If you do it as consciously as possible, you don't damage yourself nearly so much and you're probably not as unhappy. But if you opt for a quick release, which then becomes a habit, you've unleashed the hounds of hell from your own personal kennel.
Enabling drug addicts is not compassion so much as self-delusion. The Woke do this compulsively because their totalizing ideology means that the world is divided between Good and Bad and Right and Wrong. Just like with the religious fundamentalists. but without the otherworldly elements. The net result is that their secular religious hysteria is a compound of selective confirmation bias and wishful thinking. They might even get a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation or a faculty appointment to an elite school. The incentive system on the woke left involves social acceptance and validation. not rigorous scholarship or skepticism.
Still, our Woke Supremacists know they are smart because everyone they listen to believes exactly like they do. You can ignore your city's social dysfunction and mayhem and revel instead in your righteousness. What underlies this new religion is an old religion, and that's knowing in the core of your being that you are saved by your your own light.
We who are skeptics and heretics can marvel at this brave new world of absolute certitude. Communism lasted for generations not because it was a success but because its foundational beliefs gave meaning to people who own lives lacked any. That's what Portland offers to its disaffected hipsters who detest the pointlessness of their random pleasures. Are we really going to pretend this is just the best we can do? No! We want the Truth and the license it gives us to dominate others. If you don't like it, please save your breath because we know we're right and you're wrong.
The left's victimology is its whole point. There are good people (say, non-binary and unhoused BIPOCs) and bad people (cis-gender white males). This organizing principle is all you need to know to understand our primary human drama. How did we ever live without this?
Joseph Gallivan’s straight reportage is more honest than Nicole Hayden’s melodrama.
The problem remains that the media have helped turn homelessness into a lifestyle. This profile of "Utah," as well as an earlier profile in the Trib of a woman who helps homeless and housed drug addicts obtain food and other stuff, makes the lifestyle seem normal, even sustainable.
Utah's story, frankly, is more interesting than that of a mini-mart store clerk who spends his workday watching guys like Utah come into his store and take whatever they want. Utah is having an adventure. The store clerk? No adventure for him. None of Utah's freedom, either. The clerk works for a living.
On an unrelated note, "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" has been on my mind, courtesy of the abortion fight. Subsequent journalists tracked down the children of the poor, white sharecroppers to see what their lives were like. The boys fared better than the girls. Some of the boys made it into the middle class. The girls? Their lives were defined by pregnancy. Pregnant with poverty.
Thank you for putting me onto Joe Gallivan. Your piece was a double delight.
I pick up the litter in my 'hood partly because I'm a bit of a do-gooder. It's an old-age hobby that affords me a perspective on the human condition I can glean from talking to the drug addicted and mentally ill. Perhaps the keenest insight I've gained is that most drugs make people very stupid and when they're not inebriated, they're much more sensible. Everyone has a story, of course, which is usually a mix of self-pity and anger. Few people are unscarred by their childhoods and parentage. Still, it's always a choice how we cope with our unhappiness. If you do it as consciously as possible, you don't damage yourself nearly so much and you're probably not as unhappy. But if you opt for a quick release, which then becomes a habit, you've unleashed the hounds of hell from your own personal kennel.
Enabling drug addicts is not compassion so much as self-delusion. The Woke do this compulsively because their totalizing ideology means that the world is divided between Good and Bad and Right and Wrong. Just like with the religious fundamentalists. but without the otherworldly elements. The net result is that their secular religious hysteria is a compound of selective confirmation bias and wishful thinking. They might even get a "genius" grant from the MacArthur Foundation or a faculty appointment to an elite school. The incentive system on the woke left involves social acceptance and validation. not rigorous scholarship or skepticism.
Still, our Woke Supremacists know they are smart because everyone they listen to believes exactly like they do. You can ignore your city's social dysfunction and mayhem and revel instead in your righteousness. What underlies this new religion is an old religion, and that's knowing in the core of your being that you are saved by your your own light.
We who are skeptics and heretics can marvel at this brave new world of absolute certitude. Communism lasted for generations not because it was a success but because its foundational beliefs gave meaning to people who own lives lacked any. That's what Portland offers to its disaffected hipsters who detest the pointlessness of their random pleasures. Are we really going to pretend this is just the best we can do? No! We want the Truth and the license it gives us to dominate others. If you don't like it, please save your breath because we know we're right and you're wrong.
The left's victimology is its whole point. There are good people (say, non-binary and unhoused BIPOCs) and bad people (cis-gender white males). This organizing principle is all you need to know to understand our primary human drama. How did we ever live without this?
Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me.
I once was lost but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.