I gave you a starter article to read. Monbiot expresses it far better than I could. If reading isn’t your thing look up Adam Curtis documentaries on YouTube.
You especially might want to consider that one of the many bad ideas promoted by that philosophy is that everyone is equally capable of lifting himself up out of poverty or homelessness by his own bootstraps. The “patient and slow” establishment Dems have become less and less willing over the last decades to give such people any help.
What someone reacts to is not necessarily a root cause. Sometimes, as in the case of Reagan and Thatcher’s supporters, it’s just something they believe is keeping them from what they feel they’re entitled to.
Certainly those who pushed the neoliberal consensus over the past 40 years didn’t give much thought to what many liberals and progressives recognised as the logical outcomes of their policies. Many of the true believers, espousing their economic policies with near-religious fervour, didn’t come close to von Braun’s cynical and opportunistic abandonment of responsibility for his own actions.
I voted for Sanders in the primary. When I didn’t get that in the general election, I didn’t abstain and allow true evil to stand unopposed. I voted for the lesser of the two
available evils knowing full well it was evil but the best available choice… Unlike those who chose to abstain on “moral grounds”.
Were my experience ALL I knew… Maybe. But it’s not.
You think I did it “ALL BY MYSELF”? By-my-bootstraps? Oh **** NO! I got no superman suit.
There is an old joke in my circles;
A man walks down the street and falls into a deep hole.
The politician walks by, looks down the hole, passes a law and walks on
The concerned citizen walks by, looks down, tosses a few dollars, some socks and food down and walks on
The holy man comes by, peers into the hole and prays over him and moves on.
The doctor looks down the hole and drops a prescription and walks on.
Finally this one guy comes by, looks down and jumps in.
The first man looks at him and says “what are you crazy?! Now we’re both down here!”
The second man smiles and say “Yep, but I know how to get out”
Good for you. Have a cookie. Many others did the same but turned around the day after the election to make sure that in 2020 they’ll have a Dem candidate for whom they don’t have to hold their nose in the voting booth.
No, but again, you’ve been generalising your own ability to pull yourself out of homelessness. Not everyone is you, and what worked for you will not work for everyone. If there’s a solution it lies in collective action, something that’s (not co-incidentally) considered anathema and the Road to Serfdom by the powers that be.
I did when I first heard it. I don’t think you get the real point of the story.
They all “start” at Reagan/Thatcher and act it began there.
As I told someone else, you presume too much.
I never said I pulled myself up… I did say I had to make the effort to reach out even when I didn’t think there was any way out.
As Edison is reputed to have said when he was asked how it felt to fail at making a light bulb 1000 time…
I didn’t fail, I know 1000 ways that don’t work.
I knew a whole bunch of things that didn’t work.
It was just another thing to try… Something I’d never done. Trying something that worked for someone else.
Says the kettle who presumes others here don’t know about the books you’ve read, about mental illness (including the type that makes it near impossible to make an effort to reach out), about homelessness (again, including the type that makes it near impossible to make an effort to reach out), about when neoliberalism took hold as the default economic philosophy in the West.
Your Horatio Alger narrative doesn’t apply to everyone,* and believe it or not there are people here who’ve overcome greater odds and done more reading and studied and lived through more history than you have. You want a cookie for reading to go with the one I gave you for voting for the lesser of two evils and calling it a day, you got it.
Your arrogant attitude has become tiresome as have your trite “insights” and your disrespect for some of this site’s other users, so I’m done with this discussion.
[* note how I don’t presume you don’t know who this is in the same way you presumed I couldn’t have possibly have read Toffler or Brunner]
I know WAY too may who haven’t read them or much of anything else.
There possibly are some who’ve lived more history… Probably are, but not a whole lot.
As I keep saying and you keep ignoring, there were no-bootstraps… No Horatio Alger stories. Just a lot of pain and difficulties. Never claimed it was fun or easy. Just
possible. But that doesn’t fit the narrative you want to propagate.
In your view, it seems, there only predators and prey
By itself, out of context, very little. As part of a conversation it means more.
English is an interesting language; it can encode some subtleties with few words, but others it struggles to express at all. I am a native speaker but do not know how to be more explicit than I was, sorry.
I cannot do this without being stopped by society and its legal apparatus. I cannot make anyone else do it, and no useful number of people will join with me to do it (because I do not have the reach or resources to create a popular movement - the many failed movements I see around me were begun by people with more money, more time, more charisma, and more connections than I, and I am not electable).
However, if you find this easy and accomplishable, I will happily join your movement and I will show up with a shovel and skills in masonry, electricity, plumbing, and western platform construction. Just let me know where you’ll be breaking ground, and if it’s within driving distance of my source of income, I will be there for you!
In the meantime, I am putting up a homeless person in my house, because that is what I can do without anyone stopping me.
Don’t forget about overflowing buckets smarminess. Always welcome in a topic like this. (Or, maybe I’m just missing more subtleties?)
Look, I never said it would be easy and it’s the kind of thing that needs state and local government support. Sadly these entities seem more interested in propping up sportsball teams and wooing big businesses. These are leadership and money problems, not the kind of intractable legal and societal problems you allude to. I’m sure most society would love to see homeless treated fairly even if for the selfish reason of just not wanting to see them.
It’s great that you’re willing to put up somebody in your home but that simply doesn’t scale.
Sometimes, having someone to talk to can ease depression.
But I don’t know how that dynamic works with the homeless. In the USMC, when two guys got into a fight, we would often attach them with six feet of rope for a few days. Usually, they ended up being close friends. I am not suggesting tying the homeless to anyone or anything, but it is interesting how well it worked for young Marines.
There’s plenty of other, more realistic things where “if everybody did it” the homeless would be much better off. Saying “well, everybody should open their homes to the homeless” is far less realistic than putting the onus on the government (be it federal, state, or local) to actually do something about it. I mean, I live in a small space, am generally not trusting of others, and very introverted – but fuck all that, time to open my doors to anybody in need, right? Clearly you don’t have any of these problems, which is great. Give yourself a pat on the back for that. Not everybody is as fortunate as you, and those of us that aren’t are not the problem here.
I don’t think that’s the reason… but you do you, I guess. It’s clear that the problem is the BB community not being advanced enough to comprehend your superior intellect and cleverness.
Maybe we could talk about those things? If they entail housing, seems like they’d be near enough to the topic. Are there ways to advocate for those things that won’t just make people angry?
I’m not going to stop advocating personal action.
I’m not going to stop pointing out the limitations of asking for government to do something.
You seem to be implying the only kind of personal action is putting up someone in your home – which as I’ve said before isn’t appropriate for everybody. Advocacy and education which I’m a big proponent of and I try to do is also personal action. But I guess that’s not good enough?
