My Response to Their Response

The King County Executive, Mayor, community leaders announce unified homelessness response...

(If you enjoy yawning, watch the video. If you're interested in the truth skip to my response below.)

Stop treating homelessness as if it were a normal condition. As if,homelessness on an epidemic scale has always been a fact of life like death and taxes and there is nothing we can do about it except manage the symptoms. If worldwide homelessness were a disease it would be on scale with HIV, or malaria, or syphilis infections. In the United States alone, the self-proclaimed richest country on Earth, homelessness has spread to as many people as Hepatitis B worldwide. Here, in our very own King County, homelessness afflicts 20% more lives than those claimed by schistosomiasis globally each year. 

Full Stop! 

Here are the truly alarming statistics: 

Homelessness is nearly 100% Preventable and Curable. 
However, when treated as merely treatable, it spreads.

Here is the regrettable truth about our condition, Dow... 

We like to talk a lot about doing something about homelessness because we must appear socially conscious. We blather on about the corrosive effects of homelessness on children, women, veterans, and the mentally challenged. We collect and collate data. We attend symposiums. We design graphs and charts to illuminate the statistics. We write and publish papers in psychology, sociology, and social issues journals. We accumulate continuing education units in classes on how to identify and treat the symptoms of homelessness. Some even go so far as to post their new approaches to homelessness on social media. 

However, when it comes to actually doing something to eradicate homelessness rather than just treating the symptoms... *Insert the sounds of crickets chirping here* 

Why? 

Well, Dow, you and I know that the only way to really end homelessness is… homes. The title of our disease contains the cure. It’s not really hidden either. It’s the first four letters of the pathogens name. But home is a four letter word for people like you because the more you build, the more property values drop. The more property values drop the faster those voters with property will throw you out of office for destroying their huge over inflated real estate investment bubble they call HOME. That four letter word that stuffed with urban sprawl land restrictions, green spaces, habitat and forest protection, sustainability strategies, public spaces, and draconian zoning restrictions coupled with exclusionary property taxes to pay for it all! 

FOUR LETTER WORD, Dow. Four letter word. 

Anything else is more HOMEless.

Mostly Poor, Generally Miserable, and Statistically Short

Why you’re going to be mostly poor and generally miserable for the rest of your statistically short adult life...

Unaffordable housing isn't a "norm", nor should it be. Unaffordable housing is a red flag. Now that I think about it, unaffordable housing is not just one red flag. Unaffordable housing is more red flags than a Communist Party parade. All those red flags are signaling a problem, but rather than solve that problem we're all busy managing symptoms. Symptoms which we think, because we are told, are separate problems. They aren’t. They're just symptoms of the one real problem. Yup, there’s only one of those, but we’re not being told that. So, we don't hazard to think it. 

Hang on. I’m going to tell you about it right now. The problem which caused the housing shortage symptom and a bunch of other serious social "ills" (all symptoms of the one real problem) is a change in our social structure. The change which manifest so many serious symptoms that we've confused them with problems, in themselves. The one real problem we have is we recently abandoned the ancient human lifestyle of "Three Generations to a Home" starting about three generations ago.

Suddenly,

1. Housing is unaffordable by default

2. Elder care costs have become a new cumbersome budget item.

3. Our elderly parents are routinely placed at risk of being abused or ignored to death in nursing home 
institutions.

4. Child care becomes yet another massive personal budget item requiring government assistance.

5. Our children are taught values by strangers rather than family.

6. As a result of #5, XBox and gang-banging become lifestyle choices for our kids. 

7. Meanwhile, as a result of all the above SYMPTOMS, we get to spend years of our lives standing in line trying to get some government housing, child care, and/or elder care assistance which is guaranteed to keep us in chains for the rest of our days.

 8. If we are fortunate enough to buy a home, we’re going to have to work a lot more hours to cover all the bills. This means more child care costs and as a result, more X-Boxing/ Gang-Banging kids. Note to self: Figure Bail money into monthly budget… somehow.

All these SYMPTOMS are spawned of our abandoning the ancient human lifestyle of "Three Generations to a Home". The solution is not more or bigger government assistance checks. That, my human friends, is the road we took to arrive at this place of despair. What we need to do is solve the problem by living like humans again: Three Generations to a Home", because it works and always did. 

We used to know this. We forgot. It’s time to remember again. It’s time to remember how to live like humans. It’s time to remember how to live our humanity rather than enhancing our morbidity through bankruptcy.

The future is our past or we're all history.

It’s time to go home to humanity.

IGNORANCE

IGNORANCE comes in all colors, all shapes, all sizes, all religions, all sciences, all genders, and all worldviews.


IGNORANCE is an equal opportunity employer.


IGNORANCE can appear as progress, brilliance, forward thinking, and every other good thing.


IGNORANCE is a virulent pathogen which can infect the strong, weak, young, and old alike.


IGNORANCE will expose everything about everyone to hide the carnage in its heart.


IGNORANCE is a master at deception.


IGNORANCE is aware of everything and everyone.


IGNORANCE knows how to fix both.


IGNORANCE is a murderer with a just cause: Just (Be)Cause.


IGNORANCE is aware of everyone and everything... except itself.


Now, you are no longer ignorant of IGNORANCE.



Be aware and beware IGNORANCE, especially in yourself.

The Brand

They said it was necessary.
It wouldn't hurt much.
Over in a bit.
Then you will know happiness, and
finally gratitude.
It's a simple, clear-cut procedure with 
science to back it up.
Just a little snip between the hemispheres
a tiny little cut.
Now...
Now...
Everything is forever now.
No future to look forward on.
No past to look back through
Now...
Now...
I can't even remember you
Who said it was needed
I was an unacceptable mess
One cut away from being my best
Now...
Now...
Everything is now.
That moment of gray
When the colors left
Life became existence 
at my very best.

Earthbound Angels

Always remember, with or without wings we all have the ability to become Earthbound Angels. 

Act accordingly and it will be so.

Andy, I'm sorry.

I never really liked the kid.
I suppose, I never took the time to like him.
He wasn't the kind of kid that was easy to like.
He had problems.
We all have problems, but Andy’s problems were different;
more extreme, less tolerable, more numerous, and less solvable.
So, he never put effort towards solving them. Life isn’t fair, so what’s the use?
Victim or victimizer… those were his choices.
Andy made a choice.


I never liked the kid or his choices.
He had a way of making his problems the problems of others.
If someone wronged Andy, he would complain bitterly to any who would
offer a shoulder to cry on.
A shoulder placed him within reach of his next victims throat.
That was Andy's indirect method of problem distribution.
His direct method was far more insidious and destructive to his victims.





Andy lacked empathy.
Empathy is the natural whisper within that urges us to,

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Empathy allows us to feel another sentient being's pain, joy, loss, sorrow, and victory.
Without shimmering empathy, people like Andy are very hard to like.
We “speak” empathy on the spiritual, social network Nepesh.

(Go ahead and click it or you'll miss the whole point, just like Andy. Remember, it's an action, not a thing!)

Empathy was gibberish to Andy.
The whisper from deep within 
which restrains us from barbarism 
and all other valedictorian studies 
at the Serpent school fell silent. 
His sins became more egregious, 
more irritating, and without a doubt, 
less forgivable in the world of the Living. 
He was a corpse. 

Someone planted a feral seed 
in Andy the victim. 
That crooked sprout tormented the boy 
in which it took root. 
Given darkness and time, 
rage and age metastasizes like cancer. 
Changing victim into victimizer.
Before the Bitter harvest could reach maturity, 
some tried to intervene 
by battering, disciplining, or transforming 
the foul maturing fruit. 
Others tried to sweeten the nectar 
from within and through Nepesh, 
but Andy’s isolation fire-walled intimacy. 
Love finds no safe harbor, 
only embargo by a swift and strong unnatural Defense. 
Strength through Power projected, fabricated Strength.

Down, down the spiral, 
a victim steps into the skin of perpetrator 
to seize a crown by force.
Force through fabricated, overrated Strength.
Power; his lost crown.
Down, down into Darkness go.
Into battle go.
Pierce the flesh below.
Hunted is now the hunter.

A veteran blooded by his own… blood 

and of those who lingered near his cold, dark hollow.
A forlorn bunker home once made of flesh.
The space where he was armored 

and invulnerable to all those alien feelings. 

Feelings not his own.
His castle had been like ours, 

just more sullen, ever thinning, and dimming.
Isolation is a mindset, 

and his mind was set in twisted iron and jagged concrete long ago.

He was a castaway 

and sole survivor of a tragic shipwreck 

He began as crew and eventually took the helm.
But his vessel had taken on water, 

tattered sails, and an empty galley.
He was weighed down, dragged down. 

He couldn’t catch a following wind 
with his best attempts.
He was always hungry.
Starved ravenous to the point of madness.
Nothing could fill that breach.
Everything could not fill that chasm.


I never really knew the kid, 
and I never made the effort to know him.

If I had, would it have made a difference 
in the course he set?

I will never know, 
because he took his own life the other night.
That was the last choice he made 
and my first regret 
concerning Andy.

No one spoke his praise,
No one bore his tears,

and no one noticed that his cold, dark hollow
was empty. 

Andy, I'm sorry.