Yes. Hating your own society & turning that into ruinous policy that has deep, dire effects on ordinary people, is more than courting, wanting disaster. It's a kind of terrorism turned on your own society. There IS such a thing as a societal state of madness, a societal psychosis affecting a majority in a nation, and then convulsively putting in place legislation that insidiously destroys. We all feel this happening.
Plenty of those defecating and shooting heroin at the streets are pureblood americans either of the white or black varietals.
I hate working with Indians, hate their culture, but the vast majority of Indians in the Europe and America came from the upper castes or at least had a few years of formal educations.
Let's not be stupid racists. I am in favor only of intelligent, data driven racism.
The real problem is the financialization of the economy, excessive immigration (not because they are brown per se, but because they fuck the job market driving salaries down), as the article says, permissiviness with drug usage, glorification of mental disease as an identity and the closure of mental institutions.
Plenty of those defecating and shooting heroin at the streets are pureblood americans either of the white or black varietals.
I hate working with Indians, hate their culture, but the vast majority of Indians in the Europe and America came from the upper castes or at least had a few years of formal educations.
Let's not be stupid racists. I am in favor only of intelligent, data driven racism.
The real problem is the financialization of the economy, excessive immigration (not because they are brown per se, but because they fuck the job market driving salaries down), as the article says, permissiviness with drug usage, glorification of mental disease as an identity and the closure of mental institutions.
I knew it was time to move out of SF when I was walking my daughter to school and we came across a pile of human excrement on the sidewalk with a perfect dog paw print right in the middle of it. An ironic metaphor if there is such a thing.
Jeez Louise! That is a perfect metaphor. San Fran’s downfall has been one of the saddest, most shocking stories of the 21st century. And what’s amazing is Vancouver watched it happen and said “let’s do that.” 🤦♀️
Human excrement is more disgusting than non-human excrement because the disease risk to other humans is greater. Different species get different diseases, to some extent. But defecation in public or in other inappropriate places is all inexcusably awful, regardless. A vivid marker for societal decline.
We have been in Africa for 2 months. All public bathrooms are a nightmare. There are no rest areas and facilities. In Botswana it is hard to find a toilet with a lid. It's Africa. But never once did I see a human pile of excrement. Saw a few guys peeing and looked on with jealousy because let's face it... As a girl we face different problems... Splashing sucks. Bad people ruin a good thing for the majority of good people who are silent. Maybe we should be more vocal about this. Poop patrols. But it just seems like nobody gives a shit about any of it. But believe me.. You miss it when you didn't have it!
I live in a red state but work in a blue city. We keep our restrooms locked with no public restroom signs posted at the front door and on both bathrooms. Here’s my criteria for allowing use. You got a little kid or elderly person, an obviously sick person you get right in. If you very politely say I know your sign says x but I really need…and you act/appear even sort of decent I let you in. You DEMAND or insinuate “I’m a paying customer and therefore am exempt from rules” and/or are an asshole, forget it. Especially if you’re an asshole about it. All you have to be is a decent human being and I will let you in but I’d say at least 75% of those “asking” are really demanding and expecting either let in or a chance to curse me out. I usually get the curse out.
I recall the disdain in which Lee Kuan Yew was held in western capitals for cleaning up Singapore. But he was right. Allowing squalid public conditions to become normalized across the West just reflects picture perfect the condition of Western civil society and it's soul. It's no coincidence to me now that this decline occurs in the context of the C19 toxic injections, the rampant cheating in our elections (esp. by the left, we must admit), & an imminent severe economic decline. We're in surrender mode, giving up the ghost. A turnaround starts with something visible, necessary, touching all of us: public sanitation.
Definite pattern recognition there. The current complaint is with Nayib Bukele, who cleaned up El Salvador. People like AOC and whatshername from Minnesota have expressed “concern.” 🙄 Similarly, it was a global coalition of leftists supporting the Ayatollah’s revolution in Iran 47 years ago. Communists are genuinely dangerous and deranged people who love nothing more than seeing things burn to the ground.
i was doing a matter at the St. Catherine's Courthouse, right downtown. On my way out, I took what i thought was a little shortcut to my car. It turns out there is a little courtyard behind the court, with access to my parking lot. Great. I went there, and at the end of the courtyard was a little area filled with weirdly, almost perfectly shaped turds, presumably human. I couldn't beleive it. right next to the courthouse. horrible
I have never seen these kinds of problems in all-White communities, except, perhaps, where there are homeless people and, even so, the White people are looking for solutions to that homelessness.
The author makes a good point that 'mainstreaming' the mentally ill (as GOP initiative), created the first wave of 'difficult persons' being on the street. It was - again - one of those ideas that the GOP just loves where you dismantle public institutions with open books and some accountability for expenses and policies and transfer the public *funds* to private entities with closed books and zero accountability.
i would say that the deinstitutionalization movement was based primarily on bleeding heart types who could not bear to hear the "suffering" of schizophrenics who were locked up. They're the same people who feel bad for coyotes or cry when old trees get chopped down. It's not about saving money as we spend tons on mental health support workers who do everything for these people who largely cannot take care of themselves. The worst part is that the families are stuck with them too..... Watch the movie one flew over the cuckoo's nest . its a great movie but it sent a horrible message that helped spawn this movement.
Back in the day, I was a big fan of R. D. Laing. He was a pioneer in 'deinstitutionalization'. So I'm relatively familiar with the discourse that was taking place *on the left* with regard to 'deinstitutionalization' and how it was full of high-minded progressive ideals and, of course, a basic lack of direct experience with the mentally ill.
'Deinstitutionalization' was a con.
But so, to some extent, was institutionalization.
Deinstitutionalization failed because there's really only so much the 'sane' can do for the 'insane' without coercive measures. At the every least, the public needs to be protected from crazy people doing crazy things. I don't think the crazy person sitting in their own waste is better off doing so on the street than in a room in a ward in a mental health facility.
But 'institutionalization' had it's own problems. Specifically, the unwillingness of some folks to make the distinction between 'eccentric' and 'insane'. As the joke goes in 'Great Expectations', no matter how crazy you are, if you have enough money you're merely eccentric.
I also think it's worth looking at the role the Cold War played in 'deinstitutionalization'. At one time, the American Right liked to play up the existence of 'psychiatric imprisonment' in the Soviet Union. Deinstitutionalization was also viewed as a propaganda coup.
I know for a fact that deinstitutionalizing was implemented under the Reagan/Bush administration as part of it’s push to privatize public monies. The same with private prisons.
The simple fact is that the ‘bleeding hearts’ played into the hands of the greedheads and got exactly what they wanted good and hard.
I never said deinstitutionalization was about ‘saving money’. That’s just the shuck and jive for the rubes who think that either party is the party of ‘small government’ and ‘fiscal restraint’.
The whole point of ‘public/private’ projects is to funnel taxpayer dollars into the hands of favored constituencies with as little oversight as possible.
I think the role of mental illness in the degradation of the cities is important. I also think that mental illness - no matter how conceived - is real enough that action needs to be taken to segregate the mentally ill from the healthy. The exact ethic that we exemplify in this process of segregation is the only ‘moral’ part of the whole thing. No sane person wants to deal with crazy people all day without be compensated for doing so.
Yes, well said. And drives home my point about the policies that make some people rich causing problems the super rich rarely have to deal with. The super rich don't take public transportation and needn't worry about gettting pushed onto the tracks by a lunatic who should have been locked up long ago. And they don't have to witness some hobo relieving himself on a streetcar.
hmm.. well, without challenging your facts, if what you say is true, then .... I would say that that is interesting! I stand corrected, subject to further research. Whatever the motivation, ie, ideology or bleeding hearts or saving money, or channeling money to constituencies, the policy is ridiculous. I have had many seriously mentally ill clients and in each case, my instinct was to say that they should be instituionalized for the good of society, of their families and most importantly, for their own good. There are probably plenty of people who do have manageable MH issues and can live on their own. And there are plenty who are in some twilight zone where it is a maybe, but there are many who are out who need serious help and cannot really live on their own or without serious help from their family, the sort that makes their family's lives miserable. I am all for liberty and i know that for some of my clients, their liberty is important to them, even though they are basically out of touch with reality, and i know that there has been plenty of abuse in the psychiatric world, but it is plain as the nose on my face that there are many who clearly should be in hospitals. I do bail hearings for people who get released and I just know that they have nowhere to go. And that they may well re offend shortly. people who assault the MH workers themselves and who create a nuisance for the public. who are we benefitting by releasing people onto the streets only to have them live under bridges? I suppose perhaps one can say that I am only speaking anecdotally, so I would be interested in a broader view but at heart it just seems so obvious.
I’m not sure the GOP played a big role in the deinstitution movement, it started with Kennedy closing large asylums and completed with O’Connor vs Donaldson where the Supreme Court ruled against involuntary confinement of the non violent mentally ill.
Most homeless suffer both mental illness and addiction and , since jails cannot treat them and they can’t be involuntarily committed against their will they’re free to shit in our streets.
Definitely not restricted to one party. Of course Canada adopted the the same policy. Growing up in the 70s, homelessness was a pretty rare phenomenon. Come the 90s, it all went south.
Yes, latrines and toilets have always been a white man’s obsession. While plumbing dates back to the Mesopotamians 4 thousand years ago, it was Queen Elizabeth I’s godson who invented the first flush toilet.
Agree… and there’s a tinge of libertarianism in there. Let the crazies be free! But as we know from NY subway pusher incidents, their freedom is sane people’s prison.
Not that we need another horrifying example…but airplane loos have also become a no-go on flights over 3 hours. WTF people? Sad state of affairs indeed. Great piece Liz. You are the best!!!!
Too many guys seem to be unable to hit the hole no matter whether its on a plane or on the ground. I see guys standing a foot away from urinals, and this is when the floor has just been cleaned.
But on flights to europe, several hours in when i know the washroom must be getting damp i have seen women bare foot, too lazy to put their shoes back on go into those washrooms.
Thats eewww x 10.
I'm unsure what is wrong with people.
I have a superpower, its peeing in the toilet not on the floor.
Import the third world, become the third world.
Liberals see this as justice, because they are ashamed for being white, and have come to hate everything about the West and America.
You're on the wrong channel bro.
Bro? Probably.
Yes. Hating your own society & turning that into ruinous policy that has deep, dire effects on ordinary people, is more than courting, wanting disaster. It's a kind of terrorism turned on your own society. There IS such a thing as a societal state of madness, a societal psychosis affecting a majority in a nation, and then convulsively putting in place legislation that insidiously destroys. We all feel this happening.
Plenty of those defecating and shooting heroin at the streets are pureblood americans either of the white or black varietals.
I hate working with Indians, hate their culture, but the vast majority of Indians in the Europe and America came from the upper castes or at least had a few years of formal educations.
Let's not be stupid racists. I am in favor only of intelligent, data driven racism.
The real problem is the financialization of the economy, excessive immigration (not because they are brown per se, but because they fuck the job market driving salaries down), as the article says, permissiviness with drug usage, glorification of mental disease as an identity and the closure of mental institutions.
this is what you care about ? that immigrants are being unfairly targeted? You're kind of missing the point.
Plenty of those defecating and shooting heroin at the streets are pureblood americans either of the white or black varietals.
I hate working with Indians, hate their culture, but the vast majority of Indians in the Europe and America came from the upper castes or at least had a few years of formal educations.
Let's not be stupid racists. I am in favor only of intelligent, data driven racism.
The real problem is the financialization of the economy, excessive immigration (not because they are brown per se, but because they fuck the job market driving salaries down), as the article says, permissiviness with drug usage, glorification of mental disease as an identity and the closure of mental institutions.
As the 80-90's motivational speaker Wayne Dyer once said..."If all you do is follow the herd you'll soon be stepping in poop all day."
Thanks Herd!!!
I knew it was time to move out of SF when I was walking my daughter to school and we came across a pile of human excrement on the sidewalk with a perfect dog paw print right in the middle of it. An ironic metaphor if there is such a thing.
Jeez Louise! That is a perfect metaphor. San Fran’s downfall has been one of the saddest, most shocking stories of the 21st century. And what’s amazing is Vancouver watched it happen and said “let’s do that.” 🤦♀️
Its pretty awful no matter where progressives gain power.
You just described all of Canada 😂. TBF, things aren’t that bad (yet), aside from the fact that we’re all europoors.
Human excrement is more disgusting than non-human excrement because the disease risk to other humans is greater. Different species get different diseases, to some extent. But defecation in public or in other inappropriate places is all inexcusably awful, regardless. A vivid marker for societal decline.
That tracks. Having said that… fecal transplants are miraculous apparently 🤷♀️
We have been in Africa for 2 months. All public bathrooms are a nightmare. There are no rest areas and facilities. In Botswana it is hard to find a toilet with a lid. It's Africa. But never once did I see a human pile of excrement. Saw a few guys peeing and looked on with jealousy because let's face it... As a girl we face different problems... Splashing sucks. Bad people ruin a good thing for the majority of good people who are silent. Maybe we should be more vocal about this. Poop patrols. But it just seems like nobody gives a shit about any of it. But believe me.. You miss it when you didn't have it!
I’ve been to Ethiopia a couple of times. 😬 Outside of tourist spots, toilet paper really isn’t a thing.
I live in a red state but work in a blue city. We keep our restrooms locked with no public restroom signs posted at the front door and on both bathrooms. Here’s my criteria for allowing use. You got a little kid or elderly person, an obviously sick person you get right in. If you very politely say I know your sign says x but I really need…and you act/appear even sort of decent I let you in. You DEMAND or insinuate “I’m a paying customer and therefore am exempt from rules” and/or are an asshole, forget it. Especially if you’re an asshole about it. All you have to be is a decent human being and I will let you in but I’d say at least 75% of those “asking” are really demanding and expecting either let in or a chance to curse me out. I usually get the curse out.
Solid policy. I have to say Irunthis… I’m glad you run this!
Tell em there's a bucket out back for such as them.
I recall the disdain in which Lee Kuan Yew was held in western capitals for cleaning up Singapore. But he was right. Allowing squalid public conditions to become normalized across the West just reflects picture perfect the condition of Western civil society and it's soul. It's no coincidence to me now that this decline occurs in the context of the C19 toxic injections, the rampant cheating in our elections (esp. by the left, we must admit), & an imminent severe economic decline. We're in surrender mode, giving up the ghost. A turnaround starts with something visible, necessary, touching all of us: public sanitation.
Definite pattern recognition there. The current complaint is with Nayib Bukele, who cleaned up El Salvador. People like AOC and whatshername from Minnesota have expressed “concern.” 🙄 Similarly, it was a global coalition of leftists supporting the Ayatollah’s revolution in Iran 47 years ago. Communists are genuinely dangerous and deranged people who love nothing more than seeing things burn to the ground.
i was doing a matter at the St. Catherine's Courthouse, right downtown. On my way out, I took what i thought was a little shortcut to my car. It turns out there is a little courtyard behind the court, with access to my parking lot. Great. I went there, and at the end of the courtyard was a little area filled with weirdly, almost perfectly shaped turds, presumably human. I couldn't beleive it. right next to the courthouse. horrible
Good grief. Sadly, many such cases. Like Venice Beach, where a hedge’s privacy proves too much of a temptation.
Canada is headed for the second world.
California has their foot on the gas.
https://ogre.substack.com/p/theres-only-one-thing-the-american?r=astbc
I have never seen these kinds of problems in all-White communities, except, perhaps, where there are homeless people and, even so, the White people are looking for solutions to that homelessness.
The author makes a good point that 'mainstreaming' the mentally ill (as GOP initiative), created the first wave of 'difficult persons' being on the street. It was - again - one of those ideas that the GOP just loves where you dismantle public institutions with open books and some accountability for expenses and policies and transfer the public *funds* to private entities with closed books and zero accountability.
i would say that the deinstitutionalization movement was based primarily on bleeding heart types who could not bear to hear the "suffering" of schizophrenics who were locked up. They're the same people who feel bad for coyotes or cry when old trees get chopped down. It's not about saving money as we spend tons on mental health support workers who do everything for these people who largely cannot take care of themselves. The worst part is that the families are stuck with them too..... Watch the movie one flew over the cuckoo's nest . its a great movie but it sent a horrible message that helped spawn this movement.
Yes, I believe One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was a major inflection moment. The message was ‘crazy people are just misunderstood artists.’
Back in the day, I was a big fan of R. D. Laing. He was a pioneer in 'deinstitutionalization'. So I'm relatively familiar with the discourse that was taking place *on the left* with regard to 'deinstitutionalization' and how it was full of high-minded progressive ideals and, of course, a basic lack of direct experience with the mentally ill.
'Deinstitutionalization' was a con.
But so, to some extent, was institutionalization.
Deinstitutionalization failed because there's really only so much the 'sane' can do for the 'insane' without coercive measures. At the every least, the public needs to be protected from crazy people doing crazy things. I don't think the crazy person sitting in their own waste is better off doing so on the street than in a room in a ward in a mental health facility.
But 'institutionalization' had it's own problems. Specifically, the unwillingness of some folks to make the distinction between 'eccentric' and 'insane'. As the joke goes in 'Great Expectations', no matter how crazy you are, if you have enough money you're merely eccentric.
I also think it's worth looking at the role the Cold War played in 'deinstitutionalization'. At one time, the American Right liked to play up the existence of 'psychiatric imprisonment' in the Soviet Union. Deinstitutionalization was also viewed as a propaganda coup.
I know for a fact that deinstitutionalizing was implemented under the Reagan/Bush administration as part of it’s push to privatize public monies. The same with private prisons.
The simple fact is that the ‘bleeding hearts’ played into the hands of the greedheads and got exactly what they wanted good and hard.
I never said deinstitutionalization was about ‘saving money’. That’s just the shuck and jive for the rubes who think that either party is the party of ‘small government’ and ‘fiscal restraint’.
The whole point of ‘public/private’ projects is to funnel taxpayer dollars into the hands of favored constituencies with as little oversight as possible.
I think the role of mental illness in the degradation of the cities is important. I also think that mental illness - no matter how conceived - is real enough that action needs to be taken to segregate the mentally ill from the healthy. The exact ethic that we exemplify in this process of segregation is the only ‘moral’ part of the whole thing. No sane person wants to deal with crazy people all day without be compensated for doing so.
Yes, well said. And drives home my point about the policies that make some people rich causing problems the super rich rarely have to deal with. The super rich don't take public transportation and needn't worry about gettting pushed onto the tracks by a lunatic who should have been locked up long ago. And they don't have to witness some hobo relieving himself on a streetcar.
hmm.. well, without challenging your facts, if what you say is true, then .... I would say that that is interesting! I stand corrected, subject to further research. Whatever the motivation, ie, ideology or bleeding hearts or saving money, or channeling money to constituencies, the policy is ridiculous. I have had many seriously mentally ill clients and in each case, my instinct was to say that they should be instituionalized for the good of society, of their families and most importantly, for their own good. There are probably plenty of people who do have manageable MH issues and can live on their own. And there are plenty who are in some twilight zone where it is a maybe, but there are many who are out who need serious help and cannot really live on their own or without serious help from their family, the sort that makes their family's lives miserable. I am all for liberty and i know that for some of my clients, their liberty is important to them, even though they are basically out of touch with reality, and i know that there has been plenty of abuse in the psychiatric world, but it is plain as the nose on my face that there are many who clearly should be in hospitals. I do bail hearings for people who get released and I just know that they have nowhere to go. And that they may well re offend shortly. people who assault the MH workers themselves and who create a nuisance for the public. who are we benefitting by releasing people onto the streets only to have them live under bridges? I suppose perhaps one can say that I am only speaking anecdotally, so I would be interested in a broader view but at heart it just seems so obvious.
I’m not sure the GOP played a big role in the deinstitution movement, it started with Kennedy closing large asylums and completed with O’Connor vs Donaldson where the Supreme Court ruled against involuntary confinement of the non violent mentally ill.
Most homeless suffer both mental illness and addiction and , since jails cannot treat them and they can’t be involuntarily committed against their will they’re free to shit in our streets.
Definitely not restricted to one party. Of course Canada adopted the the same policy. Growing up in the 70s, homelessness was a pretty rare phenomenon. Come the 90s, it all went south.
Yes, latrines and toilets have always been a white man’s obsession. While plumbing dates back to the Mesopotamians 4 thousand years ago, it was Queen Elizabeth I’s godson who invented the first flush toilet.
Agree… and there’s a tinge of libertarianism in there. Let the crazies be free! But as we know from NY subway pusher incidents, their freedom is sane people’s prison.
Hey man, when ya gotta go, ya gotta go…
😂
Not that we need another horrifying example…but airplane loos have also become a no-go on flights over 3 hours. WTF people? Sad state of affairs indeed. Great piece Liz. You are the best!!!!
Too many guys seem to be unable to hit the hole no matter whether its on a plane or on the ground. I see guys standing a foot away from urinals, and this is when the floor has just been cleaned.
But on flights to europe, several hours in when i know the washroom must be getting damp i have seen women bare foot, too lazy to put their shoes back on go into those washrooms.
Thats eewww x 10.
I'm unsure what is wrong with people.
I have a superpower, its peeing in the toilet not on the floor.
Yes, i'm practically a god these days.
The world thanks you… 🙏
How civilizations die.