A friend of a friend on Facebook just posted that he wanted to have all homeless people medicated monthly with Haldol to prevent them from committing crimes. If this is a commonly held opinion, then it is a very disturbing one. Not all homeless are schizophrenic; my experience with them is perhaps 10% of them show obvious signs of pathological behavior. Even most of those with mental illness are gentle and harmless; and many have no mental illness at all, they're just tired of the rigged game of "private property" and have opted out.
Having experienced homelessness first-hand, although admittedly in a rather haphazard fashion, always having other options, I can say that those who don't participate in the illusion of prosperity already have enough privations without forcing more upon them. One of the first that you encounter as you leave your house behind is that there is no place to go to the bathroom, especially in cities, and most especially at night. It may seem like a small matter until you have been up for hours with pressure on your bladder and/or uranus and no legal way to relieve it. I'm not saying there are easy solutions, particularly as our culture treats human waste as such, "waste", rather than the valuable resource it could and should be; I'm just saying it's a problem that wouldn't exist in a state of nature.
Another matter is that the homeless have, even in the "better" states like Florida, pretty much lost their 2nd Amendment rights. There are so many places where carrying a weapon is illegal, and given that post offices, banks, and bars no longer offer the service of "checking" it at the door, it becomes totally impractical to own one. People who appear to be "homeless" are routinely hassled by the police, and regardless of legality, a cop will confiscate your weapon and you will have little to no recourse. You may even be locked up for a while.
I could go on and on about this, and may someday, but I've got a dying hard drive that needs my attention. So, end of rant for now.
last updated 2013-01-05 01:16:50. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com