(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . California--home to whom? [1] ['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.', 'Backgroundurl Avatar_Large', 'Nickname', 'Joined', 'Created_At', 'Story Count', 'N_Stories', 'Comment Count', 'N_Comments', 'Popular Tags'] Date: 2023-04-03 “Every park bench in America—everywhere a homeless person sleeps—should have Ronald Reagan’s name on it.” Peter Dreier, Occidental College Urban and Environmental Policy Dept. “Thanks to Reagan’s draconian housing cuts, homelessness, which had historically been a temporary problem during economic calamities, became chronic.” Andy Borowitz PROFILES IN IGNORANCE Once more, my home state of California leads the nation, this time in homeless populations. California also boasts the world’s fourth or fifth most productive economy. The confluence of these oppositional statistics shows me the total failure of trickle-down. Why do we allow these situations to exist side-by-side, as if these man-made circumstances are as immutable as the laws of nature, which, incidentally, humans keep trying to change? Massive poverty amidst massive wealth is more than an academic talking point—it affects everyone. Homeless people consume, digest, then must evacuate just like everyone else, and where it goes, who knows? We’re all in this together, like it or not. Still, we make no progress; the homeless population keeps increasing. Our current social, economic, and political structure almost guarantees against any lasting solutions. As the saying goes: “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” America’s (and California’s) social actions toward homelessness waver between two positions. First, we make honest but half-hearted efforts to provide shelter. When that fails, since sleeping (though not being) outside is illegal, we send the police to wreck homeless camps, forcing the homeless to exist somewhere else. In early 2023, the trend seems to be prevailing toward wreck-and-move, although we know that sending a problem elsewhere, for others to deal with, guarantees the problem will eventually come back. Extermination is one permanent solution which (thankfully) most citizens still reject, although Sacramento has a nifty new military toy that begs to be tried out. The other permanent option is to build sufficient housing. Instead, we continue switching the two solutions-in-name-only. And California’s homeless problem is a national problem, though the usual California haters, both in and out-of-state, never hesitate to point fingers at the “incompetence of left-coast liberals.” There are some rational explanations for California’s homelessness leadership. California has the largest population; why not the most homeless? Our climate (much of the time) is more hospitable to roofless people than many other locations, making homeless living less uncomfortable. However, the root causes of homelessness are built into America’s (therefore, California’s) cultural foundations. These deep-rooted factors—untreated mental illness, opioid addiction, extreme poverty, among others—are substantially institutionalized, therefore quite difficult to amend. Despite California’s reputation for wild-eyed liberalism, many Californians firmly hold to hardcore reactionary sentiments. The economic and political upper class, and the underclass supporting it, subconsciously hold to the nineteenth century’s almost religious belief in “manifest destiny,” the creed that the American nation was divinely destined to rule from coast-to-coast. Americans fulfilled our destiny by gradually moving across the continent, conquering, exploiting, then moving west. To California, the Yankees came by land and sea, quickly supplanting the small number of Mexican cattle barons who had recently conquered the indigenous population. Once California’s Anglos became dominant, they realized that there was no more continent to conquer. Whether they got here by land or by sea, they were confronting an ocean. With Manifest Destiny fulfilled, some Anglo Californians began implementing progressive policies, hoping to make their naturally comfortable new home an even more pleasant place to live. Government projects: parks, dams, canals, freeways, schools and more, meant to make life easier for many of us; abound in California. But these improvements can only go so far, when they come up against an enduring element of the American character: rugged individualism, the urge for each person to get and keep whatever he or she can. This human trait has contributed substantially to the tremendous progress we have made, when tempered with other instincts to work together to promote the general welfare. But beginning in the late 1960s, Americans have gradually abandoned concerns for the common good, choosing instead to embrace selfishness. As an example, Ronald Reagan’s all-consuming hatred and contempt for government projects did throw mental patients onto the streets, resulting in a permanent homeless population. But he had a lot of enthusiastic support for his efforts. Between 1966 and 1984, Reagan was elected and re-elected California governor, then President of the United States, winning all four elections in landslides. He convinced millions that they, too, could be fabulously wealthy if only government stopped taking what they earned and giving it to society’s losers. The tone he set still dominates American politics. While publicly extolling individualism and free markets, Reagan actually expanded corporate control of society, a development which most Americans ignored. Dismantling government was a means to an end of putting more money into millionaires’ pockets and giving boardrooms more power over people. The closing of state, then federal asylums reduced government spending only slightly, but were condoned by Californians, then Americans, in the general zeal to put an end to “intrusive” government programs, to set us all “free.” Americans who were functionally incapable of making sound decisions about their lives were set free to live outdoors—collateral damage to the frenzy of spending cuts, scarcely noticed by most American voters. Mentally ill homeless people were joined by others who lost housing subsidies in Reagan’s rush to decimate any government programs that helped people who were not rich. In the rightwing mentality, homelessness would be a helpful incentive for people to get jobs so they could afford living indoors. In reality, desperate economic circumstances force people to do more work for less money, which increases desperate poverty, including homelessness; but that inconvenient fact is disregarded in the “private good, government bad” universe. In that dimension, fewer government programs mean lower taxes, which can be proved—therefore more prosperity for all, which cannot. But millions of working stiffs, struggling to make ends meet, still believe the myth. Reacting to the confusion of the 1960’s, millions of Americans sought to restore order by voting to increase corporate rule—Mussolini’s definition of fascism. In 1978, California voters overwhelmingly added Proposition 13 to the State’s Constitution, reducing property taxes while at the same time making it almost impossible to raise other taxes, no matter how popular the issue. Although it has severely impeded social progress while preserving and enhancing plutocracy, Proposition 13 remains sacred, as voters over the years have routinely rejected major amendments. That California initiative kick-started a nationwide mass movement that swept Reagan into the presidency two years later. The rich still dominate American society, through statutes, court decisions, and the support of nearly half the country’s voters. Our dominant social and political atmosphere is a direct descendant of the revered myth of manifest destiny, wrapped around the worship of extreme rugged individualism. These apparently permanent attitudes impede the actions society can take to deal with ongoing crises such as homelessness. In true Old West fashion, we conquer the homeless, then we exploit them for what little they have, then we move them along. Homelessness could be resolved by building sufficient shelter for everyone, and raising wages so that everyone could afford housing. If we go on as before, we accept a permanent homeless population, one which continues to grow, which eventually could include any of us. Rugged individualism is helpless here. Only society can solve this problem. It might be time to let go of the “What’s in it for me?” national philosophy, and replace it with something along the lines of “This could happen to me.” [END] --- [1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/4/3/2161858/-California-home-to-whom Published and (C) by Daily Kos Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified. via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds: gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/