Shithole Cities

[Joe in PNG]

Well... It is impossible to "talk about why" without debating ideas. Social policies are results of ideas adopted by majority. Just an example - you mentioned "the decay of the nuclear family." This is a result of certain ideology. According to Marxism - the nuclear family emerges not because of the needs of industrialization, but because of the needs of the capitalist system. Friedrich Engels argued that family had a clear economic function for capitalism, by ensuring that wealth remained in the hands of the bourgeoisie.... So abolition of the nuclear family is a very important part of the ideological platform. It is not an accident. It is as political as it gets, my friends...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/01...30b3e21f3b1fde

Kraut has a great video about how the Marxist are quite wrong about the emergence of the nuclear family, and don't let the title turn you off.

[cheby]

Kraut has a great video about how the Marxist are quite wrong about the emergence of the nuclear family, and don't let the title turn you off.

Marxists are wrong about pretty much everything. Making shitholes out of great cities is just another proof of that.

[feudist]

Marxists are wrong about pretty much everything. Making shitholes out of great cities is just another proof of that.

Are they "wrong" or is creating widespread misery an intermediate step in achieving a desired End State?
I think what they're wrong about is that the End State of communism exists at all. You have "Permanent Revolution", AKA Activism in the US, until you reach violent anarchy. Then a dictatorship emerges, and then that Who song gets covered.
Again.

[RevolverRob]

The shear number of people entering the country at the southern border is going to transform America. Especially demographically. Crime and corruption will be on par with the third world.

It's sad to witness what is happening.

Maybe we're witnessing two different plights. But the homeless and vagrancy problems that I have witnessed in the United States, and particularly those in the Pacific Northwest, where I lived in the Seattle-area and worked in downtown Seattle as recently as December of last year, are made up almost entirely of individuals from 16-45 and virtually all of them are speaking English and are white or black.

Now, if you're arguing that it is through our southern border that fentanyl is coming in, that is true, but the United States has had a vagrancy problem since the late-1960s and continues to have one today. The National Institute of Health and Department of Health and Human Services has done studies and found that our extreme form of vagrancy is largely attributable almost entirely to the lack of state-run institutions and deinstitutionalization.

Fentanyl is merely the current drug of choice, alcohol, heroin, crack, Oxy, fentanyl - at the end of the day the problem is not the source of the drugs. The problem is associated with the fundamental reason why people take those drugs. And the reason is self-medication for a variety of mental and physical ailments.

[Clusterfrack]

...Fentanyl is merely the current drug of choice, alcohol, heroin, crack, Oxy, fentanyl - at the end of the day the problem is not the source of the drugs. The problem is associated with the fundamental reason why people take those drugs. And the reason is self-medication for a variety of mental and physical ailments.

Or maybe it's because drugs are enjoyable, and some people prefer the homeless drug addict lifestyle over being sober and gainfully employed?

[45dotACP]

Or maybe it's because drugs are enjoyable, and some people prefer the homeless drug addict lifestyle over being sober and gainfully employed?

I feel like it is not controversial to assert that while taking drugs may be fun, being an addict is likely to be incredibly unpleasant.

Most of the addicts I've seen in hospital have had extraordinary amounts of self hatred, no doubt because they knew they were an addict, but some also realized the person who ruined their life was staring them in the face every time they look in the mirror. Perfectly reasonable to hate yourself if you've ruined relationships with your family, abused your children and were otherwise just a miserable cunt to be around.

I knew one who was brought in after an alcoholic bender and he had been beating his wife and daughter pretty badly so they just left while he was in hospital. He remarked that he felt like attempting suicide.

That day, as much as my oath is to help those in need (and I did inform the psychiatrist and he was admitted to an inpatient psych unit) I could not help but agree with his conclusion that the world would be better without him in it. Every now and then...I find myself thinking that I hope he never found his family and that he was successful in his suicide.

But that's a pretty dark path to go down. No doubt his wife thought he was romantic, steady, loving and most definitely husband material when she told him "I do." and no doubt his parents thought he was the cutest baby when they bounced him on their knee and he laughed and made their hearts overflow with joy. Or maybe none of those things were true and he was always a narcissistic, violent asshat who loved smacking around people smaller than himself.

In any case, who am I to decide who the world is and is not better off without? That very easily leads to making all types of assumptions about all types of people, so I can't just write off the homeless and the addicted by saying that they probably just love it. Even that fucking asshole probably didn't love being an addict.

Also, for others, it was extraordinary loss that led to their dependence on drugs or alcohol...loss of family members, jobs, relationships, etc...I met a patient who lost every member of his rather large family in the course of three months. Spouse, kids, siblings, parents...all of them. And it just broke his brain and he remained a junkie until his suicide. Never once did he harm anyone but himself. The world would have been better if he had been in it, and he had been healthy. He was just dealt an extraordinarily poor hand in a short time and it tore his support system right apart and his life was ruined in a way that is almost unfathomable to anyone who has never experienced that type of hardship.

As an addict, he was also a miserable cunt.

I have met more than a few addicts whose family was still involved, because their loved one was a bright kid...honors or AP student, graduated college, but something just went haywire in their brain and they got hooked on something. Every now and then I see myself in the life of one of them, even though I've never used drugs, because but for a few bad judgement calls, I could be in their exact position or worse.


I guess where I'm trying to go in all this rambling is the old adage of "THEY are not YOU" is certainly true, when you stumble across someone whose life has changed due to addiction and their thought processes, morals and opinions are just so different now...or if you stumble across someone who was just a miserable asshole all their life.

But there's probably a life on the other side of this for a load of these guys. The progressive approach of "Well we just need to build them tent cities, enable their drug use, and give them free shit." is not gonna work. It will doubtless keep them trapped in the cycle of using. But I also wonder if that is not a reducto ad absurdum? But the conservative approach of slashing government funding for assistance for homeless people, drug addicts and the mentally ill and having the cops push them off onto some other town isn't gonna work either. But I wonder if that isn't a reducto ad absurdum.

I don't even pretend to know what will work, but as many truths are...the truth probably exists somewhere in the middle.

Anyways, back to the spirit of this thread, Chicago is one of the least Shithole cities of the big liberal cities, but we're doubtless trying very hard to be as shithole as we can. Therefore, I've moved to the suburbs and the wife and I just moved into our house...which is 5min from a BJJ gym and 6 min away from a shooting range. Life's pretty good for now.

[JHC]

Maybe we're witnessing two different plights. But the homeless and vagrancy problems that I have witnessed in the United States, and particularly those in the Pacific Northwest, where I lived in the Seattle-area and worked in downtown Seattle as recently as December of last year, are made up almost entirely of individuals from 16-45 and virtually all of them are speaking English and are white or black.

Now, if you're arguing that it is through our southern border that fentanyl is coming in, that is true, but the United States has had a vagrancy problem since the late-1960s and continues to have one today. The National Institute of Health and Department of Health and Human Services has done studies and found that our extreme form of vagrancy is largely attributable almost entirely to the lack of state-run institutions and deinstitutionalization.

Fentanyl is merely the current drug of choice, alcohol, heroin, crack, Oxy, fentanyl - at the end of the day the problem is not the source of the drugs. The problem is associated with the fundamental reason why people take those drugs. And the reason is self-medication for a variety of mental and physical ailments.

Yep. The rest deleted.

[DDTSGM]

I’m 50 years old, of well above average intelligence, and can be relentlessly motivated when I need to do something important.

I would be absolutely fucked if I had to move to a foreign culture where I didn’t speak the language.

In high school I breezed through calculus with a B. I could have had an A with a modicum of effort. I had to work my ass off to barely pass Spanish. Same story in college. Same story in the military where I had a contract instructor tell me it would be easier to teach everyone in Guatemala to speak English than to teach me Spanish. Same story with Law Enforcement Spanish.

It just doesn’t stick in my brain.

Same deal, Spanish was about the only class I really tried hard to pass in high school because, while I was generally don't give a shit, I didn't want to fail anything. It just didn't stick.

I think when people talk about “assimilation” it would be great for them to give up everything they have, maybe pack a suitcase if they are lucky, then go somewhere where you can’t understand anything anybody says, and every cultural norm and value is incomprehensibly different.

I really wouldn’t want to do that, but if it was the only way I could give my kid a good life, I would do it in a heartbeat.

I'd like to think I'd do the same. One of the reasons I've always thought there needed to be a path to citizen for the 'productive' illegals - those with no criminal record.

[luckyman]

I’m 50 years old, of well above average intelligence, and can be relentlessly motivated when I need to do something important.

I would be absolutely fucked if I had to move to a foreign culture where I didn’t speak the language.

In high school I breezed through calculus with a B. I could have had an A with a modicum of effort. I had to work my ass off to barely pass Spanish. Same story in college. Same story in the military where I had a contract instructor tell me it would be easier to teach everyone in Guatemala to speak English than to teach me Spanish. Same story with Law Enforcement Spanish.

This is the point in the story where people tell me 1) I didn’t have the right book/instructor/immersion experience or 2) I didn’t try hard enough. Fuck off. It just doesn’t stick in my brain.

I think when people talk about “assimilation” it would be great for them to give up everything they have, maybe pack a suitcase if they are lucky, then go somewhere where you can’t understand anything anybody says, and every cultural norm and value is incomprehensibly different.

I really wouldn’t want to do that, but if it was the only way I could give my kid a good life, I would do it in a heartbeat.

Ha I am living this just a little right now. Took 2 years of French in high school. Did fine grade-wise, but compared to everything else it was obviously my weakest subject by far, and not much of it “stuck”.

My wife (who already knows 6 languages; 4 fluently) is working on adding Spanish to that list and has somehow convinced me to learn Spanish at the age of 61. She’s about 5 months into it and I’m 3 months along. Holy shit is it kicking my butt [emoji1787]

I’m having fun though. Taking one 1hour zoom class a week from a Mexican high school teacher actually based in Mexico, plus a couple or three hours homework from him, and maybe 5 hours of duo lingo a week. Plus getting abused by my wife as she tries to converse in Spanish with me randomly during the day. I really wish any US citizen caught berating immigrants for their lack of English skills could be forced to take a foreign language for a couple months.

[cheby]

delete