1. Dealing with the mentally ill
As I walked through a suburban town square, a crazy man a hundred feet ahead of me started shouting crazy things.
My first reaction was to tap my pants pocket to ensure I had my pepper spray, then visualized how, if he became aggressive, I’d either evade him or cause him pain. For the moment, he was a potential threat, and I hardened myself to combat him. Thankfully, his rants turned to mumbles and we both went about our day.
It was a quick reminder that sick people can be hard to hard to love.
My reaction was reasonable and prudent, yet made me a bit sad as well. Clearly, his brain was broken. Had he been lying in the street with a broken leg, I would have leaped into action to help him. Instead, I visualized how to hurt him.
It reminded me of this woman who had a freakout on an airplane, now known for saying 'that motherf***er back there is not real' among other gems.
She wasn’t an “angry Karen” or a bad person. She was someone in the midst of mental crises, who’s now the subject of media reporting around the world, and viral fame of her at her worst. In short, her breakdown became public entertainment disguised as news.
People with mental problems are hard to help as well.
Our “homeless” problem is a bit of a misleading term, since it’s really not about homes. Only a small portion of people living on the streets would benefit from lower housing prices or even a free home. A few are campers, but most are mentally ill or drug addicts or, usually, both. Yet our government policies treat them as though their problem is poverty. We treat them as though they’re not sick.
If every mentally disturbed person living on the street had an injury we could see, we’d fix the problem in days.
Imagine if San Francisco were hit by an earthquake, with thousands of injured people on the sidewalk. We would swing into action with first responders, the military, and triage centers. There’d be no political fights, debate about budgets or even conversations about the rights of patients resistant to help.
But, of course, the people strewn on the sidewalks aren’t earthquake victims. They can look and act like somewhat healthy people, which is at the very heart of the problem. They’re not.
In too many cities, government solutions treat them like those down on their luck and try to make their lives better: allowing them to camp on public streets, giving them money and other minor assistance, helping them be “safer” drug users through clean needles, and allowing them to violate the rules of society under the banner of “don’t criminalize poverty.”
This misplaced compassion perpetuates a living hell for thousands of broken people.
Poverty isn’t a new human phenomenon, and societies throughout time and the world have done better than we’re doing today. We’re the world’s richest country and can solve this, but only when we start treating the mentally ill as people who can no longer help themselves.
2. Fox News stock rises to before its April foolishness
I tweeted this out yesterday and it got a bit of attention. Mediaite, the Drudge Report and the Daily Mail all featured it. Fox is slowly recovering from its ratings drop, and still faces another massive lawsuit that it’ll likely settle, but things are starting to return to normal for the channel.
3. Tim Tebow ramps up fight against trafficking
Former quarterback Tim Tebow deserves some attention for combatting human trafficking and child sexual abuse.
Tebow's foundation reports a decade-long accomplishment of rescuing 2,000 victims and prosecuting over 500 traffickers. For his 36th birthday, Tebow is launching a $1 million fundraising campaign to further expose and combat child sexual abuse. He’s 70% of the way there.
The foundation reveals that more than 50,000 images of unidentified children undergoing abuse are in a global database, and the foundation helps uncover their identities and whereabouts. They say two child abuse media pieces are produced every second.
— Ken
True come to LA CA or San Fran & see the homeless citywide
Odd most homeless go to the Westside of LA since cooler vs Eastern
& we have ex felons mixed in with homeless
We need to re estd Mental asylums BUT use New Tech, therapies:
Pet, Light, music, movie, diet therapies to work & others
NO 1960s rerun issues
Yours is one of the more realistic assessments of the “homeless” problem, or “houseless” as Oregon has taken to renaming it. And while most people realize it is often a choice of lifestyle, efforts continue to build more “affordable housing” which sadly is likely a future slum. Aiding and abetting drug use and legalizing dangerous drugs, also now accomplished in Oregon, one of the bluer blue states, just makes the whole problem much worse. How would you solve it?