I went to my first “meeting” of any kind in years.
It was the first meeting, of a very local ‘Alliance of Charities’ that doesn’t have a real name yet. About 50 people showed up, and as you might expect, every single one of them (of .. us) was a well-meaning do-gooder of one arcane kind or another.
Afterwards, I went up to the only person I knew there, a former boss at a part-time job from 20 years ago, to get re-acquainted. (I had an ulterior, or at least non-social motive).
Once again, even in this nominally liberal setting, I was treated to an earful about Those Homeless–they’re all drunks and addicts, they’re all nuts, they don’t Want To Work.
And once again, in as sugar-coated a way as I could manage, I replied with words that meant: Fuck you. You’re talking about my family–these are the least among my brothers, so you don’t get to run your stupid mouth that way about them. Not to me. Shove your crafty secondhand homilies and your faux street-smart realpolitik. I don’t want it.
I won’t have it.
The hypocrites and moralists–I confess it–are not entirely wrong. Yeah, anyone on the street has problems, and some of those problems are disorders of character, whatever that means, or just plain flaws.
I don’t hesitate to pull my knife when one of them steps too close and violates my robust security concerns. It’s already happened once this year. If necessary, I’ll beat on them until they’re not capable of advancing further in my direction.
But I would never wag my finger at them for what they are, behind their back, or take a superior moral tone about them, like so many dipshits in this world seem so eager to do.
Because the meanest nastiest least moral drunk in the world is still quite capable of freezing to death on a winter’s night with no roof and no coat.
And if they sell their charity coat, or roof, for their next hit, I would still want them to have another, to put off the chill for one more night of life.
You’re more than entitled to feel differently.
And I am entitled to my opinion, about who you really are deep down in the end.
Bonus: where the same garbage values lead geopolitically.
Bonus: What Then, Are We To Do?