You’re not wrong about calling out the hypocrisy of an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude, however, I do wonder how the homeless who either don’t want help or can’t make an affirmative decision for help would be treated in your Marxist utopia.

2 They would be its leaders along with the Stranger writers. We’d all be dead in a year as no food or anything else would be made. Maybe when the drug production would also end with this leadership would they actually realize what they are asking for. Probably not.

Yet again, Charles lazily riffs on other writers and events to meet his production quota. Yawn. The only ‘news’ in this post is the reconfirmation of what we already know: there exists no known force in the universe strong enough to compel the “journalists” at the Stranger to admit drug addiction and/or mental illness, not economics, drive homelessness in Seattle — and attract the already-homeless to Seattle.

One can agree with Charles's quasi-Marxian meta-take on this jingoistic display (I do, more or less) and still seek to protect the environment, people and pets we care about from the suffering and damage it inflicts. It's not an either/or proposition.

W the actual F?! Blue Angels and homeless camps? What a fcking narrow minded (Seattle focused) and tenuous grasp at an analogy. If we ban the Blue Angels we will hide our military spending from sight?! Just like sweeping those disgusting camps hides the mental illness/drug epidemic?! TS and Charles have truly lost their grip on reality.

Yeah. We should get rid of the military - so that countries like Russia and N Korea can put us all into camps. (Not homeless camps either - those would be cushy in comparison.)

Just like “defunding the police” has been sooo successful in improving the average citizens daily experience. (Hello random shootings of pregnant people in downtown.)

W T A F?!

TRILLIONS of dollars spent maintaining expensive weapons of mass destruction while people live on the streets and starve. Get rid of the jets. House people. Feed people. Provide health care. The military budget of this country could literally be cut to an 1/8 of what it is, would still be extremely robust, and there would be no unhoused, unfed, cared for people in this country.

@9
Bingo xina
our Love for
Billionaires's
Blinded us so badly
we cease to see Causation

'The Suffering
Our Rich Society
Deliberately Throws
onto Its Streets Does Not
Go Away When It’s Out of Sight'

yeah
but if we
just Schweep
them Away, it's
Most Fulfilling! (we're
not actually Fooled). [yes, we Are]!

It’s been a long time since I lived in my parents basement. What’s it like for you Kristofarian while you’re in your forties? Does your mom still make you dinner?

if she hadn't died
9 years ago I'd be
Delighted to share
a Meal with her. So
kind of you to inquire

subby.
now Fuck Off.

oh.
it's not Me
it's just your
Cognitive Dissonances
coming home to Roost. apologies.

@9: xina, you are completely correct. Solving “Seattle’s” homelessness crisis would require resources appropriate to a national effort; Seattle cannot alone feed, house, and treat the multitude of persons who have arrived in town already homeless, already unemployed, and already addicted, or already suffering from other mental disorders. Blaming little Seattle for failing to cope with a national problem is cruel victim-blaming of a once-wonderful city.

@1, @15: First, you’d need the Stranger to admit many of the homeless use drugs, and there’s never been any indication the Stranger might do this. Second, the Stranger does not actually seem to care what happens to the homeless. Sure, they blame the deaths of homeless persons (carefully omitting any mention of drugs or violence in the camps, of course) on politicians the Stranger opposes anyway, but they never seem to care about any actual homeless persons. (Even their sympathetic profile of Cuba and his fellow RV campers never asked why they didn’t just move to any of the many places in Washington and the United States with a far lower cost of living.)

The Stranger mostly seems to want as many homeless encampments as possible, disrupting as many middle- and low-income Seattle neighborhoods as possible, and hurting as many housed persons in those neighborhoods as possible with thefts and assaults. Perhaps the Stranger just wants to punish everyone else in Seattle for having built a prosperous city?

Not everyone is comfortable with ironies, nevertheless we love animals and eat meat, bitch about the military industrial complex but love it when the Blue Angels give us 1000 mph hearing loss and step on homeless folks as we teeter back to our expensive homes after a night on the town, drowning our misery in alcohol, fully aware that it causes organ damage and can lead to automotive catastrophe.

Seattleites bask in this Pacific Northwest Chataqua as a show of military strength and muscle flexing to let the world know that we are mighty and prosperous enough to have our own underclass, just like the Third World countries we subordinate.

And considering ironies, how many Trump supporters are down there at the Stan Sayers Pits at this very moment, guzzling beer and peeing in the lake?

The Sea fair Festival may be our way of admitting that we’re no better than any other city. We have preposterous gun crime, a festering homeless problem and transportation issues that rival any metropolis, so why not get loaded, run around naked in Seward Park and watch the Blue Angels?

The homeless tragedy, as Mr. Mudede duly mentioned, is too big of a social and economic problem for this city administration to tackle, so it just keeps getting worse, as many posters have aptly pointed out.

Everything is about making money, and people profit off the misery of the homeless by writing about it in the Stranger or developing governmental policy to address it, while enabling it by advocating soft-on-drug laws in the name of free will and life, liberty and happiness.

The Seafair races bring in tons of wealth for the City of Seattle, while all the progressives jump up and down about the colossal greenhouse effects from burning thousands of gallons of fuel for an air show.

Many of these same altruists are on the lake, enjoying the show and saying “pass the shrimp’.

Local industries like Boeing rake in the money developing and constructing the FA-18 jets the Blue Angels miraculously fly over a densely populated area at warp speed, as we again ignore the catastrophic possibilities in the name of American bravado and entertainment value.

So, you see, this entire discussion centers on earning profits, in spite of the agitations of Mr. Mudede, the avowed Marxist, who made money writing this article.

@18 Who do you think pays all the money that is going to the homeless? Who does the work to make that money?

@19: I was going to post something along those lines. But thank you.

In Marxist/Communist societies, you get a work assignment. You might be able to volunteer to do something the state wants. But if they don't, you get a job that they need done. Or else.

In the most successful examples of Communist communities, the kibbutzim, you see how long you'll last not doing any work before they march you to the gate.

how do they do it
in Scandinavia?

must the Democratic Socialists
Toe the Line there too?
have they gone Full
Commie yet?

@22: Wages and salaries tend to be higher in the US than in Europe, because the US has a higher cost of living.

(https://talentup.io/blog/united_states_salaries_vs_europe_salaries/#:~:text=States%20Salaries%20vs.-,Europe%20Salaries,skilled%20and%20high%2Dpaying%20jobs.)

Either way, as @23 notes, the economic basis in both the US and Europe is capitalist, not socialist. Europeans simply desire (or maybe tolerate) a larger governmental presence in their labor markets than do Americans. That doesn’t make either side of the Atlantic better or worse than the other, just different.

Don’t confuse Kristo with facts.

Not sure about the "houses on the San Juan Islands," but maybe the cost of getting there and building there? Anyway, great article as always. I agree. We cannot fix what we do not see. That has been the problem with addressing racism for centuries. Whites often never see how blacks are really treated. Men do not see how women are treated. This is the point of getting attention with protests. Military institutions are so common they are not really seen anymore. Starving people are not seen by those who have the power to change things. On and on and on. At 73, I have moved closer to believing in the power of violent disruption as a tool for change than I would have ever thought possible. Just to make people SEE.

@29: Ask the voters if they want lower wagers, lower salaries, and higher taxes. Then tell them all the results of their sacrifices will get promptly flushed down the exact same toilet which has abjectly failed to address homelessness in Seattle for most of a decade. Then rage hatefully against the voters for the answer they give you.

Any solution would start with “ilk” like writers at the Stranger no longer pushing the exact same policies which have already failed catastrophically for many years. When you get them to stop making the problem worse, then you can ask anyone else for how to starting cleaning up the enormous mess. Good luck with that.

@31: Tell us you’re never going to do anything useful, without having the guts to admit in as many words that you’re never going to do anything useful.

BTW, the government which has fumbled and stumbled through half a billion dollars and seven years of homelessness persons dying is the one right here in Seattle, elected mostly with endorsements from the Stranger. So you can quit your gutlessly cynical whining about the problem being shadowy cabals of faraway rich guys. Voters in Seattle no longer believe increased taxation will accomplish anything positive. (Have someone read that last sentence to you many times, so the enormity of Seattle’s failure can begin to sink in, even through your thick skull.)

And yes, I do believe Lisa Vach might still be alive, if she and Travis Berge and all the rest had been rousted from their encampments every few hours or days, instead of being left to die in Cal Anderson Park. But Seattle didn’t care enough about her to do that for her. (And since to you, she’s just a dead homeless woman, you won’t care enough to read about her, and so I won’t waste my l time providing you with urls and quotes about her.)

@33: No, my #1 fanboy, I no longer reside in Brooklyn, so I cannot say how things go there now. I reside in a completely different part of New York State. Unlike Seattle, we have no homeless problem here, because our winters are too cold to camp outdoors, and also because we arrest persons who steal for drug money (or who steal for any other reason, really).

I have to wonder: how often does Charles lean back from his keyboard, crack a smile and say, “I can believe I’m getting paid for this”?

@36
tentsy's
Hate for tS
& progressivism
forces him to revenge post

he's here to make Certain
tS'd Death &/or dismem-
berment precedes his.

yet another Ex-
cellent post
'Fanboy.'

@36, @37: I’ve already explained elsewhere how my love for the place Seattle once was, and may yet again be, animates my comments here.

I won’t waste your time repeating it further, because your chronic behaviors demonstrate how the idea of putting any effort into something which has no immediate, tangible, personal benefit is not an idea you can ever possibly understand.

Now run along, and castigate mike blob, xina, and anyone else here who dares comment at the Stranger without residing in Seattle. I wouldn’t want to distract you from an activity which is obviously very important to you.