Well said. I live in Seattle and we're certainly living the reality you described in most of those paragraphs. Drug dealers everywhere. Humans trafficked for sex slavery line up on Aurora Ave N between 85th and 145th soliciting their next John. High Schoolers packing (trafficked) heat at school. Housing provided gratis. Cash assistance flowing. We'll never have enough "affordable housing" which is usually subsidized housing, so how is that affordable, and for who? Certainly not the taxpayers. We're a Mecca for illegal immigrants. It was all benign in the 80s and 90s, but things got real during the Biden years. We're a sanctuary city. Yikes. We also have a ever-growing homeless population of people who mostly aren't from here that won't stay in shelters, only tiny houses, and even when we get them an apartment, they keep their tent for their nefarious pursuits of fencing, prostitution, and drug use. Half the people who live here are thinking of moving and there's no end in sight. Our state was the only state in the whole Union that went further left. The neoprogressive hold on us is suffocating. Between the tech bros voting leftist, the college student voting leftist and the wealthy white women voting leftist, it's depressing.
I’m confused at how educated people can observe their favored policies making things WORSE and not draw the proper conclusions, but: (1) education is no guard against ideology. The kind of education we give youth today inculcates and protects ideology, and doesn’t question it (2) emotional impulses and ideological assumptions are powerful. When you combine these with a sense that the ‘other side’ is bad you have millions of people literally willing to go down with the ship rather than adjust their priors. Corrupt statists use this kind of affiliation and motivated reasoning often. Look at socialists in Argentina, or the ANC is South Africa. Riots in the streets, hyperinflation, brownouts and blackouts for 1 of every 3 days… and still the voters vote at they’re told. It’s incredibly discouraging. WA is a beautiful state but perhaps it’s time to move.
I live in a sanctuary city, which is experimenting with universal basic income—participants chosen by lottery after demonstrating low-income. What I find particularly irksome is the difference in housing for American homeless vs illegal aliens. The illegal population gets a hotel with a room they can stay in — all day, if they wish. The homeless can get a bed in a shelter when the shelter opens but must leave when the shelter closes. Thus, the homeless spend the day in parks, on benches, on sidewalks, wherever they can. Illegals are given a home; homeless are given temporary shelter. Temporary shelter only makes sense if one’s position is temporary but some of our homeless residents have been on the streets for years. This disparity in treatment of two populations—one, American citizens, the other illegal aliens—is heart- wrenching.
I’m a combat veteran who spent most of 2024 living in my car. Believe me-I hear you.
Choosing a distinct, favored group (based on ideological predilection and a kind of gushing empathy) and then showering them with EXTRA benefits only makes sense if you’re trying to encourage as many as possible to arrive.
The age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. Voluntarily reduce your country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stav there and work to improve your living conditions.
Well said. I live in Seattle and we're certainly living the reality you described in most of those paragraphs. Drug dealers everywhere. Humans trafficked for sex slavery line up on Aurora Ave N between 85th and 145th soliciting their next John. High Schoolers packing (trafficked) heat at school. Housing provided gratis. Cash assistance flowing. We'll never have enough "affordable housing" which is usually subsidized housing, so how is that affordable, and for who? Certainly not the taxpayers. We're a Mecca for illegal immigrants. It was all benign in the 80s and 90s, but things got real during the Biden years. We're a sanctuary city. Yikes. We also have a ever-growing homeless population of people who mostly aren't from here that won't stay in shelters, only tiny houses, and even when we get them an apartment, they keep their tent for their nefarious pursuits of fencing, prostitution, and drug use. Half the people who live here are thinking of moving and there's no end in sight. Our state was the only state in the whole Union that went further left. The neoprogressive hold on us is suffocating. Between the tech bros voting leftist, the college student voting leftist and the wealthy white women voting leftist, it's depressing.
I’m confused at how educated people can observe their favored policies making things WORSE and not draw the proper conclusions, but: (1) education is no guard against ideology. The kind of education we give youth today inculcates and protects ideology, and doesn’t question it (2) emotional impulses and ideological assumptions are powerful. When you combine these with a sense that the ‘other side’ is bad you have millions of people literally willing to go down with the ship rather than adjust their priors. Corrupt statists use this kind of affiliation and motivated reasoning often. Look at socialists in Argentina, or the ANC is South Africa. Riots in the streets, hyperinflation, brownouts and blackouts for 1 of every 3 days… and still the voters vote at they’re told. It’s incredibly discouraging. WA is a beautiful state but perhaps it’s time to move.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/scout-mindset?r=1neg52
I live in a sanctuary city, which is experimenting with universal basic income—participants chosen by lottery after demonstrating low-income. What I find particularly irksome is the difference in housing for American homeless vs illegal aliens. The illegal population gets a hotel with a room they can stay in — all day, if they wish. The homeless can get a bed in a shelter when the shelter opens but must leave when the shelter closes. Thus, the homeless spend the day in parks, on benches, on sidewalks, wherever they can. Illegals are given a home; homeless are given temporary shelter. Temporary shelter only makes sense if one’s position is temporary but some of our homeless residents have been on the streets for years. This disparity in treatment of two populations—one, American citizens, the other illegal aliens—is heart- wrenching.
I’m a combat veteran who spent most of 2024 living in my car. Believe me-I hear you.
Choosing a distinct, favored group (based on ideological predilection and a kind of gushing empathy) and then showering them with EXTRA benefits only makes sense if you’re trying to encourage as many as possible to arrive.
The age of mass migration is over. Importing millions of people who will work for next to nothing just to be here destroys the wages of working class Americans and drives up housing costs when we can't house our own citizens. People cannot overpopulate their home country and just expect to move to greener pastures. There are no more green pastures. Voluntarily reduce your country's population to an environmentally sustainable level, stav there and work to improve your living conditions.
XXX