Am I excited about another Fetterman? No.

Am I excited about another Bernie? Also no.

Am I excited about cleaning out Susan Collins? Absolutely, and if a Nazi tattoo helps so be it.

Platner is doing what he needs to do: ignore the naysayers, look confident and calm, and stick to the positive.

When leftists argue that if they were in charge people would have to put up with being unsafe, uncomfortable, constantly on alert and can’t expect to use sidewalks, they are making the fascists’ case for them.

It is okay for society to have boundaries on what behavior is acceptable in public.

We have an obligation to address the underlying needs, but that does not mean handing our public spaces over or making “put up with getting shaken down” a condition of using public transit.

I can still stress myself all the way out just by remembering the smells I smelled.

The solution can’t be to gaslight people into not caring about their safety and comfort, because it will not work.

Homelessness makes public spaces harder to use. It drives people into cars, further eroding the social fabric of the community. It increases cortisol, especially for more vulnerable community members.

And that’s not something we can rationalize away.

Homelessness is a form of enclosure. It is taking public space and claiming it for private purpose.

It makes it very obvious how fragile & precarious our social order is.

Desperation so great the social order is ignored is a signal of danger. Ignoring the danger doesn’t make it go away.

I want to be clear: I don’t say this from a lack of empathy. I have been homeless. I have slept on the street.

But the actual solution is giving people houses. It is just easier to shame white liberals into overlooking people on the street than it is to convince even leftists to stop being NIMBYs.

They pretend public opinion is fixed & policy is all that matters, while never naming the racism & sexism involved. They mis-represented a bunch of research & ignored the many more papers that say they are wrong.

This isn’t peer reviewed analysis: it’s centrist activism cosplaying as science.

Curious: how are you planning to pay for this when wages for working people are stagnant? Isn’t it just going to bankrupt the program sooner?

Wouldn’t it make more sense to just fix healthcare funding?