Quote of the day—Danny Westneat

On Friday, 10 days after five people were shot in an apparent drug deal gone bad, city officials and various nonprofit groups met at City Hall to talk about what to do about the city’s homelessness emergency. They seemed bizarrely put off at the idea of shutting The Jungle to homeless access.

One talked of The Jungle’s “sense of community.” Another said some Jungle inhabitants would be worse off if they were uprooted. Others said it was stigmatizing to even call it The Jungle, preferring “Beacon Hill greenbelt.”

Instead, ideas for aiding The Jungle ranged from putting lockers under the freeway so the homeless could store their belongings, to providing encampments with bins for used hypodermic needles.

It was at this mention of needle bins that Dustin Davies and Angel Johnson couldn’t take it anymore. They burst into incredulous laughter and left the council chambers.

Davies was an alcoholic and meth addict who was homeless until 19 months ago. Johnson was a drug addict and prostitute who has been sober 12 years. In recovery, both have been helping the homeless through charity groups.

They came to the meeting to say that the very worst thing you could do for the denizens of The Jungle is keep it open. That the idea was even discussed seemed crazy to them.

Danny Westneat
February 5, 2016
Keeping Jungle open is the opposite of compassion
[“The Jungle” was a Seattle homeless encamping area over six years ago. This is the same author on last Saturday:

I’ve argued in this space for more than a decade now that allowing these makeshift encampments is a humanitarian catastrophe — back to the days of The Jungle, which itself was only closed after a mass shooting. The shantytowns are an embarrassment to both Seattle and the liberal project.

The “city officials’ have been told their ideas are crazy for many years and the data is there to back up those claims. Yet they insist the world should change to match their beliefs rather than their beliefs change to match reality. This, by some definitions, is insanity. A diagnosis of evil also fits the available data.

Prepare and respond appropriately.—Joe]

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7 thoughts on “Quote of the day—Danny Westneat

  1. So we keep the border wide open, and welcome all. In a homeless crisis? With the only homes available being over-priced. OK. Got it.
    Let me channel Will Rogers and suggest; It’s a good thing we don’t get all the evil we pay for?
    If one no longer wants the homeless drug addicts. I would say simply close the southern border drug routes. And quit paying people to be homeless.
    But how else are they going to get you to own nothing, rely totally on government. And be happy about it?
    Homeless junkie-ism IS the new world order. Hell, I even heard in so. Oregon that helping homeless was a money-making growth industry.
    Just like HUD is one of the biggest scams ever created. No one is truly trying to stop homelessness. There is far to much money, power, and control in it.

    • I suspect it’s “pretending to help the homeless” rather than actually helping them. Remember that you don’t want to solve the problem that government programs claim to want to solve, because then the worthless parasites being paid by the tax dollars going to those programs would be out of a job and would have to try to find real employment.
      I have long viewed “reverend” Al Sharpton as the canonical example of the sort of people who live off of other’s misery. I call him a “misery pimp” for that reason.

      • I don’t know that the Helping Professions are pretending, but once they get a salary and an organization, actually helping the homeless loses a priority or two to protecting one’s phony baloney job and organization.

      • Exactly pkoning. I had a friend that worked in a government program that paid welfare recipients utility bills. One month a year I believe.
        She said that only 10 cents of every dollar made it to the street.
        Ya, we don’t have clue as to how deep the rot is. Good thing the smell tells you all you need to know.

  2. The Local Big City just built a secure homeless campus of 30-ish “tiny homes” for the homeless. They have on-site laundry, showers and restrooms and a management staff. The latest resident to depart his beloved free housing burned it to the ground. Fire station immediately across the street. Too late! $50,000 replacement cost.

    Tangent: University engineering students just designed, built, and installed a solar charging module mounted atop a Little Free Library so the homeless may charge their cellphones and laptops. Good for them!
    Seeing as it is mounted at head height, I predict a lifetime of two or three days before terminal vandalism. But, I’m cynical.

  3. I feel sorry for Davies and Johnson, though.

    Imagine their reaction: they have, through the grace of God and their own willpower, managed to claw their way out of the pits of addiction and madness… and find that their so-called elected officials want to keep others in that pit.

  4. ”A diagnosis of evil also fits the available data.” A far stronger case can be made for a diagnosis of evil than for “craziness” or stupidity, actions and assertions over time, in the face of mass destruction, being the more potent one.

    When one experiences consistent negative consequences, up to and including mass death, and yet holds steadfast to his assertions, and even doubles down, and this behavior remains for centuries undeterred, I don’t see any other diagnosis as plausible. We’re dealing with enemy action and, until we fully realize that, there is no possibility of any sort of appropriate response.

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