Inky: I kind of disagree on the “There is no Them. We are them.” thing. Same for making sure that everyone is fed, warm, and safe. In doing the last three things, you wind up encouraging people to stay while simultaneously decreasing the safety. There’s a local saying… -40F keeps the riff-raff out. As people became more “compassionate,” crime, etc. increased during the winter. The more people worried about the “safety” of the vagrants, the more the vagrants congregated and the more they would hang around towns panhandling, urinating/defecating wherever they chose, and stealing whatever wasn’t welded down. This “compassion” is killing communities and not just places like San Francisco where structural damage is occurring due to the amounts of human urine and/or feces being applied. Last time I was in Billings, MT could see last night’s pools of vomit and urine in building entrances and noticed that several businesses had closed.

Sorry, but I work hard for my money, and I’m not even getting a raise this year due to budgetary issues. I have little patience or sympathy for people not willing to get off their butt and do something productive. We’ve seen the results of getting something for just having been conceived and delivered, and it doesn’t work. What is wrong with expecting people to be productive and to have the common sense to at least be prepared to survive in the environment that they travel to? Why is it my, or my neighbor’s problem when “Bob” slithers into town in a “wifebeater” and sweatpants in the middle of winter and discovers that… no, you can’t get a 6-figure job with 5 felony convictions, current parole status, no training, “Dead Beat” tattooed on your knuckles, and personal hygiene that would make Pig-Pen vomit?

Also, when there is an influx of California and Illinois gang-bangers who bring with them prostitutes, drugs, and violence, it is an us and them situation. The same thing holds true for periodic influxes of Aryan Brotherhood types from Northern Idaho and other areas, who bring their own version of sex, drugs, and violence.

I was thinking more along the lines of the global craziness that seems to have erupted in various countries. Everybody wants to push everybody’s else’s buttons. Kind of like the prelude to WWI. The difference being “Big Bertha” and the “Paris gun” were the height of technology in the 1910’s. The height of technology today involves dropping multi-megaton displays of canned sunshine on multiple targets.

There is also the craziness in the US that seems to espouse “criminals are our ‘misunderstood’ friends.” Any wonder why we’re experiencing record overdoses, a runaway heroin problem, etc. when our leader keeps releasing “non-violent” drug dealers? It truly can’t be a good thing to reduce the sentence on say, somebody who imported >1 metric ton (1,000Kg) of marijuana. Yet, that’s the message being sent. Perhaps it is these “misunderstood friends” who keep trying to pry their way into my house?