You can absolutely make rhe case that the origin of the current homelessness crisis goes further back, but it is undeniable that Reagan accelerated the process beyond any other set of post war policies.

You can also point to some short term benefits from that administration but you don’t mention that Reagan (and the party of fiscal responsibility) increased the federal debt from $738 billion to $2.1 trillion, thus transforming the USA from the worlds largest creditor to the worlds largest debtor.

Since Reagan, many people who called themselves conservatives and those who called themselves liberals both embraced neoliberal policies, and some benefited a lot. The long term consequences we see are dissapearing middle class, ever increasing income inequality and record levels of homelessness.

It also seems like no particular person or party is really to blame, these are just the natural results of late stage capitalism, invisible hand of the market and all that.

Good.point.

This is the same reason I don’t trust any Italians from Rome. Those Romans are always going around waging wars of conquest, demanding tributes, look what they did to Carthage! I still hold them dang Romans responsible for all those crucifixions. Horrible!

And don’t even get me started on those Hittites! Constantly conquering people, they had slaves too! Just as bad as the democrats if not worse. Whenever I meet an Assyrian I like to personally thank them for taking care of those Hittite bastards.

Maybe I deserved that. But come to my house we will play some groovy bongo rhythms and I’m sure you will have a good time.

Great question. It turns out protesting doesn’t seem to have that much effect, unless a lot more people participate.

Yes let’s be honest. Your concern for immigration is really just a cover for your racism, isn’t it? Yeah I thought so.

I mostly posted my rant just to be contrary, but I still feel like there is something erroneous to this argument, even tho you do make it seem clear and sensible.

I offer Japan as an example: the whole country is very neat, tidy and orderly. People know that if you see garbage, or something out of place, you put it where it belongs. People take the personal responsibility to clean up after themselves very seriously, and willingly clean up after eachother. As it was explained to me, 'If you’re the first person to see it, then you are the person to take care of it."

So you would expect this baseline indication of ethical behavior to translate into other domains. Surprisingly, people who as a group score very well on this test of self-regulation and ethical behavior seem to have a systemic problem with violence, sexual abuse and sexual harassment against women. https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2017/3/8/sexual-assault-in-japan-every-girl-was-a-victim

It could be that individuals not putting things away is a sign of a deeper societal issue, but group/individual fastidiousness doesn’t seem to generalize to broader ethical adherence.

Maybe there is a mistake somewhere in my thinking.

Nope, I don’t buy it.

• An estimated one out of every 500 Americans is homeless
• Unarmed noncombatant civilian women and children are being bombed, shot, and starved to death.
• There has been a nearly 70% reduction in wild vertebrates worldwide since 1970
• The leading cause of death among children and teens in america is firearms

Privileged westerners could do something about these things, but they are sipping their pumpkin spice lattes and congratulating each other for putting their shopping carts back because, you know, it’s the ultimate test of moral righteousness. Ugh.

What is happening here? Could it be there is a tiny progressive streak in that cold conservative heart of yours? Soon you’ll be admitting black lives really do matter! Glory hallelujah!

You really should get your TDS looked at before it becomes more debilitating

That’s all you got? People so concerned with crime are voting for a criminal, and all you can say is “TDS”! That must be how you deal with your cognitive dissonance.

OK, I can’t argue with that. In my defense I didn’t expect you to come at me with facts and logic, but when you’re right, you’re right.

I would accuse you of playing dumb but I don’t think you are playing.

You should understand that aside from the big cities, most of the state leans right. You should also be able to grasp that local officials have some influence over local political issues, like the implementation of various ballot measures. But you’re so hot to blame them dang ole democrats for ever bad thing, you want to act like you don’t know this?

I wont argue against the fact that democrats are largely useless, but how is going back to the war on drugs a better solution?

Not in Josephine county they aren’t.

It wasn’t democrats dragging their feet (or straight up obstructing) on treatment and social services for Americans in need.

The problem with democrats is that they are dumb for continually trying to collaborate with republicans, who don’t want to cooperate on anything.

Irrelevant. The issue here is the flaw in your thinking: you have been conditioned to believe that every desperate person who crosses that border illegally is a murderer, a rapist, an arsonist, a thief, a drug dealer, etc. You have been conditioned to think this way by a constant stream of propaganda.

undocumented immigrants have substantially lower crime rates than native-born citizens and legal immigrants across a range of felony offenses. Relative to undocumented immigrants, US-born citizens are over 2 times more likely to be arrested for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4 times more likely to be arrested for property crimes. https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2014704117

If someone believes that a person who crosses the border without authorization is by definition a criminal and is subject to consequences, that would be understandable if they weren’t also planning to vote a convicted felon into the Whitehouse.

What Tyler Durden doesn’t tell you is that 260 million dollars were allocated for treatment, housing and employment help, naloxone distribution and other services to help people escape addiction and what happened? Foot dragging happened, and little to no effort was put into actually assisting people in trouble. Very little of the allocated funds were used for their intended purpose, cops got no additional training (despite what pro-cop liars will tell you), aside from “write a ticket”.

What a shocker that decriminalizing and doing nothing else didn’t work out well. The solution? Go back to the war on drugs as if that worked.

I got the top 5 of the attractive list and only arguing online from the other list, so I think that’s cancelled out.

Edit: checked with wife, she says graph is accurate.

Man, if you think inviting Gorbachev to the ranch for a bar-b-q is what ended the cold war you are fooling yourself.

See, I added that part as absurdist contrast to the sensational and terrifying news coverage of immigrants.

I’m not saying I disagree with you, but Putin was also positive about the other guy too. And as shitty as the democrats are, the other guy is not a better choice in my opinion.

Edit: and in addition to that, I recall Don calling Putin “genius” and “savvy” so it seems he has some admiration for someone who shares values with Biden and Harris?

That’s right. Dictators are supporting other dictators.

BBC News, Moscow 9 November 2016 Deputies in Russia’s parliament broke into applause at the news Donald Trump had been elected US president.

Vladimir Putin wasted no time sending his congratulations and state TV channels switched quickly from claims of fraud, to hailing the triumph of the “man of the people”.

Hmm.