Your sharing of your recent Oregon experience brought tears to my eyes, Naomi, for both you and me. I live on the edge of Portland and have been here since 2011. I first visited in 2003 after my daughter and son-in-law moved here from Central Coast California where they both grew up. At that time it seemed magically weird and the homeless were mostly teen-aged runaways. Going downtown for shopping, a concert, a wonderful restaurant was fun, entertaining and special. It was still like that in 2011. Now I have not been downtown since 2019 and have no plans to return. I do not want to see the large encampments, although they are beginning to filter into the suburbs. Many of us have realized that the millions of dollars thrown at the problem along with all of the political posturing about getting those living rough off of the streets have made no lasting difference. Multomah County now has around 6000 unhoused and Oregon has the third highest rate in the country. My heart and soul grieve for what is no longer. People still try to be optimistic about this once thriving city, but I am not one of them. In fact, it is very much on my mind to return to Southern Indiana where my brother and I grew up on a small farm near a small town and people are not walking around outside wearing masks. At 74 my Soul needs a change.
Always so evocative! I love the way you describe everything. It's perfection. :-)
RE: the testimony of the poly-person. Childish. Immature. Unrealistic. But if grown adults all consent to the group huddle, then that's their business. Dragging minors into it is unethical and wrong and should remain illegal.
Umm, you don't work, you don't eat according to the New Testament (2 Thess.3:10).
IOW you might be "unhoused" for a good reason, notwithstanding that drugs, alcohol and mental illness are a large part of being homeless.
Two, Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ - which is pretty hard to do if you claim to be Christian and believe the New Testament. Ergo the rest of the nonsense follows, however bizarre - transgenderism and all the other current politically correct du jour causes.
We lost everything years ago, sealed by two weeks to stop the spread, chanted in I Can’t Breathe and From the River to the Sea and Branded Non-Binary… all we need now is brain chip to solidify this forever.
Re: "But the result of these efforts...seemed to be that more and more “unhoused”...people were flocking to this sweet little goodhearted town."
If you feed the pigeons you get more pigeons. I discovered this years ago when my neighbors were "helping" homeless in the park across the street. Soon I (a single woman) had people banging on my door in wee hours, either screaming (in which case I'd call 911) or asking "Is this the mission?" and asking for a blanket or something similar.
I think the problem isn't so much mental illness as it is illegal drugs which can cause symptoms similar to mental illness. Americans want their illegal drugs and there's not a thing anyone can do about this.
It seems a small minority are truly down on their luck and employable. Those are easy to deal with.
For all of your informed, elegant, fluid, fluent writing, especially your flow of adjectives, I’m stunned that any of this outcome surprises you. Logic and anticipation of human behavior have been abandoned here. Personal responsibility is a form of dignity. Efforts should focus on empowering not patronizing. I know some folks just can’t get to a good place and need lots of help but what you describe is a self perpetuating sub culture totally dependent on others —who could abandon them. And the polyamory bit- I can’t see how that ends well.
Re: "But the result of these efforts...seemed to be that more and more “unhoused”...people were flocking to this sweet little goodhearted town."
If you feed the pigeons you get more pigeons. I discovered this years ago when my neighbors were "helping" homeless in the park across the street. Soon I (a single woman) had people banging on my door in wee hours, either screaming (in which case I'd call 911) or asking "Is this the mission?" and asking for a blanket or something similar.
I think the problem isn't so much mental illness as it is illegal drugs which can cause symptoms similar to mental illness. Americans want their illegal drugs and there's not a thing anyone can do about this.
It seems a small minority are truly down on their luck and employable.
I worked for a private tree planting crew in the north cascades, planted in and around Sultan, Rockport and Concrete washington. Did a lot of thinning on a ranch north of Coburg!
Up here in British Columbia, Canada, incredibly addicts and others in need of our public health system can have a hospital bed and have a knife up to four inches long with them. There have been stabbings of nurses, paramedics, causing alarm. BUT the NDP in Victoria wants the homeless and addicts who find their way into a hospital room to have the right to keep their knives. The government's policy is to instruct health care workers NOT to confiscate weapons from patients doing drugs or threateningly waving around knives etc.
Oddly, what causes everyone to snap to attention in public health are the no smoking signs. A nurse can get stabbed on the job in a hospital, but must understand the 'bigger societal issues' that lead to drug addicts needing to have their knives in a hospital setting, while having zero tolerance for smoking cigarettes indoors.
Your discussion about what is happening for the Kirtan community in this 'idyllic' Oregon town, reminds me of two recent conversations. One with a gay couple (one a retired nurse) who still wear masks to this day. Their 20-something adopted son has got all the boosters (up to 7 I think) and since last spring/summer 2023 has a very rare autoimmune disease: hidradenitis suppurativa. While another retired couple I know have a 40-something daughter that spent over a week in hospital and is diagnosed with Guillain–Barré Syndrome. The daughter is also up-to-date with her boosters. But in both cases, it would be inconceivable for any of these fully vaccinated aging parents to imagine that the rare and serious health issues of their respective adult children could have anything to do with the 'safe and effective' vaccines.
Your mentioning of the spreading homeless community had me thinking of something:when me and my husband were dropped off in Bangkok close to Khao San road at 4:00 AM a few weeks ago: in the hippie backpacker enclave, we noticed several dozen, perhaps 50 or 60, Thai people sleeping in a parking lot. Homeless people were never ever a feature in Thailand: sometimes you had beggars at local markets, perhaps mothers with young children or the visibly disabled playing an accordion for spare change, but they always went somewhere at night that was not out in the open. Now the homeless in Thailand don't have tents like America's homeless do. Only half of them even seemed to have basic plastic mats to sleep on that kept them off the bare cement and I wondered what they would do when it was raining. But I began to see them everywhere in the area under the shadow of the Grand Palace. Most did not seem drunk or addicted to anything. They had simply been left behind by an economic system that prioritizes the few at the expense of the many. Perhaps their family land had been taken.
The Covid catastrophe is reaping bitter fruits all over the world...
"The Covid catastrophe is reaping bitter fruits all over the world..." and that's exactly what it was meant to do. It's a hoax intended to destroy and control and too many believed the government lies and went along with it!
I have watched Naomi learn about reality in the last few years since people started realizing that it was all Kayfabe, all professional wrestling, all fake, all lies, and all satanic. I'd love to talk to you face to face Naomi and congratulate you for finally "seeing the light". But I probably can't and won't ever get that pleasure. But I want to give you a suggestion. Don't poo-poo it, please. This is the most important thing you can include with your fake virus, fake testing, fake (but poisonous) vaxxes that Big Drug along with the Medical Mafia have foisted on us as gullible, cognitive dissonant, spoiled, useful idiots have finally are starting to come to grips with. Leftist statists, fascist/commies, all "D's" and 95+% of the "R's" find themselves trapped inside the Matrix, just like Keanu Reaves and Laurence Fishburne's movie portrays.
There is a way out. But you have to do some homework until you believe. It is real and it is scary. But it is happening. The sooner you get on the right side of the money problem, the better your entire life will become. The longer you wait, or even worse reject what will go down in world history as the most pristine, and apex discovery/invention of all time.... Bitcoin. All you need is a little push down the "Rabbit Hole". It's a remarkable journey.
Fake fiat Ponzi scheme money, led by the insidious US$ dollar, is crashing the entire 160 world currencies, all the nation states except El Salvador, and with it the Armageddon we have all thought was for another time. It is here now and it is happening. Fake fiat enables perpetual warmongering, lies, false narratives, propaganda, slavery, poverty, despair, massive inequality through inflation/debasement of the fake money while the 1% or .1% own more wealth than about 60% of the lower quintiles of people in the world today.
Bitcoin, is the most perfect money ever. Eventually all $900 Trillion of fiat debt will be consumed by Bitcoin. All wealth will be redistributed and repriced in Bitcoin. It won't happen instantly. It will be like Ernest Hemingway's bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises, gradually then suddenly. A perfect world awaits those who survive. Not everybody will survive. I call it God's Money. Learn it, study it, love it and live it. Peace, Truth, Freedom, Hope and Abundance for all 8 Billion on the planet awaits us. Thank you.
""" Being the epitome of a liberal, Naomi blames it on “the China/Globalist entities interested in dividing our country.” But of course it is not “China/Globalist entities.” It is dumbshit Democrats. Knowing that Naomi is intelligent, I am having a bit of trouble with this. Perhaps she is making fun of Americans who blame foreigners for all of their problems. Or perhaps she is spreading the blame around in hopes of surviving her exercise of free speech.
I doubt that Naomi really believes that the Chinese, not the blue Democrats, are responsible for a Unitarian ministry called “Parents as Sexuality Educators.” The church curriculum involves parents teaching “Ethical Non-Monogamy.”
Naomi, even when she is confused, is worth reading. She usually ends up at the right place. """
I agree that Democrats and leftists often won't/can't admit that it's their own policies that lead down the road to destruction for everyone, even when they are starting to see the light. But China is playing a role too. It's both.
Democrats are (very) generally deluded and self-infatuated, etc. etc. and etc. I grew up in Greenwich Village with hippy Democrat parents, yadda yadda yadda. But there is no question that dark forces outside our nation are helping things along; One small example, China sends fentanyl through Mexico and into America to erode and kill in the heartland. One big example, Covid came from the Wuhan lab in China along with fake fear porn of China citizens dropping in the streets, and they had no use for the "95% effective" Pfizer vaccine. The only people dropping in the streets are those who vaxxed against this mild flu.
The invasion of the US (condensed version) : Mayorkas (Tribe), runs the operation. He sends money to the head NGO who run the invasion. The NGOs also receive money from private donors (Soros and Bloomberg-both Tribe). The NGOs funnel the invaders through South and Central America, and into Mexico. At the wide open border, the invaders are met by border patrol and NGOs handing out money and phones as they are loaded onto buses to be transported to expensive hotels in major cities. Guess who the top dog NGO is? The one who handles all the money and organization......none other than HAIS. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. By the way, Mayorkas was a top dog at HAIS before coming to the Biden White house.
Don't worry, the entire system will be collapsing soon, causing today's misery to be a minor inconvenience, as the real suffering begins, and all these "marginalized people" that everyone has been so worried about, die in the streets. But all of that will pale, whence compared to the Wars (yes, plural) that we will be in!
And in that moment of total despair, we can finally start to "clean up" all the garbage, and people, and "leaders" that brought us to that lowly place, and for the few of us that survive, the sun will shine once again!
Now, say goodbye everyone, you brought this all on yourselves, so spare us your bitching when it happens!
Your sharing of your recent Oregon experience brought tears to my eyes, Naomi, for both you and me. I live on the edge of Portland and have been here since 2011. I first visited in 2003 after my daughter and son-in-law moved here from Central Coast California where they both grew up. At that time it seemed magically weird and the homeless were mostly teen-aged runaways. Going downtown for shopping, a concert, a wonderful restaurant was fun, entertaining and special. It was still like that in 2011. Now I have not been downtown since 2019 and have no plans to return. I do not want to see the large encampments, although they are beginning to filter into the suburbs. Many of us have realized that the millions of dollars thrown at the problem along with all of the political posturing about getting those living rough off of the streets have made no lasting difference. Multomah County now has around 6000 unhoused and Oregon has the third highest rate in the country. My heart and soul grieve for what is no longer. People still try to be optimistic about this once thriving city, but I am not one of them. In fact, it is very much on my mind to return to Southern Indiana where my brother and I grew up on a small farm near a small town and people are not walking around outside wearing masks. At 74 my Soul needs a change.
Always so evocative! I love the way you describe everything. It's perfection. :-)
RE: the testimony of the poly-person. Childish. Immature. Unrealistic. But if grown adults all consent to the group huddle, then that's their business. Dragging minors into it is unethical and wrong and should remain illegal.
Umm, you don't work, you don't eat according to the New Testament (2 Thess.3:10).
IOW you might be "unhoused" for a good reason, notwithstanding that drugs, alcohol and mental illness are a large part of being homeless.
Two, Unitarians deny the divinity of Christ - which is pretty hard to do if you claim to be Christian and believe the New Testament. Ergo the rest of the nonsense follows, however bizarre - transgenderism and all the other current politically correct du jour causes.
IOW you want idols. you will get them.
Naomi, you're a treasure.
You might appreciate this podcast on the Police Deception:
https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/k7jpE3Ua2Jb
We lost everything years ago, sealed by two weeks to stop the spread, chanted in I Can’t Breathe and From the River to the Sea and Branded Non-Binary… all we need now is brain chip to solidify this forever.
Re: "But the result of these efforts...seemed to be that more and more “unhoused”...people were flocking to this sweet little goodhearted town."
If you feed the pigeons you get more pigeons. I discovered this years ago when my neighbors were "helping" homeless in the park across the street. Soon I (a single woman) had people banging on my door in wee hours, either screaming (in which case I'd call 911) or asking "Is this the mission?" and asking for a blanket or something similar.
I think the problem isn't so much mental illness as it is illegal drugs which can cause symptoms similar to mental illness. Americans want their illegal drugs and there's not a thing anyone can do about this.
It seems a small minority are truly down on their luck and employable. Those are easy to deal with.
For all of your informed, elegant, fluid, fluent writing, especially your flow of adjectives, I’m stunned that any of this outcome surprises you. Logic and anticipation of human behavior have been abandoned here. Personal responsibility is a form of dignity. Efforts should focus on empowering not patronizing. I know some folks just can’t get to a good place and need lots of help but what you describe is a self perpetuating sub culture totally dependent on others —who could abandon them. And the polyamory bit- I can’t see how that ends well.
Re: "But the result of these efforts...seemed to be that more and more “unhoused”...people were flocking to this sweet little goodhearted town."
If you feed the pigeons you get more pigeons. I discovered this years ago when my neighbors were "helping" homeless in the park across the street. Soon I (a single woman) had people banging on my door in wee hours, either screaming (in which case I'd call 911) or asking "Is this the mission?" and asking for a blanket or something similar.
I think the problem isn't so much mental illness as it is illegal drugs which can cause symptoms similar to mental illness. Americans want their illegal drugs and there's not a thing anyone can do about this.
It seems a small minority are truly down on their luck and employable.
I remember the hoedads!
I worked for a private tree planting crew in the north cascades, planted in and around Sultan, Rockport and Concrete washington. Did a lot of thinning on a ranch north of Coburg!
Thanks for your "Blue State Blues" commentary.
Up here in British Columbia, Canada, incredibly addicts and others in need of our public health system can have a hospital bed and have a knife up to four inches long with them. There have been stabbings of nurses, paramedics, causing alarm. BUT the NDP in Victoria wants the homeless and addicts who find their way into a hospital room to have the right to keep their knives. The government's policy is to instruct health care workers NOT to confiscate weapons from patients doing drugs or threateningly waving around knives etc.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/b-c-tells-nurses-to-ignore-rising-phenomenon-of-armed-patients-doing-drugs-in-hospitals
Oddly, what causes everyone to snap to attention in public health are the no smoking signs. A nurse can get stabbed on the job in a hospital, but must understand the 'bigger societal issues' that lead to drug addicts needing to have their knives in a hospital setting, while having zero tolerance for smoking cigarettes indoors.
Your discussion about what is happening for the Kirtan community in this 'idyllic' Oregon town, reminds me of two recent conversations. One with a gay couple (one a retired nurse) who still wear masks to this day. Their 20-something adopted son has got all the boosters (up to 7 I think) and since last spring/summer 2023 has a very rare autoimmune disease: hidradenitis suppurativa. While another retired couple I know have a 40-something daughter that spent over a week in hospital and is diagnosed with Guillain–Barré Syndrome. The daughter is also up-to-date with her boosters. But in both cases, it would be inconceivable for any of these fully vaccinated aging parents to imagine that the rare and serious health issues of their respective adult children could have anything to do with the 'safe and effective' vaccines.
dear heaven
Your mentioning of the spreading homeless community had me thinking of something:when me and my husband were dropped off in Bangkok close to Khao San road at 4:00 AM a few weeks ago: in the hippie backpacker enclave, we noticed several dozen, perhaps 50 or 60, Thai people sleeping in a parking lot. Homeless people were never ever a feature in Thailand: sometimes you had beggars at local markets, perhaps mothers with young children or the visibly disabled playing an accordion for spare change, but they always went somewhere at night that was not out in the open. Now the homeless in Thailand don't have tents like America's homeless do. Only half of them even seemed to have basic plastic mats to sleep on that kept them off the bare cement and I wondered what they would do when it was raining. But I began to see them everywhere in the area under the shadow of the Grand Palace. Most did not seem drunk or addicted to anything. They had simply been left behind by an economic system that prioritizes the few at the expense of the many. Perhaps their family land had been taken.
The Covid catastrophe is reaping bitter fruits all over the world...
"The Covid catastrophe is reaping bitter fruits all over the world..." and that's exactly what it was meant to do. It's a hoax intended to destroy and control and too many believed the government lies and went along with it!
I have watched Naomi learn about reality in the last few years since people started realizing that it was all Kayfabe, all professional wrestling, all fake, all lies, and all satanic. I'd love to talk to you face to face Naomi and congratulate you for finally "seeing the light". But I probably can't and won't ever get that pleasure. But I want to give you a suggestion. Don't poo-poo it, please. This is the most important thing you can include with your fake virus, fake testing, fake (but poisonous) vaxxes that Big Drug along with the Medical Mafia have foisted on us as gullible, cognitive dissonant, spoiled, useful idiots have finally are starting to come to grips with. Leftist statists, fascist/commies, all "D's" and 95+% of the "R's" find themselves trapped inside the Matrix, just like Keanu Reaves and Laurence Fishburne's movie portrays.
There is a way out. But you have to do some homework until you believe. It is real and it is scary. But it is happening. The sooner you get on the right side of the money problem, the better your entire life will become. The longer you wait, or even worse reject what will go down in world history as the most pristine, and apex discovery/invention of all time.... Bitcoin. All you need is a little push down the "Rabbit Hole". It's a remarkable journey.
Fake fiat Ponzi scheme money, led by the insidious US$ dollar, is crashing the entire 160 world currencies, all the nation states except El Salvador, and with it the Armageddon we have all thought was for another time. It is here now and it is happening. Fake fiat enables perpetual warmongering, lies, false narratives, propaganda, slavery, poverty, despair, massive inequality through inflation/debasement of the fake money while the 1% or .1% own more wealth than about 60% of the lower quintiles of people in the world today.
Bitcoin, is the most perfect money ever. Eventually all $900 Trillion of fiat debt will be consumed by Bitcoin. All wealth will be redistributed and repriced in Bitcoin. It won't happen instantly. It will be like Ernest Hemingway's bankruptcy in The Sun Also Rises, gradually then suddenly. A perfect world awaits those who survive. Not everybody will survive. I call it God's Money. Learn it, study it, love it and live it. Peace, Truth, Freedom, Hope and Abundance for all 8 Billion on the planet awaits us. Thank you.
hm thank you
From:
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2024/05/28/naomi-wolf-describes-the-self-destruction-of-a-small-very-blue-town-in-oregon/
""" Being the epitome of a liberal, Naomi blames it on “the China/Globalist entities interested in dividing our country.” But of course it is not “China/Globalist entities.” It is dumbshit Democrats. Knowing that Naomi is intelligent, I am having a bit of trouble with this. Perhaps she is making fun of Americans who blame foreigners for all of their problems. Or perhaps she is spreading the blame around in hopes of surviving her exercise of free speech.
I doubt that Naomi really believes that the Chinese, not the blue Democrats, are responsible for a Unitarian ministry called “Parents as Sexuality Educators.” The church curriculum involves parents teaching “Ethical Non-Monogamy.”
Naomi, even when she is confused, is worth reading. She usually ends up at the right place. """
I agree that Democrats and leftists often won't/can't admit that it's their own policies that lead down the road to destruction for everyone, even when they are starting to see the light. But China is playing a role too. It's both.
Democrats are (very) generally deluded and self-infatuated, etc. etc. and etc. I grew up in Greenwich Village with hippy Democrat parents, yadda yadda yadda. But there is no question that dark forces outside our nation are helping things along; One small example, China sends fentanyl through Mexico and into America to erode and kill in the heartland. One big example, Covid came from the Wuhan lab in China along with fake fear porn of China citizens dropping in the streets, and they had no use for the "95% effective" Pfizer vaccine. The only people dropping in the streets are those who vaxxed against this mild flu.
The COVID pandemic was all a giant government con game, a HOAX!
The invasion of the US (condensed version) : Mayorkas (Tribe), runs the operation. He sends money to the head NGO who run the invasion. The NGOs also receive money from private donors (Soros and Bloomberg-both Tribe). The NGOs funnel the invaders through South and Central America, and into Mexico. At the wide open border, the invaders are met by border patrol and NGOs handing out money and phones as they are loaded onto buses to be transported to expensive hotels in major cities. Guess who the top dog NGO is? The one who handles all the money and organization......none other than HAIS. Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society. By the way, Mayorkas was a top dog at HAIS before coming to the Biden White house.
Prove me wrong.
Then why did Dr. Wolf just give my comment a "like"? Do you think she gives a "like" to lies?
Don't worry, the entire system will be collapsing soon, causing today's misery to be a minor inconvenience, as the real suffering begins, and all these "marginalized people" that everyone has been so worried about, die in the streets. But all of that will pale, whence compared to the Wars (yes, plural) that we will be in!
And in that moment of total despair, we can finally start to "clean up" all the garbage, and people, and "leaders" that brought us to that lowly place, and for the few of us that survive, the sun will shine once again!
Now, say goodbye everyone, you brought this all on yourselves, so spare us your bitching when it happens!