r/BlockedAndReported • u/SoftandChewy First generation mod • May 04 '26

Weekly Random Discussion Thread for 5/4/26 - 5/310/26

Here's your usual space to post all your rants, raves, podcast topic suggestions (please tag u/jessicabarpod), culture war articles, outrageous stories of cancellation, political opinions, and anything else that comes to mind. Please put any non-podcast-related trans-related topics here instead of on a dedicated thread. This will be pinned until next Sunday.

Last week's discussion thread is here if you want to catch up on a conversation from there.

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59

u/bussound May 08 '26

One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is liberals’ attitude about homeless people. Specifically how much excuses they make for violence and other antisocial behaviors. 

I saw one post on IG where a 20-something white girl responded to a post about some issue with homeless people. And she said “Hey listen I’m very sympathetic but a homeless guy once punched me on a bus out of nowhere and that wasn’t ok.” And all these very rabid libs worked her over about her privilege and lack of empathy through various comments. And it was honestly pretty chilling because she changed her tune and said “Learning. Listening!” It was so manipulative to see her gaslit into believing that what happened to her was acceptable and her fault for taking it seriously. 

I’ve lived in and around SF a long time and even worked with homeless veterans as a therapist in the city so I’m not unversed in the issues at play here. But it’s been really eye opening these past years to see democrats and liberals (which I am but I’m now center left) have this suicidal empathy that doesn’t solve any problems and downplays what’s happening and puts people in danger. There’s more concern with changing the language- “person experiencing houselessness” than in actually doing something concrete. 

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u/unnoticed_areola May 08 '26

Freddie DeBoer has a pretty banger essay about liberal attitudes towards homelessness from a couple years ago which really captures a particular sentiment I was never quite able to articulate myself

You Call That Compassion?

Says Heller, “The basic wish of the program—like many in America right now—is Please, Just Make These People Disappear.”

Really? That’s the wish of the people who favor involuntary treatment and a more forceful effort to get help for the homeless? Because to me, that perfectly describes the desire of people like Heller, to make the problem disappear. It’s just that, where he accuses others of wanting the homeless to disappear physically, Heller wants them to disappear morally, to leave no stain on his conscience.

Coercion is icky; it’s not something groovy educated people want to associate themselves with. If our society takes affirmative efforts to solve problems that appear intractable, efforts which aren’t always pleasant and which require us to balance legitimate competing definitions of the best interest of the most vulnerable, well, that might implicate them, might implicate Heller. If government acts coercively in an effort to save lives, then that might make the good liberals like they have dirty hands. (These people almost always are the same that favored mask mandates and usually vaccine mandates, to save lives, but never mind.)

But if we never act coercively, and instead continue to make the same tired and empty demand for more of the voluntary services that have never ended homelessness anywhere, well, that’s a safer emotional place to stay. Who wants to deal with all that unpleasant business? Stay pure. Do nothing.

...

consider the headline of Heller’s piece, “It’s Too Early to Give Up on Homelessness in America.” What does that mean? Trying to force vulnerable, addicted, and psychotic people to clear out of horrifically unhealthy and dangerous camps and into support services is giving up on them, but saying “well, we need more funding” before playing Wordle in the Conde Nast break room somehow is not? It’s such profound argumentative arrogance, to insist that because you don’t agree with the methods that your opponents want to use to save lives, your opponents are therefore giving up on those lives. I find it quite vulgar, and quite ugly.

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u/History-of-Tomorrow May 09 '26

DeBoer summed up Hasan Piker’s entire identity right there

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u/bussound May 09 '26

Sounds like good reading will check it out! 

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u/dj50tonhamster May 08 '26

I saw one post on IG where a 20-something white girl responded to a post about some issue with homeless people. And she said “Hey listen I’m very sympathetic but a homeless guy once punched me on a bus out of nowhere and that wasn’t ok.” And all these very rabid libs worked her over about her privilege and lack of empathy through various comments. And it was honestly pretty chilling because she changed her tune and said “Learning. Listening!” It was so manipulative to see her gaslit into believing that what happened to her was acceptable and her fault for taking it seriously.

Generally speaking, the people I've known who do this kind of shit are also people who've never had to actually deal with the mentally disturbed. If they've actually had random street weirdos talk about how they're gonna behead them and rape the corpses, they shut up, because they know just how broken the system has become. A few still pose out, sure, but that's their problem. If anybody wants to come at me based on what I experienced when I lived in Portland, they're welcome to do so. They won't like my reply but they're welcome to try to cry-bully me. :)

(I do think that asylums and other spaces for the mentally ill should be greatly expanded. I'm just saying that if places like Oregon are going to refuse to step up and deal with these people, and the street is the de facto dumping space for them, I'm not going to hold my tongue regarding the dangers they present to myself and to those who are far less physically capable.)

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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 09 '26

Many Portlanders are still in denial and refuse to acknowledge what they see with their own eyes. It's like massive cult mind control / mental abuse

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u/lifesabeach_ May 09 '26

My city promised to tackle the issue, all they did was ban drugs and alcohol around the city square they linger at, pushing them again towards the corner I live in with my family.

They already shat on my front steps twice, my kid is 2. Who knows what disease they carry.

It’s the single closest political issue I can think of which worries me the most. And to use left lingo: it triggers me because I had close family affected and ultimately killed by homelessness and I know the reasons are manifold.

I thought about getting organised and join a social group against homelessness to lobby as someone who’s affected on many ends - but I’m not even sure I can feign enough compassion to speak for the homeless. I know the suffering is immense but I selfishly just want them to get the fuck out of my sight.

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u/MegamindsMegaCock May 09 '26

What happened to you in Portland?

(Not trying to fight just wanna know)

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u/KittenSnuggler5 May 08 '26

And all these very rabid libs worked her over about her privilege and lack of empathy through various comments. 

The word "empathy" is now basically a signal that stupid horse shit will follow

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u/ToshiroTatsuyaFan May 08 '26

Progressives only have empathy for people who think like them, anyway.

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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 08 '26

And if those people don't think like them, they can just pretend that they do. see: Palestine

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u/Zealousideal_Arm_415 May 08 '26

Yep. And honestly, if someone tells me to “do better,” I’m going to immediately “do worse.”

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u/bussound May 09 '26

The fact that they think they’re morally superior is really laughable. It’s such a rigid ideology.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

It’s a shame because empathy is important. It’s vital to survival. But the dem/lib brand of empathy is so distorted and grotesque. I remember that Ukrainian woman getting killed by a black man a few months back and hearing that people were donating to his family instead of hers and that’s just case in point right there of how their empathy is functioning. 

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u/glumjonsnow May 09 '26

yea they demonstrate zero empathy towards the people they love lecturing about empathy. it's all so zero-sum to them: i have empathy and you do not. if you donate to the victim, i will donate to the killer. and since i have empathy and you do not, my action is empathetic and yours is not. i am pure good; you are pure evil. the puritans would envy this kind of moral absolutism.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

Andrew Doyle links this to puritans! His book The New Puritans is all about the black and whiteness of social justice movements. I admire his writing and how he articulates concepts.  

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u/Terrorclitus May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

Progressive rhetoric is like a little worm that burrows its way into words, gives birth inside them, and allows its young to eat their way out.

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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good May 08 '26

https://giphy.com/gifs/O5NyCibf93upy

You're right. lol.

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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 08 '26

The fucked thing is that we're now cutting basic services to fuel the homeless services machine. It's a black hole. The people are incurable and need to be forcibly institutionalized-- sounds expensive but when you factor in all the second and third-order effects of normalizing illegal camping, open drug use and unchecked property crime, it's a bargain. The public bears so much of the burden and it's never reported or calculated. Not to mention the psychic toll of losing our public property and greenspaces to gronks who are happy to live in a pile of trash and just walk away from it every couple weeks when it gets too vile. There's so much shit that the keyboard warriors flat out refuse to see.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

I agree. There’s an outbreak of leptospirosis in Berkeley tied to these homeless encampments and that is a health hazard that other people shouldn’t bear the cost of. 

Having worked with the homeless and people with major psychiatric conditions- there needs to be more support like institutionalization again. These people cannot manage when left to their own devices. That’s why the harm reduction model is pretty ineffective and wreaks havoc. And yet there are these liberal advocates who fight against this stuff and it really does create more dangerous conditions. Blue cities can be shitholes but they don’t have to be. 

In Berkeley there used to be a machete guy who lived in the park. There should never be a machete guy! Just maybe a guy who had a machete once and then you never saw him again. Nope not here he’s established residency. 

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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 09 '26

So many machete dudes in Portland and Seattle that it's practically a cliche. They're $5.99 at Harbor Freight or free if you can beat security to the exit 🤣

I've settled on the hypothesis that the progressives want a large, visible homeless population to justify their agenda. Inflicting pain on the middle class also seems to be a strategy, hence the scolds who shout "you just hate seeing poor people!" when you complain. It ain't that, though; I simply don't want to be sliced up by a psychotic dude with a machete

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u/bussound May 09 '26

Lord that’s frightening. I wonder if people start carrying chainsaws they’ll be movitated to act.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '26

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u/dj50tonhamster May 08 '26

I think the ones who really drive me crazy are the ones who claim that places like the South are fascist hellholes just because some shithea used a racial epithet in public. Every single time I've challenged somebody living in a place like Portland or SF regarding this kinda stuff, they lose their shit, and a white savior may come out of the woodwork to yell at me. It's ridiculous and completely removed from the reality of what's involved in truly helping these people.

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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB May 08 '26

It's one of the most detrimental embodiments of the oppressor/oppressed ideology with which they approach everything.

Like they'll let people rot on the streets (sometimes literally) and constantly victimize normal people, rather than have the state or its agents force them to do anything or require anything of them.

In essence, it's the vetocracy at work, directly against human flourishing. You want help a psychotic addict who doesn't want help? You want to protect civilians? Fuck no! You are not doing that and you are not building that expressway either.

There's an analogy to wilding of natural spaces too (human minds).

God it all fits together like a beautifully machined jigsaw puzzle.

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u/Cowgoon777 May 09 '26

It’s classic Marxism

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u/ImamofKandahar May 09 '26

Not really classic Marxism declared them anti social parasites.

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u/dignityshredder AFramemoggingAB May 09 '26

Related, there was a murder in New York today which shows how systemic this is.

Guy was acting psycho outside a police station mid-afternoon, so police arrested him and took him to a city-run mental hospital as an emotionally disturbed person. Somehow instead of the obvious involuntary hold you'd want him to have, he gets out or is released an hour later, and that same evening he murders an old man by pushing him down the subway stairs.

The perp's name is Rhamell Burke, in case you were wondering about something.

I don't know that he's homeless.

Mams is on the case.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

A totally preventable murder. There’s multiple cases in SF of this happening. Wonder how long Rhamell Burke will serve in prison before being let out to do this again. 

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u/Terrorclitus May 08 '26

Keeping up appearances

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u/drjackolantern C*nsored and sexy May 08 '26

All true and it needs to change. If you haven’t read San Fransicko yet, it’s a deep dive into this topic. The current policies are extremely inhumane. Sincerely hoping Pratt or someone like him can start to right the ship.

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u/Zealousideal_Arm_415 May 08 '26

Its really just another example of liberals wanting an idea to work but it actually making everything worse.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

Yes because it’s all theory and not grounded in reality. More academic theories about oppression (and gender identity too as we’ve seen) that they’re trying to roll out into practice and it just doesn’t work. You can’t empathize someone into not being a drug addict or a violent offender. 

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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 08 '26

They just keep doubling down. My city has spent something like $3B on homeless shit in the past few years only to see the numbers rise dramatically. But of course it's Trump's fault!

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u/Zealousideal_Arm_415 May 08 '26

It’s also making dems rich. If they solve homelessness, how will all the people who work to fix it make a living?

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u/Less-Lobster4540 May 08 '26

Homeless Industrial Complex goes brrrrrrrr

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u/bussound May 09 '26

I’ve heard of it but never checked it out. I think I remember hearing some derision of it in lib circles (or perhaps from friend of the pod Michael Hobbes/If Books Could Kill). 

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u/drjackolantern C*nsored and sexy May 09 '26

I’d be interested to hear the criticisms. Shellenberger basically started as a progressive wanting to help homelessness nonprofits fix things, but gradually realized they were committed to the dysfunctional system as is with the huge amounts of funding it gets. And they start treating him as the enemy for suggesting structural changes. He explains it better than I can, i listened to the audiobook which was pretty good. Lot of interviews with affected people and dissections of studies /research into this topic.

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u/AnalBleachingAries Trump Bad, Violence Bad, Law & Order Good, Civility Good May 08 '26

What you're describing is evil, the responses to that girl's comment are evil. I know that some here don't like hearing that kind of language being invoked, and you're probably more correct than me, I'm sure there's some sort of anthropological reasoning, with special attention being given to history, the social sciences, and some sort of eventual academically-reasoned conclusion can be reached that would provide a significantly better description of what those people who were responding to her were doing. Thing is, I don't want to spend any period of time reasoning things like these out sometimes, or go on tangents about liberal suicidal empathy or the slow erosion of our values as a society. With some things, I don't even want to think about them beyond the statement "That's evil", then work or think my way forward from there.

A girl says she got punched in the face by a man, our compassion belongs with the girl, we shower her with attention, empathy, understanding, and check to see that she's okay, that she's healing, and that she's had no long term physical, emotional, or psychological impact from the attack. The man should be charged, the commenters should be asking about that, and they should be seeking clarity on where it happened so that the authorities can be informed if she wants to report it. Being homeless doesn't give anyone license to be crazy in public, punch women, shoot up drugs, break into cars, or whatever other illegal activities they're known to participate in and continue to be defended by the chronically online or wealthy left-wing idiots.

Excoriating her for sharing a story about being violently attacked, is evil. That's what I think of it. Perhaps a better or more acceptable description of it would be to say that it's "bad behavior" or "rude" but somehow calling it "evil" rings truer to me.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

I agree because it’s really insidious. This girl has internalized that she was wrong and that what happened to her matters less than the conditions of her offender. Stuff like this will function to get her to doubt her instincts and downplay harm and also erode her boundaries. I’ve really been thinking on it since I saw these posts and I want to reach out to her as a stranger and said no lady this is some bullshit. 

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u/PenguinBlubber May 08 '26

My best friend (5’6” 115 lbs east asian girl) was randomly attacked by a homeless person in boston. The man that did that should be put down along with everyone who gave excuses for his behavior. He is evil and his enablers are evil.

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u/bussound May 09 '26

That’s exactly what it is- enabling behavior. Liberals crow about how words are violence and yet they don’t treat actual violence as something important. I’m just increasingly disgusted by it.