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Mommadillo's avatar

Victoria Hughes asked for a thousand dollars in her GoFundMe. Currently over five thousand. Wouldn’t it be nice if she got a Christmas miracle and didn’t have to go back to that awful job?

https://www.gofundme.com/f/aid-victoria-fired-for-feeding-the-hungry

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Tessie's avatar

The Dead Kennedys were saying this at least 40 years ago:

"Efficiency and progress is ours once more

Now that we have the neutron bomb

It's nice and quick and clean and gets things done

Away with excess enemy

But no less value to property

No sense in war but perfect sense at home...

The sun beams down on a brand-new day

No more welfare tax to pay

Unsightly slums gone up in flashing light

Jobless millions whisked away

At last, we have more room to play

All systems go to kill the poor tonight"

Of course, they were deploring this, not endorsing it.

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Tessie's avatar

“In most cases,” he claimed, ever so confidently, “the word ‘homeless’ is a lie. It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”

`

Fine, let's play this particular little fantasy out to it's logical end.

There are somewhere in the ballpark of 600,000 homeless people in America. Let's suppose for the sake of discussion that a non-zero number of them are actually "violent drug addicts with mental illness", or whatever other scare terms Lonnie can come up with, all of whom are somehow only pretending to be homeless for the purpose of some sort of unspecified "propaganda".

What then? What exactly is Lonnie suggesting or advocating here? What should be done about all the violent, scary homeless boogeymen? Ignore them? Put them on a bus and exile them to... somewhere or other? Lock them up in prison? Lock them up in camps... oh, sorry... WELLNESS FARMS? Or perhaps just a teensy weensy bit of genocide?

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Mommadillo's avatar

Their contempt for people who are often veterans and owe many of their issues to their service is palpable.

For people like them, EVERYTHING comes down to the bottom line, always. Sure, you got fucked up helping us, but is that our fault? Daddy needs those tax cuts, because it’s not like he has enough money yet. Someone might have a few bucks in a change jar somewhere he can scam them out of.

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carovee's avatar

Musk has zero empathy or imagination and its worked out great for him. He just wants us all to have the chance to become billionaires by adopting the personality of one.

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Megan Macomber's avatar

I'm hearing the "It's a lifestyle choice" mantra from my lefty neighbor who works as a psych nurse. These inhuman ideas, once converted into epigrammatic slogans by soulless Musk, have frightening stickiness.

My dad came up with his "Let all the junkies just die of overdoses" inhumanity all by himself. Now Musk is doing it (or rather passing it on) for a generation or two. Hatred has legs.

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Peter MacMonagle's avatar

I am tired of people like Musk telling poor people what they are like. People with more money than sense need to either help the situation or shut up.

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KEITH TAYLOR's avatar

“Fighting homelessness is just as much of a scam as climate change," says the Bald Libertarian.

Unintentionally on target. Yes. Just as much of a scam. Zero equals zero.

But if you wish to cite a REAL scam, how about Jim Bakker's colloidal silver, or "Build the Wall"?

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DemoCat's avatar

Obviously not all homeless people are drug addicts or have mental illness, but those who do are still homeless, so what is Elon’s point? His point is that the homeless aren’t worthy of help or compassion. Coming from one single person worth hundreds of billions, with the wealth sufficient to solve the homelessness problem in the entire country, this message is astounding. He’s a heartless bastard, just like Trump, and we are living in a cruel nightmare.

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DemoCat's avatar

It’s also the answer to my earlier post about why conservatives hate Joe Biden so much, when he’s always been a handsome, well-liked moderate politician and devout catholic. It’s because they live in toxic echo chambers where their warped views are reinforced, shared and celebrated. Ask an average wingnut what Joe Biden did during his tenure that was so horrible. The usual answer is a frustrated grunt or something like, “omg, what HASN’T he done!?” “He’s old!” or, lately, “he lied! He promised me he wouldn’t pardon Hunter! Then he did! That’s called A LIE!” Or, they repeat one of many popular conspiracy theories, “he takes Chinese bribes!”

If you watch Fox News all day, and you spend time raging on Twitter about the high, high cost of eggs, and how cheap they were in 2018, you lose the ability to weigh information and consider facts. Fox News is absolutely propaganda designed to brainwash voters. Billionaires have the power to manipulate and control the masses, and in the modern internet and social media age, they are succeeding. Elon Musk is becoming another Rupert Murdoch.

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Dianna Deem's avatar

When I was recently in L.A., I was approached by an older Black gentleman. He wasn't looking for a hand out. He looked fairly healthy, and quite dapper. I think he came to me because I was carrying my camera. He was hoping I could help him. I apologized, and explained that I was not local, and was only in town visiting for a couple of days. I could see he was disappointed as he turned away. That brief encounter haunts me.

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Zyxomma's avatar

Ta, Dok. There were three homeless men sleeping on the subway I took to work this morning. They smelled really bad, but otherwise weren't bothering anyone. The one sitting across from me looked like his kidneys were failing. At least it was warm on the train.

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Devon Williams's avatar

Trump only respects those as rich and wicked as himself.

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Wookiee Monster's avatar

Obviously, not everyone who is mentally ill and/or a drug addict ends up homeless. Just look at RFK Jr.

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Wookiee Monster's avatar

Of course. Conservatives have long believed that poverty is the result of moral failings rather than circumstances of birth or just plain bad luck. It let's them believe that they are the superior ones who got where they are because they worked hard and not because, say, their dad owned an emerald mine under apartheid. The poor and homeless just lack the proper motivation to buy up other people's ideas (Paypal, Tesla, etc) and leverage them for billions through government subsidies and contracts.

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Satanic Pancake's avatar

Wait, behavioral health is a lifestyle choice? Schizophrenics, the deeply depressed, and such, are all just *choosing* to be that way? I may have to re-think my entire existence.

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Fifth Dentist's avatar

"Something that they fear. Not prison, and free food and board. It has to be something bad. Healthy for society.”

Well, a certain country sterilized "layabouts" and alcoholics and prostitutes. And housed a lot of those types of people at Dachau and its equivalent for women. Sure, the food and board were free, but it was definitely "bad." A little forced labor, some psychotic kapos to beat people into line, even more psychotic guards culled from the brownshirts...

The same country a short time later euthanized the mentally ill and handicapped, including children. It eventually grew a lot more ambitious after that in its definition of "something bad," and it thought all of these things were healthy for society.

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