Jeez, I guess I could try to come up with excuses as to why I haven't been keeping up with my online business, but... no.
What makes me come out of my blogging coma is that last night I was wasting a bunch of time on stumbleupon, when I came upon a random fact generator at mentalfloss that told me that one-fourth of the homeless population in the US is made up of veterans, and the National Coalition for the Homeless site confirms it (though the more accurate figure is 23%).
And I'm not one to wave an American flag or necessarily even give a crap about the Fourth of July. Regardless--how awful is that? Hundreds of thousands of old dudes who, voluntarily or otherwise, could have died because of whatever reason are sleeping in shelters every night and being ignored by passers-by all day? Wrong. Especially since the military takes such good care of others. How is it okay that a twenty-two year-old without a college education or work history can afford the all-American house/wife/baby/new car scenario, but someone who did the same job forty years ago is standing in line at a soup kitchen somewhere?
What can we do about this?
Where the heck is that "raise hell, raise hell" attitude that so much of America's past and present are based on?
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I think a whole lot of it is that when we walk by a homeless person, we have some level of fear. Fear of what could happen, fear of people who are criminalized (without reason much of the time), and fear that the pull-yourself-up-by-the-bootstraps policy might not work. While there are education and rehabilitation programs in place, they're so often at the bottom of the priority list. It IS sad, isn't it?
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