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this post was submitted on 09 Jan 2024
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Hi, American here.
American domestic politics is absolutely fucked right now.
The Republican Party does not really even have any policy proposals for serious issues at the Federal level.
They spent years saying 'Obamacare bad', saying they could do healthcare better. Basically it is a decade later and they have no plan, not even a proposal.
Taxes? We still have morons like DeSantis basically saying 'I dunno, maybe a flat tax?' to applause during stump speeches and debates. The flat tax proposal is absolutely insane for a large number of reasons, but the Republican base eats it up.
Look, there are something like 50 million + Americans that believe in all or most of the QAnon conspiracy theories, that believe God himself appointed Trump as President.
Trump stacked the Supreme Court.
The Republicans have functionally made abortion illegal in about half the country.
Meanwhile the economy is /apparently/ recovering, though the prices of basically everything you need to routinely pay for have risen fairly dramatically while wages have remained basically stagnant. Wealth inequality has spiralled to obscene levels, rent has basically doubled in about half a decade.
As I write this, I believe that polls of Biden v Trump are still showing Trump ahead.
Even if Trump does not win, and even if the MAGA QAnon types do not do a bunch of terrorism (again), they still exist, and are hopelessly living in basically an alternate reality where anything that goes against their worldview is fake, a conspiracy, of the Devil.
It was about 3 years ago now that I told my friend group that the QAnon problem was so serious that we would need some kind of analogous concept to the de-Nazification program as was implemented after WW2 in West Germany to deal with it. They either laughed at or ignored me. None of those people are my friends any more.
We are fucked.
The only thing that motivates most Republican voters is hatred. Any politician who says Trans people bad, Critical Race Theory bad, Immigrants bad, Homeless People bad, anything like that receives applause from the audience.
And I write this /as a homeless person/ who will almost certainly not be able to vote in the upcoming election. I will be /lucky/ if I can even find and qualify for an actual apartment after basically a bunch of crimes that happened to me in the course of last year caused me serious physical injury and the loss of all of my possessions, ruined my credit score, placed my in incredible debt, lost me my job and my ability to do any other job until my physical injuries are healed, which I simply have to handle myself, while homeless, because the cost of engaging with American healthcare system to handle my problems now would be sufficient to outright purchase a modest home (outright) less than a decade ago.
Meanwhile, Trump has outright stated he would like to implement basically concentration camps for the homeless. He has stated he wants to eliminate the vermin leftists. He is very concerned with the purity of the blood of the nation, and has outright stated he will be a dictator.
And he is currently leading in the polls.
Again, this country is fucked. So, sorry Europeans, I would love to be able to assuage your fears, and become an activist or something.
Maybe send me some of your healthcare and I'll get right on it.
Or maybe I am extremely tired, have no hope for this broken country, and could use the services of someone who can smuggle me into Canada or something.
If you are homeless, reach out to a shelter to see if they would be okay with you declaring them as your residence for the purpose of mail/voter registration. You can obtain ID from the state and have it sent there, and then that enables you to register to vote. Or if you have a bit of cash, you can also register a PO box through USPS for your mail.
It may be too late for you to vote in the primary depending on where you live, but you've still got plenty of time for the general election in November.
I can only encourage you to keep trying, because disenfranchising the socially vulnerable means that the Republican strategy is working.
You honestly think someone as coherent as this person hasn’t thought of all the ‘easy’ solutions to their homelessness problem?
It’s insulting to their intelligence to suggest that they just contact the homeless shelter.
I swear people live so far up their own ass they have no fucking clue about the reality some people live.
You'd be surprised. Homelessness doesn't always look like what people imagine it to be. They may be employed but migratory. They may be dependent on a cycle of friends/family for shelter while being on perpetually temporary living conditions.
A lot of people who aren't "homeless" in the traditional sense don't consider themselves as needing the same level of support that they typically associate with homeless shelters. They assume their problems look different and don't apply. They may honestly just not know that homeless shelters are there to provide anything more than a roof. Or those who are sliding further into precarity may be in denial about their circumstances.
There are also numerous links to mental illness and rates of homeless, some of which might obstruct logical decisions that people might need to be reminded of from time to time. And sometimes it just helps to be reminded that you don't always have to shoulder all of your problems by yourself, such as with services that help with obtaining documentation.
Call it basic advice, but basic doesn't mean invalid. I don't see anyone else in this thread offering anything more than sympathies, at least.
All of the day + night shelters are full. Beyond full. Waiting lists for a year+ full.
The vast majority of shelters in America for single adult men are overnight only, and where I am now, having had to travel halfway across the country to find somewhere I can afford to stay that is /safe/, it will be about 5 degrees Fahrenheit during the day.
Almost none of the overnight shelters allow you to use them as an address. In my experience, they are also full of many fentanyl addicts, murderers and thieves.
I will continue staying in motels, with heating, comfortable beds and showers that allow my serious ligament, muscle and bone injuries to heal, as opposed to staying in an overnight shelter where I would be forced to wander around in freezing weather during the day, seriously injuring me further, even if it means I cannot vote.
Honestly, fuck you. I would rather be /alive/ and not in horrific pain than possibly have the ability to vote.
I would rather have privacy and security, though it be costly, than be at risk of literally causing my injuries to exacerbate so seriously that I would be permanently disabled at best, murdered or collapsed from a torn ligament in the freezing cold and dying at worst.
I do not care to follow your laughably inadequate advice to prioritize voting in a broken system over my current survival.
Maybe you could actually do something functionally useful to address homelessness in your area or something, instead.
Well if this is how you treat people who try to offer a shred of advice or compassion, then I hate to say it but maybe you deserve your circumstances. I can't help you more than this.
You know nothing about me, but you immediately come back with open hostility. I am only trying to offer the same advice that I would for the refugee and immigrant populations that the organization I work for supports.
Your priorities may not be the same as everyone else's, but there are people literally dying for their vote and it is just as awful to belittle that or say that they aren't prioritizing things that make a difference. Because it truly does to many people, and I would say it does now more than ever.
Gross. Nobody deserves to be homeless, even if they're being a dick.
c/iamatotalpieceofshit
Your advice is ludicrous for any single adult male anywhere in America right now, so your organization must not be very competent.
Suggesting that a single adult male, right now, in America, who already told you that they have serious injuries, should go seek a dangerous shelter which in all likelihood /will not shelter them/, which one either has to do on foot, or by wasting hours and hours searching the internet, for the aim of being able to vote, is absurd.
What should obviously be prioritized is the physical safety and security of the individual.
And I know this /because I used to work for a non profit helping the homeless/.
Telling an injured person to prioritize unsafe options that will waste their time, nearly certainly actually not result in acquiring shelter, for the purposes of being able to vote, that this priority is more important than /actually being alive/ is perfectly indicative of the attitude that many liberals have toward the homeless.
Which is basically: Do literally anything other than remedy the actual issue, you know, homelessness, which causes injuries, trauma, starvation. And then, if any of them give you any lip about this, tell them they deserve their predicament.
You are a ridiculous person. You are exactly like many of the people I used to at first work with, and then became reliant on until I realized hey could not help me: Wasting the time of the homeless with absurd hoops to jump through that can literally result in their death if your suggestions prove inadequate, and also they trust you and diligently follow their advice.
All I had to do was tell you that your advice was laughable, and be angry about how bad and useless this advice was, and you have now decided that I am rude and offensive to everyone trying to help and that I deserve my situation.
I am not in fact rude to everyone trying to help me.
I am rude to people who suggest I do things that /will endanger my health and safety/.
You are an awful human being.
If you do really work to aid the unhoused, you and your organization are morons. Your advice would be even /more/ ridiculous for immigrants and refugees who often cannot speak English well or at all.
Apologies if there was confusion, I just ask that you please read what I wrote again. I was not advocating staying at a shelter per se; if you have better accommodations, as a lot of unhoused residents do, then that's great. You are better off not staying in a shelter if you don't need it.
I was speaking more to the fact that organizations which run homeless shelters will typically offer additional levels of support when it comes to mail and ID procurement. They may be able to assist with getting you documentation directly, or may be able to help put you in contact with another organization that can.
But based on your responses so far, I'm guessing that's not something you'd be willing to do, so I'll just leave it here. You seem to know what's best for you, so good luck.
I’d put you up, man, but I’m moving in with my parents so I can pay off debt and maybe, MAYBE save enough to buy my own house someday.
I appreciate the sentiment, and I completely understand your situation.
By basically dumb luck, I managed to wander past a shoddy low rent motel ... that offers monthly leases.
Its got a comfy bed, a fridge, a microwave, a working toilet and tub, and most importantly, I can afford it.
Knowing that there is /somewhere/ I can afford to stay at, and will not have to figure out some new place to stay every few weeks is a massive improvement.
The near constant state of mortal panic is now lowering. All I have to do is basically not talk to anyone else who stays at this place.
/Now/ I can finally start to figure out how to replace my Drivers License and other important identifying documents, as most of those got stolen from me months ago at a shelter in another state.
I am very glad to hear that. Living space anxiety is the absolute worst.
It truly seems that nearly no one who has not been homeless can understand what being homeless does to you.
Oh well, at least if I survive this long term I can actually justifiably laugh until I pass out from people who have nervous breakdowns over the most unimportant first world problems imaginable.
I'm so confused about where this hostility came from. They were just trying to be helpful, you could have easily left it at "your idea is terrible and here's why", but then you decided to attack them directly as well. Why?
Because they were giving useless advice that they should have known would be useless, and even worse than that, it would have endangered me and likely led to my death, again, they should have known this if they actually read what I wrote.
Would you be angry if someone seriously suggested to you that while in an injured state, what you should do is injure yourself further with a plan that has next to no chance of success?
Further, if you were starving, exhausted, traumatized from recently being beaten, mugged and losing all your possessions, would you be angry if someone told you that /actually/ you should prioritize registering to vote right now, that that is the most important thing?
You have obviously never been homeless.
Perhaps you should read it again if you are confused.
My aching torn ligaments only permit me to type so much, so often.
This is what you sound like: ‘This person experiencing homelessness isn’t a ray of sunshine because they’ve realised the systematic changes that would be required to actually address the problem. Also, they have the audacity to be angry about it!’
Seriously? You are an asshole if you can’t empathise with someone who might be a bit prickly if they just wrote out an essay which was cogent and then told ‘well you wouldn’t be homeless if you just used homelessness services!’
If those services had adequate resourcing would people be experiencing homelessness?
Put yourself in their shoes; sleep rough a couple of nights and see how bright, cheery and willing to hear such sage advice from comfortable, housed and warm Lemmings you’d be.
I wouldn't expect them to be nice and jolly about it. But you don't have to be a ray of sunshine to avoid being an ass. I sympathize with them, but the person they responded to was genuinely trying to be helpful.
As for everything else you said, maybe you should re-read Stovetop's comment? Nothing was said about using homelessness services to avoid being homeless. It was literally just an idea as to how they might be able to vote despite their unfortunate situation.
I did read it and vexikron’s reply about how voting isn’t their priority because they are injured and homeless.
Which is why it’s kind of irrelevant until the homelessness episode ends; you can’t focus on other aspects of your life.
Vexikron isn’t being an ass, they’re being a regular human who is having a shit time of it and responding to lemmings who are telling them to just go to a shelter and vote their way out of it.
That solution to their problem is tone deaf and insulting.
It's not like they pulled the voting comment out of their ass as a solution to homelessness. It was a response to Vexikron saying they wouldn't be able to vote in their comment.
I wish I could, I really do.
I appreciate the kind words.
Also American here. Vexikron is 100% correct. I will take my payment in Wegovy please.