Pick A Card, Any Card...

     ...Every card's got a social or political issue on it, every card has two sides and no matter which side you turn up, there's more heat than light, more opinion than fact, more reaction than evidence.

     One example: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, angling for the Republican Presidential nomination, went to San Francisco and made a campaign ad in the mean streets of the Tenderloin, commenting on "...[S]o much riffraff just running around...," open drug use, people defecating in the streets and so on, the kind of "urban decay" narrative the worst parts of that city so readily support.  And it is bad.  People and politicians get into shouting matches over causes and solutions, but the situation itself is undeniable.

     The thing is, San Francisco is not uniquely pestilential.  In response to Governor DeSantis, commenters on social media posted photographs of homeless encampments in and near major Florida cities, no less tatterdemalion and desperate than anything in the City by the Bay.  Any U. S. city has examples of a modern-day "hobo jungle;" policies and attitudes can change how evident they are, and climate plays a huge part (cities with mild winters and summers are going to have a larger homeless population ), but it's there.  The unhoused and inadequately housed are a part of the American scene, some by choice and others by necessity, and the underlying causes are poorly understood and poorly addressed, when they are addressed at all.

     Pointing at 'em in horror won't fix it.  Sweeping them to the outskirts or abandoned neighborhoods only moves the problem and may make it easier to ignore.  Neither laxity nor severity towards the homeless changes their numbers.

     So, yeah, pick a card.  Why not?  It's all nearly everyone is willing to do.  But don't come whining to me when your choice results in only cosmetic change at best.  As long as "dealing with it" consists of pointing at the other political party and blaming them, the used needles, hobo dung, appalling litter, improvised shelter, beggars and inert bodies on sidewalks and in vacant lots will continue.