Thank you as always for your fair-minded reporting.
Two things.
1) My daughter lives in NYC. She is 23 years-old. I told her to not be a "good liberal." Always be on guard. Don't allow guilt to override protecting yourself. Stand away and against the wall on a Subway platform. Do what animals do. Do not judge yourself for feeling fear. T…
Thank you as always for your fair-minded reporting.
Two things.
1) My daughter lives in NYC. She is 23 years-old. I told her to not be a "good liberal." Always be on guard. Don't allow guilt to override protecting yourself. Stand away and against the wall on a Subway platform. Do what animals do. Do not judge yourself for feeling fear. Two crimes in LA were committed by homeless men. You can feel for them but don't not be afraid of them. If they scare you, they scare you. I just don't know if I ever taught her, or if society ever taught her generation, that yes - violence can always happen, especially to women or young women, no matter what. So be careful and always be cautious.
2) Joe Biden is surrounded by people who get their information from the high minded op-ed writes and the blue checks on Twitter. That is a huge mistake. They are in a bubble and any ordinary American can see that. I saw a poll recently that asked people what they thought of Kyrsten Sinema. More than half had no idea who she was. But in that feedback loop of the Left it is a bigger crisis that she thinks for herself than our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The controlling elite in this country don't understand that the empire they once ruled over has mostly abandoned them. They are only speaking to their most devoted now. Biden can't be that person if he wants to succeed. He has to get out of the bubble. How he does that, I don't know.
I was working at a non-profit a few years ago when I overheard 2 of the [female] Social Work interns worrying that it might be a "microaggression" if they put their laptops away on the bus in a very rough part of town. Uum, no, it's self preservation. I was agog. So good for you Sasha, you can have compassion without taking insane risks and I'm not sure anyone is teaching today's young women this. Since we are less able to physically defend ourselves, I think "women's intuition" is a real thing.
I grew up in a not so great part of town. I was trained to always lock the car door as soon as I got in the car from a young age. It’s So engrained in me and I do it automatically, just like putting on my seatbelt. This is regardless of what part of town I’m in. I recently heard someone say that locking your car doors while you drive is a micro aggression. Sorry, but common street smarts is not a micro aggression. There was just an armed carjacking on the freeway while someone was sitting in traffic here in Portland! I can’t help but shake my head at how naive some of these new rules come across.
Wow!! Maybe people who are in social work are more likely to worry about that stuff? My sister had been teaching all the kids in our family the manta "When in doubt, get the hell out".
Yeah, the social work students were highly attuned to things I hadn't even heard of, and I run in fairly liberal circles. Private, $$ university and some of them were in for a big surprise once they started working with clients.
There was a book in the 90's called The Gift of Fear. At that time I saw the author late night on a rerun of Oprah. He talked precisely about young women being conditioned to be nice/not offend and how that puts them in danger. That man saved my life! At that time my boss had bought a building and moved our small company out to the near west side of Chicago convinced it would become a hot real estate market. We were the only, for a lack of a better word, non-sketchy people in the area. We used an abandoned lot down the alley to park our cars and one day while walking to my car at lunchtime a crazy homeless man approached saying, 'What are you doing in this alley'? This overwhelming terror overtook me and before I could even mentally process what was going on I was sprinting back to my office and frantically ringing the bell for them to buzz me in. When I came through the door my boss was standing there talking to the receptionist obviously annoyed that I had rung the buzzer frantically. When I told them what happened they looked at me like I was nuts and I started to really doubt myself and feel stupid. The boss's wife was there and she thought if you're really afraid we should call the police. Ends up when the police came to the area they found the man down the street threatening another person with a really long carving knife!! I was so thankful I had heard that author! Another thing the author said was that men should be taught that when they see a woman alone, nervously looking back over their shoulder and picking up the pace, they should hang back or cross to the other side of the street. I've taught my my son this and also that guys need the gift of fear too! Carjackings are a big problem here and the other night he felt a bit threatened by sketchy guys pulling up in a car alongside while he was parking. So my son drove off to a better lit street and drove around till he lost them (yes they followed him for a bit).
Gavin DeBecker. We would sometimes recommend his work to DV or stalking victims, but with a big grain of salt as he says things like "The first time you're a victim, the second time you're a volunteer." Uum, no not exactly big guy. He was spot on with other stuff though. I'm glad you were ok!
To be appropriately fearful does save lives- both women and men. At the same time, living in fear all the time is unpleasant - and even during our times, where criminals are often unpunished, brutal violence on women by strangers still remains rare. And while I think the advise that author is useful in places like NYC - to be quite frank, it's not needed in major cities in parts of the world where crime is taken seriously (Singapore, Dubai, Tokyo, Seoul)
I completely agree with you about living in fear. Brutal violence on women by strangers might be rare- but all kinds of things happen to female that are bad, and they happen everywhere. In my 54 years, I've been stalked, chased, and had rape attempted a handful of times. Most of these things happened in college towns; one where I grew up and the other where I went to school. I've always had to be vigilant. One of the best things about getting older has been becoming more and more invisible to creepy men.
The last time a guy came at me was at the library. A dad I knew socially cornered me in a dead end aisle. He was herding me back against the wall. I had to duck down and push past him to get out. The funny thing is that I had totally forgotten this even happened. As I was writing this post I tried to remember the last creepy thing that happened to me and that surfaced. So, not violent, to be sure. But having spent most of my life as a prey animal, I assure you that being vigilant is second nature.
I moved by downtown Portland, Oregon in 2016 when I was 22. I had no knowledge of the city, I was relocated by my company. We ended up living by a massive homeless encampment. It was miserable.
In one month, 4 of the other tenants we knew had their car broken into. Not long after, my husband was walking our dog and saw a homeless man looking in the window of each parked car. He took a photo of the man to help identify later in case he broke in. Another young guy, probably a College student, confronted my husband and lectured him. He obviously didn’t live in the area or understand the crime rates we dealt with. He kept claiming that the homeless man only wanted to check his reflection because he didn’t have any other opportunities.
Another time, I was walking my dog and a homeless lady started following me and kept threatening to stab me. She had a metal object in her hand and kept thrusting me. I held out my pepper gel and got back in my building. I called the police to inform them of the incident, the response was “call back after she stabs someone.”
It was hard to remain sympathetic after having to constantly deal with meth needles strewn on the ground and rampant crime. It’s only gotten worse and has spread to other parts of the city.
I can't imagine the level of masochism needed to be a Portland cop. Not helpful to you as a citizen in that situation of course. Denver is swirling the drain too and similar dynamics. White, young "progressives" come to the city to lecture us about the homeless/drug addicts/mentally ill but they run like Hell back to the burbs at the first whiff of danger. Or human excrement.
The CJ system can't be the home of all rehab and mh treatment. It got dumped on us in the 80's and 90's with the sea changes in institutionalization and mh help. There were abuses in having people committed, but they changed the system before having a replacement. I think there's a place for a hybrid system. Our PD has had mental health co-responders for years. But my fear is that the baby will again be thrown out with the bathwater because of a few bad cops before a parallel system is in place. An there will always be criminals who can't/won't be helped and need to be locked away so the rest of us can function. It's an interesting point by Nellie that giving some of these folks to "freedom" to live like this is really just tormenting them. I'll have to think on that some more. I just love the thought and ideas here and this is the only space I'll read comments or engage.
Ugh- that sounds awful! I lived in Chicago in the 90's, and had a lot of scary run-ins with homeless people ( probably because I took public transportation at all hours of the night, due to my job at a hospital). I don't think they were acting like that because there was a lack of affordable housing.
I rode the max (our trolley system) and the bus to work. I work in a factory so I would have my factory steel toed boots on just in case I needed to kick someone. While I do believe Affordable housing is an issue in the area, it isn’t a fix all. Portland is a crystal meth capital. Other places give their homeless one way tickets to come here. A survey found that 1 in 3 of our homeless population had been here less than 2 years. So when people say housing first would fix all of our homeless issues, I just have to shake my head.
When CO became the first to legalize MJ, we had a huge increase, esp in homeless youth. People didn't realize that you had to be 21 and couldn't be a felon to work in the green rush. They spent all their money getting out here and then were stuck. There are also rumors that a prior mayor made us a very attractive place for others to send their homeless but IDK if it's true.
I live in NYC (and have for over a decade). I am a slight woman. When walking near an individual having a psychotic break or obviously intoxicated (which happens quite frequently), I always told myself that if they had violent tendencies they would not be on the street. I cannot afford to think the same way anymore.
Biden can't. We have a president who is clearly in cognitive decline. Everyone knows it, but it's difficult to say out loud. His flim-flam political career aside, it's sad to see any human being mentally unravel. When he's the President of the United States - with three more years to serve - it's also extremely dangerous.
Of course, Biden is senile. Any fool can see that. He should not have been a candidate, much less president. Why was Democratic primary season in 2020 a fight in a nursing home, between two near-octogenarians? Why were the younger candidates shown the door? Why were Zuckerberg et al. allowed to foist their campaign to "save democracy" on the rest of us with attempts to take over state and local election operations?
And of course, yes, Biden lives in an ever-more closed bubble of "progressivism," arranged by moral cretins who spend their days reading Vox or worse (instead of, say, Common Sense). He's in a mental and physical prison he can't get out of, even if he were aware of his position, which plainly isn't.
As opposed to that mentally stable Trump? Look, Biden is too old for the presidency, and with age, one's voice and certainty in speech delivery diminishes. He's old - not in the early parts of Dementia. The problem I have with him is that he's a party man - and too weak to stand up against the woke left wing of his party.
Wrong again. 78 is not terribly old these days. I play tennis with men older than that. The problem is his basic corrupt and flawed character, which is now made intolerable by his rapid descent into senility, a disease which reveals character flaws, it does not obscure them.
So, President Harris? She's forced to resign and then President Pelosi with VP Clinton? Then Pelosi commits suicide by shooting herself three times in the back of the head and.... I keed, but not really. Anything is possible at this point.
Of course he is!! But he's lost more marbles than Trump started out with, and I will take a good intellect in mild cognitive decline over low intellect with raging personality disorder any day of the week.
I had my doubts about the last guy, but the worst part of his presidency was the constant antic of insane behavior from Democrats. Now we get them 24/7. What a disaster. I figured Biden would be bad, but he's been abysmal, far worst than what I thought was my very pessimistic predictions. For Afghanistan alone, he should have been impeached for incompetence.
Trump certainly is a piece of work, I'll give you that. But I didn't know we were talking about him. I don't know that I would characterize Biden as a "good intellect". A good politician, perhaps. Since Biden is President now, I'm more focused on him. As a nurse, visualize three more years of cognitive decline when you are also the leader of the free world. I expect to see the 25th Amendment rolled out before his term is up. I would be happy to be wrong on this.
I bet my husband $100 that it would happen before his first year is up. I lost. Then again we have shared bank accounts so I guess all that means is that tomorrow's date night will be paid on the card that has my name on it rather than his. (It's good to place bets with your spouse btw.)
I brought up Trump because unless you were clamoring for his removal, complaining about Biden is really inconsistent. I remember the Reagan years, and he's not near that level yet.
Standing in front of crowd and talking for hours is taxing; I don't think it's a great gage of how he is performing in the day to day tasks. I also think that he is working in a milieu in which he is very familiar, and has a great depth of foreign relations knowledge. That said, who knows? He could limp along fine or have a quick decline.
Biden has been incompetent for YEARS. If you honestly thinking holding a press conference -- which is part of the work of a president -- might just be too difficult for him... I don't even know what to say.
We're talking about Biden here and the present, not "consistency". Why not bring up Rutherford B. Hayes? I remember the Reagan years also. He was one of the most consequential presidents in our history before his cognitive decline. In contrast, Biden has accomplished nothing of consequence in his long sojourn through the swamp. You'll have to tell us how he is performing in his day to day tasks. Actually, he doesn't have much real depth or skill in foreign affairs, though he has been to lots of ribbon cuttings. Even you admit that a best case is that he "limp along". You're very forgiving of the man, which is admirable, but I'm sorry - he's not up to the job.
A point of comparison. I think we can all agree that the Afghanistan withdrawal was, well, a little too reminiscent of 1975 Saigon than we would have liked. Okay. So consider 1983, Beirut. 241 American Marines perished in a terrorist bombing. And what does Reagan do? Nothing except withdraw the rest of our forces some months later. Consequential? Not then.
I don't think we're talking about the same person. Biden has never been accused of being anything but the sleaziest kind of D.C. insider, getting by on connections, bribes, and bullshit--decade after decade. He's always been a knuckle-dragging mediocrity, and when you add the senility, he's just a national embarrassment
To be quite frank, prior to 2016, most Republicans openly liked Biden. This is not particularly hidden either. https://www.businessinsider.com/lindsay-graham-called-joe-biden-good-man-god-ever-created-2019-11 It's not because Biden was necessarily moderate either - hee was considered a decent man, that never made much money from his position (until 2016, his net worth was quite low, and he lived in a modest house). Most greedy people don't wait 45 years to cash in and enjoy their late 70s.
I don't know anybody who has difficulty saying that Biden is senile. He's not in cognitive decline unless you're talking about the last few points on the curve right before the bottom. C'mon, man!
You gave great advice to your daughter, but I think it's a straw man argument to say that liberals are telling their teenagers to embrace homeless people and to not be afraid of sketchy people.
I also think that Sinema's obstruction is a bigger problem that our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Of course the withdrawal was messy- it was always going to be. We have spent 20 years throwing our treasure and our young people's lives and limbs into trying to make that place stable. Didn't work. We have problems of our own we need to deal with. Let Afghanistan take care of Afghanistan. It breaks my heart- truly- to see what happens to women and girls there. But not enough to send my son over there to lose his life or legs.
I do think that the far left wing has Biden's ear right now- to our detriment.
Still, your broken heart wasn’t so broken that you couldn’t type, “Let Afghanistan take care of Afghanistan.” But here’s my take: The United States made a commitment to Afghanistan and its people. Then we got bored and impatient, and in the end we kicked them to the curb.
I also get annoyed when I hear people bloviating about all the sacrifices that America made in Afghanistan. The cold hard truth is that the war was fought by a small cohort of this country’s young people, volunteers to a man and woman, who soldiered on, year after year, while America concerned itself with other things. On the day that PFC Smith got killed in a firefight, maybe you were ordering a latte at Starbucks. On the day that SSG Jones lost a leg, maybe you and your family were opening Christmas presents.
Let’s not forget who did actually make sacrifices, and who did not.
So maybe no one had to fight for twenty years in Afghanistan. We could have left after a year in late 2002. We could have finished off the Taliban by following them into their lair in Pakistan after we dismantled Al Qaeda. Our military objectives (taking care of who hit us on 9/11) could have been achieved with much less loss of life and treasure. Instead we got into nation building, and that's how we ended up where we did. America has never been good at that; we have enough trouble doing that at home. We should have stayed on mission in Afghanistan, and no more.
We were there for 20 freaking years! And it was a commitment we never should have made. And the reason I said let Afghanistan take care of Afghanistan wasn't to be flippant. It's because nothing else is going to work. There is toxic culture towards women there, and they have to change that themselves. I wish we could do it, but we can't. I hope and pray that having a generation of girls who have been able to grow up without a boot on their necks will change the dynamic. They will become the mothers who raise their sons to respect women.
You are 100% correct about it being a small cohort of people who fight the wars. If the sons and daughters of the wealthy were the ones who had to fight we would see a different attitude towards conflicts.
And I began my career as a nurse taking care of maimed Vietnam veterans. Years spent packing the pressure sores of men in wheelchairs can kind of turn you off to the glories of war.
Side note- I don't go to Starbucks. It's too expensive. I make my own coffee at home, fill up my thermos and head off to work. I never pack a lunch because I don't have time to eat.
(1) For the United States, the war was over. Our troops were no longer participating in ground combat. The force in place was there to secure for the US a presence in a dangerous area of the world from which a deadly threat had emerged in the past. Militarily, the war between the Afghan government and the Taliban had reached a stalemate and this, though not ideal, was an acceptable situation.
(2) For no particular reason other than his desire to collect bragging rights for "ending a war," our despicable president simply abandoned our Afghan allies: abruptly pulling the rug out from under them despite being advised that to do so would bring the Taliban back to power.
(3) The actual withdrawal was not just mismanaged but amounted to dereliction of duty on the part of the President, his administration and, I am sorry to say as a retired soldier, our senior military leadership.
(4) America's shameful skedaddle was a direct betrayal of people to whom we'd made promises of support and succor. That would include all the Afghan girls and women to whom we provided a taste of freedom before leaving them once more to the mercy of a bunch of bloodthirsty misogynists.
So, to sum up, what was done was bad for the United States in practical terms, surrendering a strategic position of value that was not very costly to maintain; bad for the people of Afghanistan; an indelible stain on the honor of the US armed forces; and a lasting disgrace to this country. Why would any ally, anywhere, trust America after Afghanistan? But these days it appears, the American people—many of them, anyway—have lost all sense of shame.
So Sinema is an obstructionist because she opposes doing away with the filibuster? Wow. I would call that character. Have you thought this one through? In an evenly split electorate, if one party with a bare voting majority can pass sweeping changes that half the country disagrees with, how long before we return to 1860? The idea of a 2/3 vote is to find real consensus and strip out the most extreme ideas of both parties. By the way, we still have troops in Korea, Japan and Germany. Imagine them gone over the last 50 years, and tell me what kind of world would have unfolded. You envision a world that doesn't exist, unfortunately.
The filibuster was never intended to find consensus, sorry. The filibuster originally was to extend debate. Senators could speak until they dropped. 2/3rds of the Senate was needed to over ride the speaking Senator - later changed to 60 out of a hundred. Filibusters now do not mean what they used to, obviously. Republicans or Democrats just push a button and then it's done. I endorse Senator Sinema in one of her interesting outfits to get up there and speak until she can't - with no over ride needed. She may not last long. Let Manchin follow her, ideally with no bathroom breaks. He won't make it till morning either. Let's make it like it used to be. If our Conservative Supreme Court can be Originalist, so can the Senate.
The progressive tail is wagging the moderate dog in the Democratic Party now. Biden spent a year trying to get pie in the sky legislation through the Senate acting as if he had the majority to do it. A complete failure. His team ignores what's doable and strives to achieve the impossible.
Afghanistan was always going to be difficult to leave. And it had to happen. But Biden looked like a deer caught in headlights and I'm afraid he might be replicating that as he faces off against Putin now re Ukraine - if Wednesday's presser is any indication.
And Sinema - well for a Senator she certainly has fashion sense. But I have no idea what she stands for. I wonder if she even knows herself.
To the hundreds of people killed by a suicide bomber released from his cell at Bagram, including 13 U.S. servicemen and women, I suspect the withdrawal would be more than "messy". It was absolutely incompetent, treasonous, and disastrous. Gifting the Taliban (and, ultimately, the Chinese) with $85 billion in military gear was catastrophic. "messy" doesn't even begin to describe this fiasco. This was not the Trump Administration plan; it was a precipitous, ill-considered decision of the current CiC Joe Biden. And let's not forget about Gen. Milley's "revenge" bombing of 12 innocent aid workers.
That part largely remains unspoken, even here. And to be honest, I'm not sure what good it does to publicly highlight it either. It sort of stigmatizes a large population unfairly (most of whom are of course not criminal). On the other hand, parents should be honest with their children, if they live in large urban areas, how to live safely. And if police were free to arrest and prosecute all criminals as individuals, as opposed to their identity (even if arrests ended up disparate) - this wouldn't even be an issue. There would simply not be as many dangerous people on the street of any identity.
I think it's fine to lump all homeless people as a group to avoid if you are a woman walking alone. As a group, they are mentally ill and/or drug addicted. That makes them unpredictable. Unpredictable is unsafe.
that's good advice, David. It's hard for young people who've grown up in a supportive, positive home to realize that there are very destructive people out there. In martial arts they teach you that the best defense is to be acutely aware of your surroundings. Sometimes small adjustments - locking a door, not taking a shortcut through a dark alley, gravitating towards people - can save a life, and it's much easier than fighting for yours once confronted by a dangerous individual.
My young children have grown up comfortable in a very safe environment, something my husband and I are proud to be able to provide. They can seriously leave expensive bikes and skateboards on the lawn with no worries of theft. I could move them to a worse neighborhood but obviously don't want that, so to inculcate a level of safe suspicion in them I just share my love of horror movies. Eyes round as dinner plates through all of Stephen King's IT. What? Grade school kids shouldn't be allowed to watch that? Phishaw!
Now they have an eye for suspicious behavior. They call out people who walk down dark streets alone or leave expensive equiptment in cars or are too trusting of people they don't know who act like friends. Also very suspicious of clowns... Especially clowns.
That's an interesting approach. Many years ago, my long since ex-wife let our youngest (age 3) watch "Night of the Living Dead" - the original. Afterwards, he was afraid to go to the bathroom by himself until he was 10. Throughout adolescence he struggled, and into adulthood. While some vestiges remain, he's largely returned to his originally well-adjusted self. He's 31.
My dad told me to go to bed and not to watch Alien. I snuck into the doorway and he didn't notice. Later, outside the bathroom window, there was a piece or rope or something blowing in the wind that looked like one of the tentacles. Serious bathroom terror for a while after that!
Thank you as always for your fair-minded reporting.
Two things.
1) My daughter lives in NYC. She is 23 years-old. I told her to not be a "good liberal." Always be on guard. Don't allow guilt to override protecting yourself. Stand away and against the wall on a Subway platform. Do what animals do. Do not judge yourself for feeling fear. Two crimes in LA were committed by homeless men. You can feel for them but don't not be afraid of them. If they scare you, they scare you. I just don't know if I ever taught her, or if society ever taught her generation, that yes - violence can always happen, especially to women or young women, no matter what. So be careful and always be cautious.
2) Joe Biden is surrounded by people who get their information from the high minded op-ed writes and the blue checks on Twitter. That is a huge mistake. They are in a bubble and any ordinary American can see that. I saw a poll recently that asked people what they thought of Kyrsten Sinema. More than half had no idea who she was. But in that feedback loop of the Left it is a bigger crisis that she thinks for herself than our withdrawal from Afghanistan. The controlling elite in this country don't understand that the empire they once ruled over has mostly abandoned them. They are only speaking to their most devoted now. Biden can't be that person if he wants to succeed. He has to get out of the bubble. How he does that, I don't know.
I was working at a non-profit a few years ago when I overheard 2 of the [female] Social Work interns worrying that it might be a "microaggression" if they put their laptops away on the bus in a very rough part of town. Uum, no, it's self preservation. I was agog. So good for you Sasha, you can have compassion without taking insane risks and I'm not sure anyone is teaching today's young women this. Since we are less able to physically defend ourselves, I think "women's intuition" is a real thing.
I grew up in a not so great part of town. I was trained to always lock the car door as soon as I got in the car from a young age. It’s So engrained in me and I do it automatically, just like putting on my seatbelt. This is regardless of what part of town I’m in. I recently heard someone say that locking your car doors while you drive is a micro aggression. Sorry, but common street smarts is not a micro aggression. There was just an armed carjacking on the freeway while someone was sitting in traffic here in Portland! I can’t help but shake my head at how naive some of these new rules come across.
Yup, the criminal who carjacks you at gun point will be using good, old fashioned, regular aggression. Or maybe a mega aggression?
Besides, it's for safety in the event of a crash too.
Wow!! Maybe people who are in social work are more likely to worry about that stuff? My sister had been teaching all the kids in our family the manta "When in doubt, get the hell out".
Yeah, the social work students were highly attuned to things I hadn't even heard of, and I run in fairly liberal circles. Private, $$ university and some of them were in for a big surprise once they started working with clients.
Sasha...i agree, cept that "Biden IS the ornament Bubble". I doubt that he can remove himself.
There was a book in the 90's called The Gift of Fear. At that time I saw the author late night on a rerun of Oprah. He talked precisely about young women being conditioned to be nice/not offend and how that puts them in danger. That man saved my life! At that time my boss had bought a building and moved our small company out to the near west side of Chicago convinced it would become a hot real estate market. We were the only, for a lack of a better word, non-sketchy people in the area. We used an abandoned lot down the alley to park our cars and one day while walking to my car at lunchtime a crazy homeless man approached saying, 'What are you doing in this alley'? This overwhelming terror overtook me and before I could even mentally process what was going on I was sprinting back to my office and frantically ringing the bell for them to buzz me in. When I came through the door my boss was standing there talking to the receptionist obviously annoyed that I had rung the buzzer frantically. When I told them what happened they looked at me like I was nuts and I started to really doubt myself and feel stupid. The boss's wife was there and she thought if you're really afraid we should call the police. Ends up when the police came to the area they found the man down the street threatening another person with a really long carving knife!! I was so thankful I had heard that author! Another thing the author said was that men should be taught that when they see a woman alone, nervously looking back over their shoulder and picking up the pace, they should hang back or cross to the other side of the street. I've taught my my son this and also that guys need the gift of fear too! Carjackings are a big problem here and the other night he felt a bit threatened by sketchy guys pulling up in a car alongside while he was parking. So my son drove off to a better lit street and drove around till he lost them (yes they followed him for a bit).
Gavin DeBecker. We would sometimes recommend his work to DV or stalking victims, but with a big grain of salt as he says things like "The first time you're a victim, the second time you're a volunteer." Uum, no not exactly big guy. He was spot on with other stuff though. I'm glad you were ok!
To be appropriately fearful does save lives- both women and men. At the same time, living in fear all the time is unpleasant - and even during our times, where criminals are often unpunished, brutal violence on women by strangers still remains rare. And while I think the advise that author is useful in places like NYC - to be quite frank, it's not needed in major cities in parts of the world where crime is taken seriously (Singapore, Dubai, Tokyo, Seoul)
I completely agree with you about living in fear. Brutal violence on women by strangers might be rare- but all kinds of things happen to female that are bad, and they happen everywhere. In my 54 years, I've been stalked, chased, and had rape attempted a handful of times. Most of these things happened in college towns; one where I grew up and the other where I went to school. I've always had to be vigilant. One of the best things about getting older has been becoming more and more invisible to creepy men.
The last time a guy came at me was at the library. A dad I knew socially cornered me in a dead end aisle. He was herding me back against the wall. I had to duck down and push past him to get out. The funny thing is that I had totally forgotten this even happened. As I was writing this post I tried to remember the last creepy thing that happened to me and that surfaced. So, not violent, to be sure. But having spent most of my life as a prey animal, I assure you that being vigilant is second nature.
I moved by downtown Portland, Oregon in 2016 when I was 22. I had no knowledge of the city, I was relocated by my company. We ended up living by a massive homeless encampment. It was miserable.
In one month, 4 of the other tenants we knew had their car broken into. Not long after, my husband was walking our dog and saw a homeless man looking in the window of each parked car. He took a photo of the man to help identify later in case he broke in. Another young guy, probably a College student, confronted my husband and lectured him. He obviously didn’t live in the area or understand the crime rates we dealt with. He kept claiming that the homeless man only wanted to check his reflection because he didn’t have any other opportunities.
Another time, I was walking my dog and a homeless lady started following me and kept threatening to stab me. She had a metal object in her hand and kept thrusting me. I held out my pepper gel and got back in my building. I called the police to inform them of the incident, the response was “call back after she stabs someone.”
It was hard to remain sympathetic after having to constantly deal with meth needles strewn on the ground and rampant crime. It’s only gotten worse and has spread to other parts of the city.
I can't imagine the level of masochism needed to be a Portland cop. Not helpful to you as a citizen in that situation of course. Denver is swirling the drain too and similar dynamics. White, young "progressives" come to the city to lecture us about the homeless/drug addicts/mentally ill but they run like Hell back to the burbs at the first whiff of danger. Or human excrement.
The CJ system can't be the home of all rehab and mh treatment. It got dumped on us in the 80's and 90's with the sea changes in institutionalization and mh help. There were abuses in having people committed, but they changed the system before having a replacement. I think there's a place for a hybrid system. Our PD has had mental health co-responders for years. But my fear is that the baby will again be thrown out with the bathwater because of a few bad cops before a parallel system is in place. An there will always be criminals who can't/won't be helped and need to be locked away so the rest of us can function. It's an interesting point by Nellie that giving some of these folks to "freedom" to live like this is really just tormenting them. I'll have to think on that some more. I just love the thought and ideas here and this is the only space I'll read comments or engage.
Wow. Portland has become a caricature. How said. I hope you're living someplace more pleasant now.
Ugh- that sounds awful! I lived in Chicago in the 90's, and had a lot of scary run-ins with homeless people ( probably because I took public transportation at all hours of the night, due to my job at a hospital). I don't think they were acting like that because there was a lack of affordable housing.
I rode the max (our trolley system) and the bus to work. I work in a factory so I would have my factory steel toed boots on just in case I needed to kick someone. While I do believe Affordable housing is an issue in the area, it isn’t a fix all. Portland is a crystal meth capital. Other places give their homeless one way tickets to come here. A survey found that 1 in 3 of our homeless population had been here less than 2 years. So when people say housing first would fix all of our homeless issues, I just have to shake my head.
When CO became the first to legalize MJ, we had a huge increase, esp in homeless youth. People didn't realize that you had to be 21 and couldn't be a felon to work in the green rush. They spent all their money getting out here and then were stuck. There are also rumors that a prior mayor made us a very attractive place for others to send their homeless but IDK if it's true.
I live in NYC (and have for over a decade). I am a slight woman. When walking near an individual having a psychotic break or obviously intoxicated (which happens quite frequently), I always told myself that if they had violent tendencies they would not be on the street. I cannot afford to think the same way anymore.
Biden can't. We have a president who is clearly in cognitive decline. Everyone knows it, but it's difficult to say out loud. His flim-flam political career aside, it's sad to see any human being mentally unravel. When he's the President of the United States - with three more years to serve - it's also extremely dangerous.
Of course, Biden is senile. Any fool can see that. He should not have been a candidate, much less president. Why was Democratic primary season in 2020 a fight in a nursing home, between two near-octogenarians? Why were the younger candidates shown the door? Why were Zuckerberg et al. allowed to foist their campaign to "save democracy" on the rest of us with attempts to take over state and local election operations?
And of course, yes, Biden lives in an ever-more closed bubble of "progressivism," arranged by moral cretins who spend their days reading Vox or worse (instead of, say, Common Sense). He's in a mental and physical prison he can't get out of, even if he were aware of his position, which plainly isn't.
As opposed to that mentally stable Trump? Look, Biden is too old for the presidency, and with age, one's voice and certainty in speech delivery diminishes. He's old - not in the early parts of Dementia. The problem I have with him is that he's a party man - and too weak to stand up against the woke left wing of his party.
Wrong again. 78 is not terribly old these days. I play tennis with men older than that. The problem is his basic corrupt and flawed character, which is now made intolerable by his rapid descent into senility, a disease which reveals character flaws, it does not obscure them.
So, President Harris? She's forced to resign and then President Pelosi with VP Clinton? Then Pelosi commits suicide by shooting herself three times in the back of the head and.... I keed, but not really. Anything is possible at this point.
It's like a novel unfolding before our very eyes.
Of course he is!! But he's lost more marbles than Trump started out with, and I will take a good intellect in mild cognitive decline over low intellect with raging personality disorder any day of the week.
I had my doubts about the last guy, but the worst part of his presidency was the constant antic of insane behavior from Democrats. Now we get them 24/7. What a disaster. I figured Biden would be bad, but he's been abysmal, far worst than what I thought was my very pessimistic predictions. For Afghanistan alone, he should have been impeached for incompetence.
Trump certainly is a piece of work, I'll give you that. But I didn't know we were talking about him. I don't know that I would characterize Biden as a "good intellect". A good politician, perhaps. Since Biden is President now, I'm more focused on him. As a nurse, visualize three more years of cognitive decline when you are also the leader of the free world. I expect to see the 25th Amendment rolled out before his term is up. I would be happy to be wrong on this.
I bet my husband $100 that it would happen before his first year is up. I lost. Then again we have shared bank accounts so I guess all that means is that tomorrow's date night will be paid on the card that has my name on it rather than his. (It's good to place bets with your spouse btw.)
Good call, Jennifer. I'll remember that!
I brought up Trump because unless you were clamoring for his removal, complaining about Biden is really inconsistent. I remember the Reagan years, and he's not near that level yet.
Standing in front of crowd and talking for hours is taxing; I don't think it's a great gage of how he is performing in the day to day tasks. I also think that he is working in a milieu in which he is very familiar, and has a great depth of foreign relations knowledge. That said, who knows? He could limp along fine or have a quick decline.
He’s been wrong historically on every major foreign policy issue. He is a corrupt idiot.
Mad...lying and cheating for 40 some years, that i know of...
Biden has been incompetent for YEARS. If you honestly thinking holding a press conference -- which is part of the work of a president -- might just be too difficult for him... I don't even know what to say.
We're talking about Biden here and the present, not "consistency". Why not bring up Rutherford B. Hayes? I remember the Reagan years also. He was one of the most consequential presidents in our history before his cognitive decline. In contrast, Biden has accomplished nothing of consequence in his long sojourn through the swamp. You'll have to tell us how he is performing in his day to day tasks. Actually, he doesn't have much real depth or skill in foreign affairs, though he has been to lots of ribbon cuttings. Even you admit that a best case is that he "limp along". You're very forgiving of the man, which is admirable, but I'm sorry - he's not up to the job.
A point of comparison. I think we can all agree that the Afghanistan withdrawal was, well, a little too reminiscent of 1975 Saigon than we would have liked. Okay. So consider 1983, Beirut. 241 American Marines perished in a terrorist bombing. And what does Reagan do? Nothing except withdraw the rest of our forces some months later. Consequential? Not then.
Arguably not his finest hour. On the other hand, he didn't get us bogged down in a futile middle eastern conflict with no resolution. Is that so bad?
I don't think we're talking about the same person. Biden has never been accused of being anything but the sleaziest kind of D.C. insider, getting by on connections, bribes, and bullshit--decade after decade. He's always been a knuckle-dragging mediocrity, and when you add the senility, he's just a national embarrassment
Gordon...load and clear "Bingo"
The senator from Master card
To be quite frank, prior to 2016, most Republicans openly liked Biden. This is not particularly hidden either. https://www.businessinsider.com/lindsay-graham-called-joe-biden-good-man-god-ever-created-2019-11 It's not because Biden was necessarily moderate either - hee was considered a decent man, that never made much money from his position (until 2016, his net worth was quite low, and he lived in a modest house). Most greedy people don't wait 45 years to cash in and enjoy their late 70s.
This must be an excerpt from Bedtime Stories for Progressives, published by the DNC. Good Lord...
Gordon...so funny
I don't know anybody who has difficulty saying that Biden is senile. He's not in cognitive decline unless you're talking about the last few points on the curve right before the bottom. C'mon, man!
You gave great advice to your daughter, but I think it's a straw man argument to say that liberals are telling their teenagers to embrace homeless people and to not be afraid of sketchy people.
I also think that Sinema's obstruction is a bigger problem that our withdrawal from Afghanistan. Of course the withdrawal was messy- it was always going to be. We have spent 20 years throwing our treasure and our young people's lives and limbs into trying to make that place stable. Didn't work. We have problems of our own we need to deal with. Let Afghanistan take care of Afghanistan. It breaks my heart- truly- to see what happens to women and girls there. But not enough to send my son over there to lose his life or legs.
I do think that the far left wing has Biden's ear right now- to our detriment.
Still, your broken heart wasn’t so broken that you couldn’t type, “Let Afghanistan take care of Afghanistan.” But here’s my take: The United States made a commitment to Afghanistan and its people. Then we got bored and impatient, and in the end we kicked them to the curb.
I also get annoyed when I hear people bloviating about all the sacrifices that America made in Afghanistan. The cold hard truth is that the war was fought by a small cohort of this country’s young people, volunteers to a man and woman, who soldiered on, year after year, while America concerned itself with other things. On the day that PFC Smith got killed in a firefight, maybe you were ordering a latte at Starbucks. On the day that SSG Jones lost a leg, maybe you and your family were opening Christmas presents.
Let’s not forget who did actually make sacrifices, and who did not.
So maybe no one had to fight for twenty years in Afghanistan. We could have left after a year in late 2002. We could have finished off the Taliban by following them into their lair in Pakistan after we dismantled Al Qaeda. Our military objectives (taking care of who hit us on 9/11) could have been achieved with much less loss of life and treasure. Instead we got into nation building, and that's how we ended up where we did. America has never been good at that; we have enough trouble doing that at home. We should have stayed on mission in Afghanistan, and no more.
We were there for 20 freaking years! And it was a commitment we never should have made. And the reason I said let Afghanistan take care of Afghanistan wasn't to be flippant. It's because nothing else is going to work. There is toxic culture towards women there, and they have to change that themselves. I wish we could do it, but we can't. I hope and pray that having a generation of girls who have been able to grow up without a boot on their necks will change the dynamic. They will become the mothers who raise their sons to respect women.
You are 100% correct about it being a small cohort of people who fight the wars. If the sons and daughters of the wealthy were the ones who had to fight we would see a different attitude towards conflicts.
And I began my career as a nurse taking care of maimed Vietnam veterans. Years spent packing the pressure sores of men in wheelchairs can kind of turn you off to the glories of war.
Side note- I don't go to Starbucks. It's too expensive. I make my own coffee at home, fill up my thermos and head off to work. I never pack a lunch because I don't have time to eat.
Every nurse I know - including my wife - says they never have time to eat on the job.
Here are some facts regarding Afghanistan.
(1) For the United States, the war was over. Our troops were no longer participating in ground combat. The force in place was there to secure for the US a presence in a dangerous area of the world from which a deadly threat had emerged in the past. Militarily, the war between the Afghan government and the Taliban had reached a stalemate and this, though not ideal, was an acceptable situation.
(2) For no particular reason other than his desire to collect bragging rights for "ending a war," our despicable president simply abandoned our Afghan allies: abruptly pulling the rug out from under them despite being advised that to do so would bring the Taliban back to power.
(3) The actual withdrawal was not just mismanaged but amounted to dereliction of duty on the part of the President, his administration and, I am sorry to say as a retired soldier, our senior military leadership.
(4) America's shameful skedaddle was a direct betrayal of people to whom we'd made promises of support and succor. That would include all the Afghan girls and women to whom we provided a taste of freedom before leaving them once more to the mercy of a bunch of bloodthirsty misogynists.
So, to sum up, what was done was bad for the United States in practical terms, surrendering a strategic position of value that was not very costly to maintain; bad for the people of Afghanistan; an indelible stain on the honor of the US armed forces; and a lasting disgrace to this country. Why would any ally, anywhere, trust America after Afghanistan? But these days it appears, the American people—many of them, anyway—have lost all sense of shame.
An eighth grader could have planned that withdrawal with more elan!! Please that was an embarrassing disaster
It would take an eighth grader to think one could withdraw simply with no problems. Reality is messy.
I love Sinema - and the fact she's standing up to the authoritarian aspects of the left impressed me. We need more Senators like her.
So Sinema is an obstructionist because she opposes doing away with the filibuster? Wow. I would call that character. Have you thought this one through? In an evenly split electorate, if one party with a bare voting majority can pass sweeping changes that half the country disagrees with, how long before we return to 1860? The idea of a 2/3 vote is to find real consensus and strip out the most extreme ideas of both parties. By the way, we still have troops in Korea, Japan and Germany. Imagine them gone over the last 50 years, and tell me what kind of world would have unfolded. You envision a world that doesn't exist, unfortunately.
The filibuster was never intended to find consensus, sorry. The filibuster originally was to extend debate. Senators could speak until they dropped. 2/3rds of the Senate was needed to over ride the speaking Senator - later changed to 60 out of a hundred. Filibusters now do not mean what they used to, obviously. Republicans or Democrats just push a button and then it's done. I endorse Senator Sinema in one of her interesting outfits to get up there and speak until she can't - with no over ride needed. She may not last long. Let Manchin follow her, ideally with no bathroom breaks. He won't make it till morning either. Let's make it like it used to be. If our Conservative Supreme Court can be Originalist, so can the Senate.
It is now just a way for us to have minority rule.
I agree with Joe Biden: "At its core, the filibuster is not about stopping a nominee or a bill, it's about compromise and moderation."
Can you give one example of the last time that actually happened?
A coherent, rational Biden statement? Or a major Bill passing the Senate with 60 votes? The former was a long time ago but the latter was 2021.
The progressive tail is wagging the moderate dog in the Democratic Party now. Biden spent a year trying to get pie in the sky legislation through the Senate acting as if he had the majority to do it. A complete failure. His team ignores what's doable and strives to achieve the impossible.
Afghanistan was always going to be difficult to leave. And it had to happen. But Biden looked like a deer caught in headlights and I'm afraid he might be replicating that as he faces off against Putin now re Ukraine - if Wednesday's presser is any indication.
And Sinema - well for a Senator she certainly has fashion sense. But I have no idea what she stands for. I wonder if she even knows herself.
To the hundreds of people killed by a suicide bomber released from his cell at Bagram, including 13 U.S. servicemen and women, I suspect the withdrawal would be more than "messy". It was absolutely incompetent, treasonous, and disastrous. Gifting the Taliban (and, ultimately, the Chinese) with $85 billion in military gear was catastrophic. "messy" doesn't even begin to describe this fiasco. This was not the Trump Administration plan; it was a precipitous, ill-considered decision of the current CiC Joe Biden. And let's not forget about Gen. Milley's "revenge" bombing of 12 innocent aid workers.
All three murderers had other characteristics in common besides 'homeless".
That part largely remains unspoken, even here. And to be honest, I'm not sure what good it does to publicly highlight it either. It sort of stigmatizes a large population unfairly (most of whom are of course not criminal). On the other hand, parents should be honest with their children, if they live in large urban areas, how to live safely. And if police were free to arrest and prosecute all criminals as individuals, as opposed to their identity (even if arrests ended up disparate) - this wouldn't even be an issue. There would simply not be as many dangerous people on the street of any identity.
Stigmatizing? Doesn't the item stigmatize the 'homeless' a large population of which are not criminal?
I think it's fine to lump all homeless people as a group to avoid if you are a woman walking alone. As a group, they are mentally ill and/or drug addicted. That makes them unpredictable. Unpredictable is unsafe.
that's good advice, David. It's hard for young people who've grown up in a supportive, positive home to realize that there are very destructive people out there. In martial arts they teach you that the best defense is to be acutely aware of your surroundings. Sometimes small adjustments - locking a door, not taking a shortcut through a dark alley, gravitating towards people - can save a life, and it's much easier than fighting for yours once confronted by a dangerous individual.
My young children have grown up comfortable in a very safe environment, something my husband and I are proud to be able to provide. They can seriously leave expensive bikes and skateboards on the lawn with no worries of theft. I could move them to a worse neighborhood but obviously don't want that, so to inculcate a level of safe suspicion in them I just share my love of horror movies. Eyes round as dinner plates through all of Stephen King's IT. What? Grade school kids shouldn't be allowed to watch that? Phishaw!
Now they have an eye for suspicious behavior. They call out people who walk down dark streets alone or leave expensive equiptment in cars or are too trusting of people they don't know who act like friends. Also very suspicious of clowns... Especially clowns.
That's an interesting approach. Many years ago, my long since ex-wife let our youngest (age 3) watch "Night of the Living Dead" - the original. Afterwards, he was afraid to go to the bathroom by himself until he was 10. Throughout adolescence he struggled, and into adulthood. While some vestiges remain, he's largely returned to his originally well-adjusted self. He's 31.
My dad told me to go to bed and not to watch Alien. I snuck into the doorway and he didn't notice. Later, outside the bathroom window, there was a piece or rope or something blowing in the wind that looked like one of the tentacles. Serious bathroom terror for a while after that!