Fascinating how the 2020's is turning into a rerun of the 1960's-1970's: riots, rising oil prices, supply shocks, rising inflation and now the same "wild west" mentality about psychedelics that killed all legitimate research back then.
You forgot the crime wave. From 2003-2021 I kept my gun in a safe at night. Now I take it out and put it next to my bed. I haven't changed. My threat assessment has.
It was safe as fuck before the pandemic. I grew up in Los Angeles and lived in East LA awhile; lived in Bedford-Stuyvesant two years; lived in the Tenderloin for a year (not the way it is now). I've also lived in Prague, Barcelona, Saigon, Bangkok, Sydney (King's Cross, before the fall of it). The total chaos and anarchy of Portland right now is hard to explain. Almost everyone I know has been attacked on the street, or a victim of random violence in the past two years. Every other city in America that had a meth or fentanyl problem gave their worst cases a one-way bus ticket to Portland, in part because "let the liberals deal with it". I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night. Now I'm just waiting for the night I have to shoot someone coming into my house.
I think the only other place I sort of felt this way was Avignon. I lived on Rue des Teinturieres. It's a bit of a siege mentality when the drug dealers outside your window are blasting music so loud it sounds like they're standing over your bed at night.
At the start of the pandemic, Portland police announced they would no longer respond to any emergency calls unless a person's life was in danger. And the district attorney ran and won on the platform that he wouldn't prosecute anyone for any crime short of murder. The result is a free-fire zone. I showed up at my local bar a couple months ago and it was a crime scene with 30-40 bullet casings scattered under the table where I usually have a drink. My friend who had walked home from there a few nights prior had been jumped and had his leg broken because he was gay- by a man wearing full Joker makeup, who is still sitting and laughing to himself on the corner two blocks from my house. A boy and his girlfriend camped their van in front of my place and the boy beat their dog with a long metal pole, screaming and high on drugs. The neighbors tried calling animal services, the police wouldn't come, and this went on for days and nights, with the dog yelping in pain until I went in the street with a gun and told him it was time to leave. He got in their van screaming at me, and wrecked it into six parked cars around the corner. And finally he got arrested.
> I was a die-hard liberal progressive two years ago, before I had savage children on drugs waging running melees with rocks and trying to rape each other's girlfriends in front of my house all night.
I don’t understand this. It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that? Is it that we are a fair country that treats people with dignity? Or is it that we are Country with a huge separation of wealth that doesn’t mind letting people suffer in homelessness.
It sounds like it’s not that scene, but your wealth, that made you less progressive, and wanted to protect it that caused you to become less progressive.
Where do you think the people causing all the crime come from? Why do people commit crime? I’m pretty sure people don’t commit crime when their lives are going great. And I’m sure it’s the same thing with drug addiction.
And the people that run Portland? They’re not progressive, not in the least.
Threatening a man who is beating a dog in your front yard with a gun does not make you conservative, it makes you caring. Don’t buy into the paradigm that if you own a gun you are suddenly conservative. That’s just propaganda both sides want to live inside of you.
When politicians run on a progressive platform, institute progressive policies on crime (no bail, avoid prison, no punishment for QOL crime) and then crime goes nuts, I'd think twice about voting for progressive policies too.
But I think your point is "no true progressive" - if the policy didn't work, then it's not progressive because progressive policies always work.
::eye roll::
I think my view now on progressive policies is: They sound super when you're rich and white and don't think whatsoever about the consequences. Then when those consequences come back around to bite you, you probably become a nazi and don't think too hard about that either. Here's the dirty secret of progressive politics: No one who actually came here as an immigrant is at all interested in being fetishized for their racial background or their "noble" poverty. That's not what progressivism was 15 years ago, but that's what it is today. A white power fetishization of nonwhite people that forcefully slots us into categories we're supposed to sympathize with.
Portland is socially progressive but they are not economically progressive. In the word, they’re neo liberal. And I hate to use that term because people don’t truly understand its meaning.
No - they're pseudo-progressive on both fronts. It's not really that. They're passive aggressive. The phrase that always goes through my mind in this city is ineffectual asshole.
"Passive-aggressive people regularly exhibit resistance to requests or demands from family and other individuals often by procrastinating, expressing sullenness, or acting stubborn."
Oh, ending homelessness is a stupid priority. Giving people the education to take care of themselves if they choose to is important, but what they do with it is only my problem if they make it my problem. I can't spend my life taking care of people who refuse to take care of themselves.
It strikes me that none* of these are "liberal policies" but rather realities that arose in a few West Coast liberal cities that simply couldn't handle the influx of people who came to SF, Portland, Seattle.
* Perhaps no bail, although I think in isolation that's unlikely to be an issue
These areas are always unique because transient and the homeless can live with some degree of year round comfort, so they will be naturally appealing to people who have uncertain housing prospects.
These are all liberal/progressive policies enacted across the West Coast - Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angelas.
Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment. They believe that justice is actually righting the wrong that caused people to behave this way in the first place. "The infinite perfectability of man". That's a core progressive belief. Thus they "catch and release" for non-violent (and sometimes violent) crimes. Reduce property crimes to misdemeanors, and generally tell law abiding citizens - "just put up with quality of life issues".
Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
Lawlessness begets more lawlessness. Giving people a place to shoot drugs (without treatment options) just helps addict get their fix. Not prosecuting property crimes just encourages ever more bold property crimes.
And the funny part is, it's not poverty driving much of this. It's organized crime - easy pickings, low hanging fruit. It's not the single mom trying to feed her newborn milk that is stealing catalytic converters.
I keep saying this, but history repeats itself. Major urban cities saw mass out migrations in the 60-70s for this exact reason. Crime, lawlessness, rioting, general degradation of QOL. The "Death Wish" movie series about a vigilante taking on a lawless city wasn't popular because people enjoyed the genre. I could easily see it happening again, especially with WFH. Then the "law and order" types will get elected and we'll start the whole thing over again.
What you're saying is right. I still fail to understand whether "restorative justice" actually comes from love or from some desire to watch the world burn. But you're describing what I've seen with my own eyes in the past few years in PDX. A slow self-immolation. What's sort of nuts to me is: I'm an extremist for personal freedom and individual rights, I loathe authority but I believe in collaborative action, and I'm a leftist in terms of helping people get off the bottom and on their feet. I guess that's what "liberal" used to mean. But I'm morally offended by what progressivism stands for now. I can't see the reason in justifying terrorism against working people by people who refuse to work, and worse, clothing it in some kind of bullshit moral superiority. Because that's what it's become.
> Suffice to say the experiment has failed entirely.
You've described the justice systems of modern progressive countries and what would you know, they work fine. The US needs a firm hand because it's culturally savage. Folks think about themselves and corporate "culture" is enshrined as something good and expected. Everyone sees the exploitation of other human beings and denigration everywhere, is it any surprise that they cannot behave in a manner that has a little compassion for themselves and everyone else? The entire environment is fundamentally dehumanising. No amount of localised niceness is going to undo decades of absolutely brutal culture.
The people I know in progressive countries are shocked at the rampant violence that is tolerated and no prosecuted and punished in the US. It wouldn’t be tolerated in their countries.
Hell, the lefties I know in Europe look at the West Coast of the US and ask “what the fuck are you doing?”
> Progressives believe in restorative justice not prison or punishment.
I think this is a dramatic misrepresentation. The west Coast cities you're referencing are making these decisions because practically speaking they do not have the resources to deal with what's happening in their cities.
These things aren't happening in other "liberal" cities because they don't have those policies. I think you're confusing the egg for the chicken.
Why is the same thing not happening en masse in Austin, in NYC, in Boston, in Atlanta, in DC, in Tampa? These are liberal cities.
The answer is the underlying problem is bigger than liberalism.
Justice reform has been desperately needed for decades, but that's not what's happening here. What's happening here is underfunded cities being overwhelmed and largely giving up.
FDR got his pee-pee slapped down for trying to do a run around on the constitution.
But you keep working on your anarchistic utopia while the rest of get “exploited” and pay taxes that actually support the people who you claim to care about.
you know I can hold two thoughts in my head at the same time. I can be appreciative of taxes and the system that helps support others who are in need, and I can at the same time advocate for a system that doesn’t create peoples destitution.
>> It would make me more progressive if I saw that. What are the economic, political, social forces that are causing that?
[EDIT] TLDR: I never committed crimes or hurt people when I was poor as fuck.
When I was 20 I would've maybe thought this. I was a left anarchist, and my leanings are still in that direction. It's not wealth that made me less progressive. I wrote a novel when I was 24 that brought the world down on me; it was a satire that involved a rock band murdering Bush and Cheney at a gala at Bohemian grove. It got thousands of hits from .mil sites and I got police going through my trash cans, my apartment raided. I left the country for 15 years. And railed against the military/industrial complex.
It's progressives who made me less progressive. During my exile I worked, I created things. It was hard. But I never lost my dignity. I never acted like a savage. I did lots of drugs and drinking but I never blamed anyone else; I worked out what it was that I needed to do. I've worked every day since I was 15. I wasn't handed anything. My parents were born in complete poverty.
So when I see a 20 year old beating his dog and literally taking a shit on the sidewalk, and then screaming at me that "how dare you tell a homeless person he can't shit here unless you want me to use your bathroom", when the City of Portland and me put a porta-potty on the corner thirty paces from where he's shitting for him, what I see is an able-bodied guy with a facebook and instagram account who's LARPing as an anarchist and needs to go through some form of hardship which he's obviously not experiencing yet.
I don't blame anyone for anything I could reasonably - or unreasonably - see someone doing. Slapping someone for making fun of your wife's hair is bad but it's not incomprehensible. Beating a dog is outside the sphere of what I can understand, though. So is shitting on someone's porch.
I've started to think the main thing is that people in their early 20s are being told this is an acceptable form of rebellion. It's not the peaceful Drop out, tune out of old times. It's an aggressive attempt to assert rights to dominate everyone around them - to terrorize peaceable people - without any kind of understanding of what terror people like me went through to be here. The one thing you won't find among these Portland youth is any kind of understanding of the immigrant experience. Just (mostly white) entitlement, wrapped in a thin veneer of "woke" speech. With no thought behind it.
Social forces that drive it? Poor education, stupid parents, I don't know. They're a threat to the working order of society. I would say that even more if I were homeless; I say it as a homeowner.
[Edit] Two side thoughts: 1. Just announcing you're a homeowner in Portland is cause for being attacked these days. As if no one deserves to reap any reward for anything they've done. 2. Someone on Nextdoor here last week complained that she was sleeping on her kitchen floor because the same guy had broken into her apartment three times in a week and once started a fire in the bathroom; other people asked why she didn't call the police, and she had, but they didn't respond. Someone asked why she didn't have a baseball bat at least. She recoiled and said she didn't want to hurt anyone. Is that a way to live your life?
Fellow anarchist here who was the Hassled by the feds after 9/11.
So you’ve taken up the I’ve pulled myself up with my own bootstraps defense. I don’t demean that at all, but you did not grow up the same way as a 20 year old in your yard did.
To be a progressive, and I’m not talking about these progressives that you think you have in the Portland government, is to understand that we all don’t share the same life experiences.
You were lucky growing up in the time You did and probably you were lucky growing up in a time in Portland actually embrace community.
Tell me all these horror stories does not do anything to address the fundamental problems that are causing the horror stories in the first place.
Can you talk about this peaceful rebellion that took place in the past. What? What rebellion? Those people turned into the boomers that bought up all the property in Portland as investment vehicles. These people aren’t revolting in any positive or not coordinated way. Their revolt is more primal and therefore A true rebellion. It is an unconscious rebellion and that scares people into conservatives.
You know I just had an argument with three union reps at a bar tonight - basically around the idea that "you were lucky..." but the outcome as phrased by one of them was "individual thoughts don't matter, I have no interest in that. Everything is systemic".
I've staked my entire life on being an individual who won't support a team, a religion, or a social movement (beyond individual points I agree with). I happen to believe that if everyone acted this way, we'd have a lot fewer problems as a society. I refuse to take the side of a movement that claims some holistic righteousnes, just like I refuse to accept religion and race. So on a case-by-case basis, I decide what seems fair. I should note that before that dog-beating kid drove his van into six cars, I went out there with a gun and a six pack of beer which I distributed to his 17 year old homeless friends, who I sat around with while they told me he was a crazy shithead. I think that was what really drove him mental.
Individuals. That's how the world functions. Everything else is theory.
So my rebellion didn't work? It did. I was gassed in the street in 2004 protesting the Iraq war. Everyone hates neocons now and hates that war, don't they? Did I do nothing? An argument is ridiculous if it asks every person to pawn everything they ever did to the next struggle in the future. Portland is a shit show in the real estate market, but where isn't? It's by leaps and bounds the most progressive city in America.
The boomers' homeless and ultimately functional children grew up richer than I did. They need to come halfway and see that acting savage and refusing completely to partake in society is not an ultimately winning strategy. They're not going to win some revolutionary war where they suddenly abolish all private property - and if that's their goal, they've really got to become more coherent and stop doing so much heroin, because I can't even understand what they're saying.
[edit] my contention is that the 20-yo shitting in my yard's problem is that he is spoiled and rich, by every standard I've seen everywhere I've traveled in the world. And that's why I can't relate to the conditions that led to him, or sympathize with his plight.
> And please stop with the peacocking of how good of a person you are by trying to show off how you reach out to these people and all the protests you engaged in. It's just gross.
FWIW, such anecdotes help me understand the writer and where they're coming from. I don't think bringing a gun for self-defense and distributing some beer to a bunch of kids to figure out wtf is going on is "peacocking of how good of a person you are", it's just being a human being. Working with what you have.
No, I was not a savage. And you're not a savage. You're right, the world will act the way they're treated. I try to act kindly when possible. What's wrong with beering the homeless kids? But I don't think much of them.
This ain't about me being "good". It's about my right to exist and work and live whether some 18 year old is having a bad family life or not. It's about handling their problems, as I have had to handle my own. Funny. Sympathy only flows in one direction - towards the generation who were born of the richest fattest bulge of neocon shitheads in imperial american history. Who shit on my porch in the name of equity and social justice, literally, waving ipads.
You lost me at Ukraine. I don't see how that relates to this. But FWIW, you think it's gross that I explained both sides of my attempt to understand and my underlying dislike of the people outside my door? Cool, I'm not trying to be your friend. I'm explaining how I've chosen to deal with a world of spoiled shit spawn of boomers. Bit of carrot and stick.
[edit] also? >>they hate it because it is history now. They still love war
...is incredibly ignorant. We hated it because it was WRONG, the way Russians who protest now know that their war is wrong. This is recent and important history. The war just ended. It was the longest war in US history. It's a very good thing that people hated it. Because above all it happened for completely artificial reasons. Yes, this means you might have to admit that some wars are more artificial than others, but that one, for those of us who watched in horror when it started, was completely unjustified. So go ahead and shit on the people who were out in the streets protesting. You clearly know better.
The subtle psychology exposed in this sentence. You say you are an anarchist but here you are wanting to control others. You think you are smarter than these suffering people and will treat them like dogs with a treat to get them to do what you want.
> It's about handling their problems, as I have had to handle my own.
Again, you remain the individual. You think if everyone "lived like you" they would be fine. Not everyone can handle their own problems and some peoples problems are bigger and more complicated than yours were.
> So go ahead and shit on the people who were out in the streets protesting
I protested the Iraq war as well, so no idea what you are going on about here. I know it was useless because no one is protesting the U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine. Everything happening now, including all the propaganda, is the same as it was before the Iraq war.
If you want to know why Portland is failing, look in the mirror.
>> You say you are an anarchist but here you are wanting to control others.
No, I used to be an anarchist. Now I'm living in an anarchic state and dealing with it pragmatically. There's nothing about individualist anarchism that says you can't attempt to moderate the behavior of other people around you, btw.
>> Not everyone can handle their own problems and some peoples problems are bigger and more complicated than yours were.
You just implied I had no right to attempt to affect other people's behavior. But somehow it's still supposed to be my responsibility to pay for their bad decisions in life? How's that?
>> no one is protesting the U.S. involvement in the war in Ukraine
We didn't invade Ukraine. We don't have troops there. Not all things are equal.
>>If you want to know why Portland is failing, look in the mirror.
Oh bullshit. Portland's failing because it stopped being a weird, Amsterdam-like open-minded, leftish libertarian blue collar town, and started being a destination for intolerant, spoiled children LARPing as anarchists and destroying public safety in the name of an incoherent political agenda.
Then again, my definition of "not failing" might be different than yours. I think not failing would be downtown reopening, not having trash amd vermin all over the streets, not hearing gunshots all night, and people not having to worry about stray bullets coming through their walls. I bet you think not failing would mean giving more free shit away to homeless drug addicts who ride in from out of town. But that's not helping anyone who lives here, and it's not helping it not to fail.
So may be the problem is you never understood Anarchism. Because what’s happening in Portland is nothing close to Anarchism. It’s anarchy, with a small a. Now I guess you would call yourself an anarcho capitalist? Please don’t get me started….
You got greedy, that’s all that happened. It’s nothing complicated. You LARPed an anarchist when you were a kid, you traveled around, then somehow made some money, and you were able to end up buying a house in Portland. And now, the very system you used to make that money is destroying Portland and you’re complaining about the people? I get complaining about the government, but you’re putting all this on the people? Do you think people are kids wanna grow up to be addicted to drugs?
Portland didn’t fail because the culture changed, Portland changed because of housing speculation and housing investments and a housing bubble. Portland’s failing because of capitalism.
And this is the reason why I said look in the mirror.
And you don’t have to invade country to instigate a war.
I don't know if you know about the residential infill project, but a vast amount of zoning in Portland has now been opened up for multi-unit development (including my block). The bubble grew in large part because a lot of people moved to Portland in the last 15 years. As far as me "taking advantage" of a system, I'm not a house-flipper or a real estate speculator. I think it's fair to work and save for 25 years and buy a house without being accused of being a greedy exploitative capitalist. It's also fair to want to live in peace without constant screaming outside your window.
>> you don’t have to invade country to instigate a war.
This is like saying Chris Rock instigated getting hit. To say that the US instigated it is ludicrous. By that logic, Saddam Hussein instigated the Iraq war, didn't he? Did America also instigate Russia's invasion of Georgia, or the flattening of Grozny? Did we make Putin drop chemical weapons in Syria? I get irritated when people somehow find a way to blame America for everything as if we're the only country capable of doing something egregious, and nothing bad would ever happen in the world if America didn't exist. Speaking of small-a anarchy, that is the natural state of affairs - and there are always people who want to terrorize or enslave others. If it wasn't America starting wars, it would be someone else; and in this case, it was someone else, so not recognizing that casts doubt on the seriousness of any more nuanced argument you might make about what Putin feels drove him to attack and bomb civilians in Ukraine. In this case I think it's pure victim-blaming to say Ukraine deserved it, or America instigated it. It's tantamount to saying that Russia is fighting a just war, which is insane considering you think war is unjust.
>> you don’t have to invade country to instigate a war. This is like saying Chris Rock instigated getting hit.
I am in no way condoning the death and suffering the Putin is causing. There is no such thing as a just war.
But really? Comparing "the slap" to all the complexities going on in that region of the world? Is that how simplistic you see life? You think resources have nothing to do with the war in Ukraine? Why was the US pudding for Ukraine too enter NATO? Why is the US involved at all in a country halfway around the world? It means we have an interest there. You know who also has an interest there? Putin. Hence, war. A proxy war.
> Saddam Hussein instigated the Iraq war, didn't he?
No. That happened because the US lied that Saddam had WMDs. (You protested the war in Iraq and you really said that????)
> Did America also instigate Russia's invasion of Georgia, or the flattening of Grozny?
No, Mikheil Saakashvili instigated that when he started working as a stooge for the United States.
> Did we make Putin drop chemical weapons in Syria?
Biden was not talking about Putins wife. He is working with NATO and Oil Companies to secure resources in a world where they are becoming harder to come by. I blame them BOTH for the war. I Balme the BOTH for lying and being psychopaths. I blame the both for the suffering of the Ukrainian PEOPLE. I blame them ALL for not trying more to work for peace.
Wy have you not brought up the war against the Donbas people in Ukraine? Why have you not brought up the war against the Palestinians? Or the war agains Yemeni? Do you think the CIA does not play a role in making countries unstable? Really?
You simply the war in Ukraine because it helps you cope with a complicated world.
Can you imagine what the US would do if Russia was as involved in Mexico and Canada as much as we are in Ukraine and Georgia? OF course to you, that would be a just war.
As another data point to anyone else reading this, I live in Portland smack dab in the most densely populated part of south-east, and go to downtown several times a week. Homelessness is a problem, but I've never experienced the post-apocalyptic wasteland this person is describing. My friends, many of whom were born and raised here, have never described being mugged or being witness to random acts of violence like this. I have been here for 5 years and even when there were the nightly BLM protests in downtown I never saw or experienced anything close to what this person describes.
I know quite a few people in PDX, some of who have lived there their whole lives. Not one of them has felt unsafe in the past few years. As a matter of fact my ex laughed and told me to stay away from the national news when I texted her and told her to be safe during the height of the PDX "anarchy."
btw - the TL isn't any more unsafe than it's ever been and I've lived in The City since 1972.
That sounds horrendous. I had a friend from Portland that I met kayaking and he made it sound like heaven on earth. I have friends from UK who moved to work at Google (in Washington I guess?)
Is there a great re-location of tech staff happening in the US right now? I heard that a lot of people are leaving California including a few friends of mine. Even Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!
Joe Rogan moved to Austin and he can handle himself!
Whatever reasons Joe Rogan had for moving had nothing to do with him fearing for his personal safety. He was almost certainly scared of taxes, not muggers (add joke about the IRS being the worst muggers, here)
Rogan is a true dipshit; it makes me feel bad that I'm adding to the negativity around Portland. I resisted doing that through the entire pandemic while everyone I knew was like "how are you still in that hell hole"... I have hope because Portland is one of the only places in America where you can still sit at a cafe and truly talk crazy political shit with people from the far left and far right at the same table, because it's also the city with the highest number of books and magazines bought per capita. You just can't do that in Dallas. So there's something to it. But it's like living in fucking Berlin, 1929. Who knows whether it'll cough out a Hitler or a Stalin.
Everyone in the US who formerly worked in an office is threatening to quit if they can't work remotely full time now. No one is going back to offices. Oregon is a beautiful place to move to. 99% of it is not the city of Portland.
also gang culture. I recall in the 90s and early 00s, my classmates would suddenly break bad and join gangs. it was sort of the thing to do. it did make me feel a bt lonely since i was neither bad or good but im glad i stayed out of it. even by association you could be attacked but i was young.... seems like a lot of them were minors when they joined so their records were wiped clean....since they work in tech now
What killed legitimate research was the FUD-informed Schedule 1 classification (or similar, outside the US) of the most promising agents in this field.
The point is that big pharma was pouring money into research of these chemicals to use them for treatment in therapy.
The cases of abuse that ultimately led to the stigmatization where blown up because that narrative served the view that the general public had of these substances anyway.
The same rhetoric people use today: "encryption should be forbidden because paedophilia|money laundering|<insert whatever upsets your target demographic most>"
> Not a huge factor really because schedule 1 DEA permits are available. I know a few academics with them.
What good is an permit if you don't have anyone to fund your research? And how do you get research funded for something that can't be brought to market because ... Schedule 1?
