The persistent call from the Ukrainian leader is more weapons not humanitarian aid for his people. We’ve provided close to $18 billion dollars in military assistance. Forgive me, but I don’t see a trained comedian, actor who’s rise to power was through protesting the government’s restrictions in the entertainment industry as a trusted ally.

I could have been considered homeless in 1967 but I wasn’t. My home was an old 10’X14′ garage in the slums of Long Beach California, the rent was $6 a month. I’d scrounged my furnishings from trash strewn back alleys and in no time had a rather comfortable place to call home. While most people wouldn’t consider a slum garage home, I had a place to retreat to unnoticed and off the streets. I was poorer than most homeless panhandlers, but I wasn’t sleeping under an overpass and being harassed by the police. I grew up just as dis-advantaged as the shopping cart pushing homeless person so common on the streets today. What was the difference between them and me, the mindset of expectations. Somehow even though I was trapped in what I call the ghetto frame of mind, I expected to have a comfortable hassle-free home.

The ghetto frame of mind is when you were born on the under belly of the beast and figured that’s where you belonged and without higher expectations you stay there.

Societies and governments will never eliminate the homeless crises without understanding, it’s not caused by the lack of funding it’s caused by an individual’s mindset, and that’s a difficult thing to change.

In the past many countries allowed their poor to establish homes in shanty towns on the outskirts of big cities where they were left alone to pursue their individual mindsets on how to live, but now they’re bulldozing them down. Cities in the U.S. don’t want the blight of shanty towns, so we’ve forced the destitute into mainstream society then harass them whenever they attempt to settle somewhere. They raid homeless camps destroying everything, leaving the destitute with nothing. The link below shows images of the creative poor just trying to establish a home.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4069570/The-shantytowns-America-Inside-shacks-cars-tents-boxes-America-s-homeless-call-home.html

If we’re going to take heartless action against the homeless mindset, I say we should take a look at the privileged mindset. I find a 10,000 square foot coastal estate a blight on nature, overindulgence in extravagance a blight to my beliefs in simplicity. The rants of MAGA congress people are a blight on common sense, and yet we tolerate all of these. Let’s start acknowledging and tolerating the poor. Some cities are now establishing safe zones for the homeless which is a step in the right direction. Providing porta-potties is a cheap solution to open defecation. Establishing simple city and county codes requiring basic cleanliness is reasonable, but beyond that let them be.

Years ago, I met an old goldminer. He lived in the Serria Nevada mountains with a group of reclusive miners who minted their own coins. He gave me a silver dollar that had the inscription, “Rebellion against tyranny is obedience to God.” Perhaps some of the homeless are in fact modern day prophets exposing the fallacies that lie within our so called ‘Great Societies.’