The homeless problem frustrates everyone.
They camp on sidewalks, litter, set fires, and get into fights. Here in Seattle, even the courthouse was unsafe (see my posting here).
You can’t make them disappear; if you chase them out, they’ll go somewhere else. Efforts to get them into shelter and social services often fail, because they dont want to be pushed into drug or alcohol rehab. Professionals working on the problem can’t solve it. I don’t know the answer, and maybe there isn’t one.
A Tennessee GOP state senator, though, has a suggestion. Here it is:
“I wanna give you a little history lesson on homelessness. In 1910, Hitler decided to live on the streets for a while. So for two years, Hitler lived on the streets and practiced his oratory and his body language and how to connect with the masses. And then went on to lead a life that got him in the history books.”
His message is: Get off your ass and work hard! If Hitler could pull himself up by his bootstraps, you can too! (Read story here.)
Good grief. All he accomplished with this remark was to make himself (and Republicans in general) look stupid. Beyond that, he doesn’t have his facts straight.
Hitler was never “homeless” as we use the term, nor was he exactly shiftless, as the term implies. He was down and out, but worked at laboring jobs and sold art, and lived in shelters or a men’s dormitory. He didn’t use, much less abuse, alcohol or drugs; he was a teetotaler (and vegetarian) his entire life. In short, he doesn’t fit the stereotype, and isn’t an example of the type.
For what it’s worth, the period of his life when he lost interest in work came after the German defeat at Stalingrad in 1942; from then on, he didn’t appear in public or make use of his oratory skills, and realizing the war was lost, spent only a couple hours a day with his generals and otherwise whiled away the time in aimless conversations with his table companions and secretaries.
Beyond the senator’s ignorance of historical facts, there’s the little matter that tens of millions of people would’ve been better off if Hitler had been a bum who never made it out of homeless shelter.
The senator is a farmer (read his profile here) who represents an agricultural district. All well and good, as far as it goes. He should stick to crops and chicken, and talk about things he knows something about, instead of trying to play amateur history professor. And if he actually has a solution for the homeless problem, we all want to hear it. But it sure doesn’t sound like it.
Serious people who devote their careers to working on intractable social problems can’t count the number of times they’ve heard the old hoary Republican bromide, “Get off your ass and get a job.” If only it were so easy and simple. This comes from people with no knowledge of the problem or thinking skills, who are mentally lazy as well. Simply put, the homeless are unemployable.
Many are alcohol or drug addicts, in no shape to work, and may have criminal records that bar them from most jobs. They may have multiple other barriers to employment, such as chronic health problems, lack of skills, no driver’s license or transportation, not even clean clothes. Making them employable, and placing them in jobs if that’s even possible, requires a lot of preliminary work and support services. As Republican politicians often are unwilling to fund those services, how do they expect this happen?
If this senator wants to get his state’s homeless people off public property and into jobs, he should get in touch with Tennessee’s social services providers and ask them what they need in funding and other support from the legislature. Making stupid speeches about Hitler’s work ethic doesn’t help.