Hundreds of unsheltered people living in tent encampments in the blocks surrounding the Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco have been forced to leave by city outreach workers and police as part of an attempted “clean up the house” ahead of this week’s Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s annual free trade conference.
The action, which housing advocates allege violated a court injunction, was celebrated by right-wing figures and the tech crowd, who have long been convinced that the city is in terminal decline because of an increase in encampments in the downtown area.
The X account End Wokness wrote that the displacement was proof the “government can easily fix our cities overnight. It just doesn’t want to” (the post received 77,000 likes). “Queer Eye but it’s just Xi visiting troubled US cities then they get a makeover,” joked Packy McCormick, the founder of Not Boring Capital and advisor to Andreessen Horowitz’s crypto VC team. The New York Post celebrated the action, saying that residents had “miraculously disappeared.”
At this point the homeless ought to try staging a camp in at the city hall. Get the headlines all over them being dragged out of there.
I remember homeless people doing exactly that in Santa Cruz back in the eighties to great success.
However, public sentiment over the past thirty years really seems to have swung aggressively toward the fuck you I got mine so die end of the pendulum.
Food Not Bombs did it there ten years ago too. They camped outside of city hall every week, getting arrested over and over. They were finally given a vacant lot next to the freeway to freely camp in after that. It started after SC passed anti-camping laws, making it illegal for any unhoused person to fall asleep.
I seriously doubt that’s the case compared to the 80s, the 80s is how we got Reagan, and whatever qualms you have with Mr. Tangelini, Reagan was demonstrably worse.
No fucking shot was Reagan worse than Trump. Reagan was a piece of shit, but he didn’t attempt a coup and (insert list of the thousands of insanely stupid and illegal things Donald Trump has done since being elected).
He didn’t attempt a coup here.
Latin America has a very different opinion of that point though.
Also, Trump let COVID happen because of sheer idiocy, Reagan let AIDs happen as an act of genocide against queer folks.
Are you accounting for candidate Reagan negotiating with Iranians in Tehran in 1980 holding American hostages in order to weaken Carter’s re-election efforts as part of the October surprise, by prolonging the situation until after Reagan won and was sworn in? (Obviously this has some undercurrent that it may have been even more of a VP GHW Bush fingerprint in terms of execution of the plan as he was a recent DCI of the CIA).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_October_Surprise_theory
https://theintercept.com/2023/03/24/october-surprise-ben-barnes/
https://www.cia.gov/stories/story/george-h-w-bush-the-11th-director-of-central-intelligence/
Yes. I am aware of, and accounting for, that. Pales in comparison to Trump.
I’d make the argument that Trump was never competent enough to pull off anything so sinister and evil. Trump is more of a calamitous evil buffon spewing bullshit than some 5d chess player of evil. Some people around him may be crafty evil sons of removed, but Trump is a petulant man child dipshit that actually thinks money makes him powerful, all while having to play pretend that he’s one of the ‘ultra rich’ and not just a scumbag criminal scammer moving debt around trying to hide his business incompetence.
I don’t usually lean in so hard on this stuff, but it’s Sunday morn and I’ve had 3 cups of coffee. /fidgets