Posted on 05/19/2023 12:17:45 PM PDT by Scott from the Left Coast
I took my weekly trip to San Diego this week. This is something I have done for more than a decade, just to get a change of scenery, look at the ocean take in a ballgame and just relax for a short spell…it’s a manageable drive from where I live, in a state without an ocean.
I have, over the years, noticed a degradation in San Diego, mostly downtown, but the obvious destruction and malaise in California, while present, was actually somewhat muted in the once fair and relatively conservative city of San Diego.
But this week I witnessed things that are beyond anything I can imagine in a society that even has a modest chance at survival. This is beyond economic decay and poverty, beyond the lack of infrastructure maintenance, beyond environmental concerns (which seems, in tremendous irony, to be the only thing the people there care about). But the environment there is one of human destruction at a level that is simply unimaginable to someone born in mid-20th century America. It is human hopelessness everywhere you cast your eyes.
My experiences included watching people - on city streets, on the walkway to the ballpark, on the corner by the gas station, on the beach - openly smoking drugs (meth or heroin, I guess) out of glass pipes, once in the sight of police that did nothing (on orders from the city, I presume). Marijuana could be whiffed on the beach (expected) as well as inside Petco Park (not expected).
But really, the rampant drug culture was the least of it. Homeless encampments stretched on downtown streets as far as you could see in every direction. Even in tourist districts like Mission, homeless encampments lined the streets and parks. Garbage and drug refuse were littered everywhere…even on the beach walk. But that wasn’t even the worst of it.
While driving to a store we saw an obviously mentally ill man ranting and raving and kicking a bag of something on the sidewalk, screaming at the top of his lungs. He grabbed the bag and chucked it at my car (I suppose he saw me looking at him), it hit with a thunk (no damage)…knowing there was no recourse, I drove on. In the parking lot of the store there was blaring announcement that lot was monitored by security…well, that’s supposed to relive you but one look at the one really scrawny female security guard pretty much put the lie to that.
Later, asI parked in the Tailgate Lot next to Petco Park, there were obviously mentally ill people camping there. One had a broad knife and was whacking away at the shrubbery near his squatting place as we walked past. Not ten steps later we saw a young man sleeping as if dead on the sidewalk, all his belongings piled around him. He actually looked decently dressed, though the many people walking past him, inches away, heading to the ballpark, didn’t rouse him at all from his death-like sleep. Across the street were more drugpipe smokers “partying” it up before they went comatose. The police and security did nothing. And even that wasn’t the worst of it.
The worst was when leaving the beach being held up by police cordons and fire trucks…the police actually shied up! That was when I saw two bodies laying covered right at an entrance to Mission Bay park.
All this in just a few day’s time in a place that had none of it, or at least none noticeable everywhere you turned, 10 years ago. All of these various people I witnessed were white people in their 20s and 30s, male and female, the people that some years ago would be getting careers and families started. It isn’t that these things were just witnessed once or twice - it was everywhere in unimaginable numbers. It was noticeably more than four years ago - a LOT more.
This is a dying society, and from everything I witnessed I’d say it needs to die - the sooner the better.
The timing would be just about right for that trigger.
I can say this, what I saw in that city this past week certainly looked like a tribulation for those caught up in this mass degradation of human existence.
The juxtaposition of caring so much that you can only get paper straws for your soda and caring so little that you just attempt to ignore such widespread human devastation happening right in your face was a bit shocking to me…which is why I wrote this.
Good thing that we sent all that Free Food to Africa to end starvation.
We lived for 3 years in Ridgefield CT. There was a Rev War burial ground in the front of the community. Hadn’t yet developed my interest in that history, so really didn’t take good advantage of it. Warm memories of driving back roads with a book of maps and the gift shop up north of Danbury.
Was chatting the other day w/ a college student who is all learned up on homelessness and addiction. The more educated believe, apparently, that addition can only be managed by feeding it more of what it craves. Something about brain dopamine receptors, and blah blah blah.
Great, I replied, but is that helping them?
His only reply was that we just have to keep others from falling into that condition.
That’s from one college kid from Illinois. Multiply the attitude by “experts” across the nation, and we’re literally murdering our own (just one of the many ways our betters have devised to clear the undesirable via abortion, crime, “viruses,” “vaccines,” etc...)
Meanwhile, God is condoning and using it. The Tribulation is a train wreck in slow motion.
When I was 5 years old in 1954, we were driving through downtown Los Angeles. 5th and Main was Skid Row and my parents took notice of the winos, laying on the sidewalks. I was all eyes and ears.
I noticed one gaunt old derelict--I can see him still--who stumbled along holding only a wine bottle. Plaintively I asked, "You mean that's all he has?"
My heart is still broken.
We moved to Danbury Ct. one year ago to be closer to my husband’s widowed mother and sisters. I am from upstate NY. I love it here! I drive the back road to Ridgefield every day for the Latin mass (SSPX Ridgefield) - we live in a wooded community across the road from The Matrix, formerly Union Carbide headquarters - a scenic area with wooded ridges and fields and horse farms. A red fox ran in front of me at dusk a few nights ago. Any tips? Where is the gift shop located?
Danbury has a large hispanic and Brazilian community. I don’t know of they are legal or not, however they are hardworking decent folk compared to the vulgar and crude section 8 types in the Capital District of New York State. This does not give them a pass if they are not legal, but the difference is striking.
I took my first masters’ from Danbury in education. They promised 1 year and $1K. But I couldn’t bring myself to take the exam so did a thesis instead for a couple years. How to teach Backus’ Reduction Languages to grammar school kids. Worked well until 6th grade. Then you needed a masters’ degree for the kids to continue. Wonderful experience. I’d gone to a major university where the teachers were researchers that one would have begged never to enter a classroom. This was a 3rd rate school with dedicated teachers. Some good; some dreadful. But I did enjoy it.
Know the Union Carbide area. And especially the back roads to Ridgefield. There was a 2nd hand shop with an old woman who sat in a dilapidated recliner in a massive fur coat she’d gotten to avoid being clawed by the four baby raccoons she’d raised. Unfortunately, all 4 died too young. Always thought she was a tragic figure. Think of her when I feed our raccoons.
Did enjoy the area, but the wonderful gift shop was gone before we left. Still think of it when I see the little pieces on shelves.
I also know upstate NY. When I got into genealogy, it turned out that besides having written a book on a stool in a Dunkin’ Donuts from which I could see what turned out to be an ancestor’s house and cemetery, I also discovered that my ancestors were from Buffalo and Canandaigua and such. So I’ve driven there extensively, as well as the Poughkeepsie area. We worked in Yorktown, but rarely traveled north until we lived in MA. Strange.
The rot that you describe was well underway all the way back to my days working for Pacific Telephone at 525 B St in downtown San Diego. The bums using business doorways to sleep, pee and defecate was a perpetual problem. Homeless under the bridges (urban outdoorsmen living in a mild climate). Lots of crime. It has grown progressively worse.
My last visit to San Diego was in Sept 2017. A 2 day trip to see the development team I was leading at the time. No visits since. My 50th high school reunion is scheduled in Chula Vista on Sept 30th. I want to see my surviving classmates, but I'm also loathe to set foot in San Diego as the level of decay makes it unsafe. I'm wondering if there will even be an empty hotel room with the onslaught of "migrants" being accommodated in every way possible.
Yup. The Chaldean Christian immigrants have lots of businesses in El Cajon. They prefer to run liquor stores. There is also some nefarious mixing with the Mexican cartels to deal drugs. Other areas e.g. Clairemont, have mosques with a huge population of muslims. Balboa Ave from Genessess to I-15 is a heavily muslim area.
Drug camps are everywhere it’s not too cold in winter
Nashville
New Orleans is worst I deal with besides LA every couple years
It’s a scourge the media of course fails to treat honestly
They act like it’s folks evicted can’t pay rent etc
Bullshit
90% dopers
10% insane
Oh please
This is your thing
You know damn well shied up meant showed up from the context
Don’t be obtuse Alex
I doubt there is a trained and ready complement of sane individuals needed to run one such facility much less a national effort in every city larger than fifty thousand people in these disunited states. That industry was killed back in the seventies.
I suggest those living the freedom of gutter lifestyle would rebel rather quickly at anything structured in reality leading to reformation. If they aren’t yet hitting bottom I don’t see anything changing. We have done it to ourselves and until the culture hits bottom, it’s going to play out to an unfortunate end.
To that end, I will place much of the blame on democrat policy spelled progressivism, but RINO politicians and so called republicans share much of the blame as well. All of it falls back on the voters, unless they voted correctly and were defrauded of their actual good vote.
“the beach being held up”
How high? That’s the part giving me trouble..
Nice summation of this state's warped priorities.
I'll offer you a tidbit from the SF East Bay Area (Alameda, to be precise):
A Walgreens pharmacy, inside: much of the merchandise inside locked up in cabinets and you have to ask for help getting an item out, outside: a pile of fast food wrappers next to a pile of human feces and human feces smeared on sanitary napkins.
Yep
I’m seeing this more and more in the Denver area. I’d say gradually getting worse over the last 5 to 10 years. Things that I rarely or never saw before. Very sick looking people...skinny, dirty, no teeth. Got the meth look going on. Homeless encampments along the highways and underpasses. People on the street. There’s one guy on the corner near where my daughter works. Always there. Sleeps on that corner. I called the police on him a few weeks back because he looked dead the way he was positioned. We went by awhile later and he had moved...was sitting upright. But both my son and I thought he was dead. It wouldn’t have been a big surprise if he had been dead.
We visited friends there in the 70s. They had a couple of acres, a couple of horses, quiet neighborhood and the beaches were glorious!
Very sad.
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