Maybe those folks in Thailand have a better way of dealing with our sacred cow homeless.
Okay. I'm joking.
But it's no joke that Mike is probably black. The homeless that jerk and jitter throughout our great cities are overwhelmingly black (whites are second . . . Hispanics and orientals don't register at all). In Austin, blacks comprise less than 10% of the population, but based on what I saw, comprise 90% of its homeless.
I'm tired of the racists who coddle Mike.
Mike is a moral agent. If you implicitly claim otherwise ("Oh, that's just Mike"), you deny his moral agency.
I'm reminded of a local judge who thinks of himself as a forward-thinking guy. He allows blacks to swear in his courtroom. He's tolerant: "That's just the way they talk." Meanwhile, he demands proper comportment from whites in his courtroom.
I know: Many homeless are deranged (like the woman on a busy street in Austin who was dramatically and loudly clawing at the back of her head like she was trying to dig a bullet out of it) and if a person is so deranged that he can't form the mens rea to commit a wrong, he's innocent.
I agree with all that. It's why the Catholic Church has occasionally referred to the mentally retarded as "holy innocents." When my severely mongoloid cousin died, I told my kids we now had a saint in our family who is praying for us.
But back here on earth, if Mike has reached the point that he can't make moral decisions (that he's beyond moral blame), he ought not to be living on the street and on his own.
In sum, we need to get these folks back into brick-and-mortar institutions . . . and fast.
