Well, it has begun. We’re voting here in California. It’s a primary for candidates but it includes other things as well. One of them is Proposition 1, ‘Behavioral Health Services Program and Bond Measure.’ Basically, the State wants to re-create drug treatment and mental health facilities in which people can be involuntarily held. That sounds ominous, doesn’t it? Involuntarily held.

Cons are against the idea, of course. They talk about the cost, because the homeless, drug addicts, and people suffering breaks don’t cost anything, right? Oh, they also talk (a bit less) about how badly it interferes with people’s “freedumb.” I’m not sure why it is that whenever cons want to talk about freedom, it ALWAYS comes out “freedumb.” The thing they don’t want to focus on is, it helps people, and THAT, more than any other single thing, the cons will not have.

It’s a sad commentary on many conservatives that they oppose anything – everything – that helps people (except when it helps themselves) because programs that help people make it look like the government CAN do things, and that idea violates their dogma. They pretend governments can’t succeed, then do everything in their power to ensure the government doesn’t succeed. Sadly, they’ve been very effective.

A quick and simple history: California used to operate mental institutions, including those that held patients against their will. Pat Brown, one-time Governor of the state and Jerry’s dad, bought into the notion of “local control” and relinquished control of the facilities, instead sending block grants to the counties so THEY could manage them. Quality began to vary, depending on local sensibilities. Then, Reagan took over the state and cut those block grants to the bone, finally eliminating them altogether. This turned the inmates out – into the streets – and added a new word to the lexicon: Homeless. California has been struggling under the weight of those poor (or greedy) decisions ever since.

I’m going to let you in on a little secret the cons don’t seem to know: drug addicts and mental patients? Shocking as it may seem, they don’t make good decisions. Why, it almost seems as though something is addling their thinking. They do things, by choice, that defy reason and common sense. Leaving choices to them isn’t freedom or even “freedumb.” It’s cruelty.

I don’t get this from reading or what I hear in the media. I’ve seen it, up close and personal, with my own two eyes. It’s a nightmare you can’t wake up from. It never ends. It NEVER leaves your mind. When you find yourself suddenly thrust into a situation you never, ever thought you’d be in, the first thing you do is look for somebody, anybody, who can help. There’s nobody. There’s nothing. Well, unless you have large sums of money, which most of us don’t. I CAN NOT tell you the frustration of realizing that, for political reasons, your “choice” is to wait for a horrifying phone call. Is it the police or the morgue? You find yourself hoping it’s the police because the morgue is too…permanent. Too…unthinkable.

It’s easy to look past homeless people. We WANT to. They scare us. Partly because they may be unhinged and dangerous. Partly because many of these people are simply victims of the Greatest Economy on Earth™ and we know that even the smallest of setbacks in this once great nation can land any one of us in that situation at any given moment.

In many ways, they represent everything wrong with our world and we don’t want to believe things like this happen in America. But they do. All the time. Every day, some unfortunate finds themselves struggling with some challenge they’re not up to. NOBODY is up to that challenge. That’s why it hangs on so long and so fervently – and does so much damage.

It’s not their fault. I know, “nobody made them start taking that shit.” That’s true. It’s also true that not one of them sat down and said, “I think I’ll get desperately addicted to drugs today!” Make sure someone else is holding your beer while you’re pontificating on participating in potentially addictive behaviors, okay?

Can you tell how I voted on Proposition 1? I support it, wholeheartedly. I hope you will, too. I would throw my loved one in a lock up treatment facility in a freaking heartbeat rather than wait for that phone call. Not jail. That’s not what jails were meant for. Nobody gets treatment in jails. There’s no help there. But a facility designed and built to treat them, to help them – even if they don’t want that help? Hell yes. Like I said, in a heartbeat. I think I would be shocked to meet someone with a struggling loved one who doesn’t feel the same way.

Weirdly, I think it’s the Christian thing to do. I count myself an atheist but my Christian upbringing rings in my ears all the time. Although I’ve rejected the theological stuff, I accept good philosophy from where ever it might come, including the mouth of Jesus (okay, Joshua) who said, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:30) Be like Jesus – the good one, not the twisted, conservative version – and do the right thing for people who need help. Because I’ll tell you this: doing nothing has not been successful on any level and continues to harm on every level. Let’s do something!