In more persistent cases, of course, it may be necessary to dose with castor oil every week through the 2020 general elections.
— MRW
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‘Addiction and Personal Responsibility’
DEMAND ACCOUNTABILITY, STOP ENABLING BAD BEHAVIOR
By Max R. Weller
Every time I go online to take a peek at the Facebook page of Boulder Rights Watch I see posts which are full of paranoia and self-pity, as if those in authority and the general public have lots of time to waste picking on the poor and homeless . . . Even someone like me, who spent a decade living as a homeless man in Boulder, CO and its environs (and that means sleeping outdoors year-round) rejects this mindset as delusional.
This morning, I saw someone pushing that tired old load of crap that nobody chooses to be homeless. This is HOGWASH.
Lots of homeless people do make that choice; usually, chronic alcoholics and drug addicts have chosen the streets because they don’t like being Clean and Sober. A few of us chose to live apart from the mainstream of society because it no longer satisfies inner needs, which can be hard to put into words and which the do-gooders refuse to acknowledge as fact. This is why transitional living programs are rarely successful; maybe 10% of clients are “successful” in the long term, say 5 years and longer. I haven’t read a testimonial from any program participant who can make that claim, nor do I expect to see one which is honest.
Anyway, I did a quick online search for “personal responsibility” and found the website linked to below:
Addiction and Personal Responsibility: A Fundamental Conflict.
After skimming through it, I’m wondering what the conflict is for anyone with enough courage to quit making excuses for ongoing self-destructive behavior.
Points I found interesting are copied below:
- Who is responsible for creating a problem?
- Moreover, who is responsible for solving it?
- The Moral Model: People are responsible for creating and solving their own problems.
- The Medical Model: People are not responsible for creating or solving their own problems.
- The Enlightenment Model: People are responsible for creating, but not solving, their own problems.
- The Compensatory Model: People are responsible for solving, but not creating, their own problems.
Moral Model:
- “I’m responsible for creating the problem, and I’m responsible for solving it.”
- What do I need to solve this problem? Proper motivation
- Someone else might say: “It’s your own fault, so I’m not going to help you. You need to solve this problem on your own.”
- Extreme, exaggerated version of this model: Faulty and distorted thinking such as “Everything that happens to me is my own fault.” OR “I can solve all my own problems, I don’t need anyone.”
- Healthy recovery application: “I decided to start drinking, and now I’m deciding to stop.” (Emphasis is mine — MRW)
Medical model:
- “I’m not responsible for creating the problem, but I’m not responsible for solving it.”
- What do I need to solve the problem?- Treatment, experts
- Someone else might say: “You are ill. You need help.”
- Extreme, exaggerated versions of model: Becoming helpless and completely dependent upon others
- Healthy recovery application: “I didn’t plan on having these problems, and I have no idea how to get rid of them. I should follow the advice and suggestions of the experts who are trying to help me.”
Enlightenment model:
- “I’m responsible for creating the problem, but I’m not responsible for solving it.”
- What do I need to solve the problem?- Self-discipline
- Someone else might say: “It’s clear you don’t understand the true nature of your problems, so let me explain it to you.”
- Extreme, exaggerated versions of model: Becoming crippled and ineffective because of extreme guilt and self-loathing; complete submission to authority; blindly following others.
- Healthy recovery application: “Looking back, I see what I did to cause my addiction and I’ve learned from my mistakes. Now I’m going to follow the guidance and direction of a greater authority that can show me how to change my life (completely if necessary).”
Compensatory model:
- “I’m not responsible for creating the problem, but I am responsible for solving it”
- What do I need to solve the problem? Knowledge, skills
- Someone else might say: “I respect you for your efforts. Let me know if you need any help.”
- Extreme, exaggerated versions of model: Failing to recognize one’s own limitations, grandiosity, stubbornly refusing help of any sort.
- Healthy recovery application: “I sure wish I didn’t have these problems. However, since I do, I’m going to figure out how to resolve them. I’ll get some help if I need it.”
I’ve been SOBER for 16+ years, and sometimes I wake up in the morning and find it necessary to make the conscious decision — CHOICE — not to take that first taste of Jim Beam or other alcoholic beverage. This is usually during periods of higher stress (as when dealing with yahoos in the homeless shelter / services industry). Other times, I have enjoyed a single cold bottle of ale and felt entirely satisfied by just the one. NEVER, since losing my home in 2002, have I spent my own money on any intoxicant, and I can truly say I could now go forever without doing so and be relatively content.
I’m NOT stronger than anyone else who has been a drunkard. I simply embraced the idea that I do have control — 100% CONTROL — over whether or not I take that first sip of bourbon. After it gets to be a couple dozen sips, putting a serious dent in the contents of the bottle, I’d have NO CONTROL.
Remember what Clint Eastwood, as Dirty Harry Callahan, said in the movie Magnum Force — “A man’s got to know his limitations.”
(E-mailed to Boulder City Council.)
I know this author is a Boulder icon, BUT:
Idiot McCandless Foundation? Idiot McCandless musical? PUHLEEZ! I didn’t have to pay for the copy of “Into the Wild” I read, or I’d have sued the author for wasting my time with his tale of Christopher’s terminal idiocy . . .
— MRW
Another Christmas classic:
— MRW
What is wrong with people today? It’s an old song . . .
— MRW
This is why Boulder, CO doesn’t have $5K Tiny Houses for the hundreds of homeless adults in need:
(Boulder Shelter for the Homeless Facebook photo)
I hasten to add that this program (and others like it) is a revolving door, from the streets to an expensive new apartment and back again, so in the long run it’s only the homeless shelter / services industry which benefits: More Homeless People = More Money. The do-gooders perpetrating this fraud on the public are not about to “end homelessness,” so if you see their lips moving you should know they’re LYING.
BTW, many Housing First residents have died from alcohol-related causes, because sobriety isn’t required to stay in the program. Many of these folks are so pickled they really don’t appreciate the difference between an apartment like the one shown above and a spot underneath a bridge.
A few years back, one of the crooks in charge of this boondoggle tried to recruit the Homeless Philosopher to reside in 1175 Lee Hill; he stated that I would be able to set a good example for others. My focus, however, has always been on providing a minimal level of housing and services for EVERYONE on the streets, something that could long since have been accomplished for the tens-of-millions of dollars already spent in Boulder County alone.
Further reading:
$2,200 Tiny Houses in Seattle.
See the Washington Post article on Tiny Houses around the country.
— MRW
Robert Mueller’s ‘smoking gun’ in the Russia collusion investigation
Alan Dershowitz joined the “Fox & Friends” co-hosts Saturday morning to share his key takeaways from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s court filings.
Mueller on Friday filed a sentencing memo for President Trump’s former personal attorney Michael Cohen and a court filing for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
“Mueller has come up with far less than he hoped for,” Dershowitz said.
He explained that the Manafort filing reveals the former Trump campaign chairman is not cooperating in the investigation, and the Cohen memo doesn’t reveal anything new about hush money payments to women who allegedly had sexual encounters with Trump.
“It’s a very, very weak case that Cohen has provided,” Dershowitz said. “I suspect that may be the reason he’s getting very little in terms of sentencing consideration.”
He said the most likely result of the Mueller probe is a long report that tries to piece together a “mosaic” that shows Trump committed “political sin, but not federal crime.”
“So that’s the most likely scenario — no crime, but political sin — which would be a complete distortion of what the role of a special counsel is supposed to be,” Dershowitz said.
He said the worst-case scenario for the president, on the other hand, would be if Mueller has yet-unseen evidence of criminal conduct.
He offered a hypothetical example that some in the media have discussed.
“If in fact anybody offered Putin a penthouse in a building in exchange for Putin giving permission to build the building in Moscow, that could arguably violate the Federal Corrupt Practices Act,” Dershowitz said. “But I’ve seen no evidence to support that.”
(In fact, a Trump Tower Moscow never got off the drawing board, so neither an offer to buy influence with Putin nor the Russian president’s approval for construction exist in the Real World.)
Let’s remember another notorious case in which Robert Mueller, then serving as FBI director, was involved: F.B.I. Concludes Investigation In Fatal Anthrax Mailings from The New York Times of 2/19/2010.
Excerpt follows:
WASHINGTON — More than eight years after anthrax-laced letters killed five people and terrorized the country, the F.B.I. on Friday closed its investigation, adding eerie new details to its case that the 2001 attacks were carried out by Bruce E. Ivins, an Army biodefense expert who killed himself in 2008.
A 92-page report, which concludes what by many measures is the largest investigation in F.B.I. history, laid out the evidence against Dr. Ivins, including his equivocal answers when asked by a friend in a recorded conversation about whether he was the anthrax mailer . . .
Whether the voluminous documentation will convince skeptics about Dr. Ivins’s guilt was uncertain on Friday. Representative Rush D. Holt, a New Jersey Democrat and a physicist who has sharply criticized the bureau’s work, said the case should not have been closed.
“Arbitrarily closing the case on a Friday afternoon should not mean the end of this investigation,” Mr. Holt said, noting that the National Academy of Sciences was still studying the F.B.I.’s scientific work. He said the F.B.I. report laid out “barely a circumstantial case” that “would not, I think, stand up in court . . .”
Skeptics also pointed to F.B.I. investigators’ long focus on another suspect, Dr. Steven J. Hatfill, another former Army scientist whom the F.B.I. pursued in 2002 and 2003, keeping him under constant surveillance. In 2008, the government exonerated Dr. Hatfill and agreed to a settlement worth $4.6 million to resolve a lawsuit alleging that his privacy rights had been violated.
I recently read The Demon in the Freezer by Richard Preston, which mentions the failure of top federal law enforcement and intelligence officials to share information and work together in the nation’s first bioterrorism investigation; then-Attorney General John Ashcroft reprimanded FBI Director Mueller and others in a joint meeting, and ordered them to get their act together. It’s unclear if they ever did, and Ivins’ suicide was a convenient excuse to close out the investigation.
Yes, I’m well aware that the talking heads at CNN, MSNBC, and other Far Left networks want us to think that Robert Mueller walks on water — and even that champion of civil liberties Alan Dershowitz believes he’s an honorable (if misguided) man.
BUT, there has never been a time when the FBI was to be trusted beyond question. Remember, this law enforcement agency was the invention of J. Edgar Hoover, who had a long and sordid history of gathering dirt on his political enemies, particularly Martin Luther King Jr. and the Kennedy brothers.
The refusal to follow up on the many leads pointing to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, and their paid partisan operatives does NOT speak well to the integrity of the Mueller investigation.
Wrap it up, Bob, and put away your $30M squirt gun . . .
— MRW
