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| 2013-06-11 |
| We’ve talked about group-think that consists of thinking in bumper stickers. Believe it or not, after I went through all the trouble of writing a long post about the evils of letting mentally ill/drug addicted/otherwise alienated people overrun downtowns — evils which include harm to poor families thrown into homelessness and having to share their space with truly dangerous people and harm to poor children who depend on libraries for books and learning materials – I got someone on facebook answering with “someone needs to take care of these poor homeless, and most of them are families, and it’s heartless not to want to face a little inconvenience to help them.” … Even though we’re not in fact helping them and letting them run through cities with no restraints of law or even of “conditions to receive social services” put on their behavior is causing harm to a lot of people, particularly poor and marginal ones. That is slogan thinking. This woman learned that she should “Afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted” and she’s not going to stop and think for nobody. Because as long as she holds on to this idea that anyone trying to curtail homeless services is heartless and hates the poor she doesn’t have to wonder if the way we’re (not) “helping” the chronic homeless is destroying families, and communities, and small businessmen, and the simple trust of citizens in a civilized society. She doesn’t have to think about anything, because she has her slogan, and it’s a security blanket. She can clutch it and sleep through the night in the certainty that she’s one of the good guys. These slogan-thinkers, when you consider they vote and also scat all over public discourse with their unthinking affirmations are bad enough. But there is worse. Oh, man, is there ever worse. Let’s call them the herd thinkers. |
| Posted by:g(r)omgoru |
| #1 Sloganeering is nothing new: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Popularized (but not coined) by Marx. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2013-06-11 20:35 |