Blame Whoever You Can

Most people, if their only problem is addiction, can manage to get jobs and keep a roof over their heads. They may have to change jobs fairly often because people get tired of their shit, which also makes interpersonal relationships difficult, but they can manage to live like normal citizens in a house.

I’ve known people who were able to get and keep despite having pronounced addictions to alcohol and cocaine. One was even the governor of Mississippi. I won’t say which, but it wasn’t one of the ones I liked. Robert Kennedy Jr., whom the president appointed as the head of Health and Human Services, once kept his job despite a pretty serious addiction to heroin, and then brainworms. I swear, you can’t make this stuff up.

When my mother ran the Stewpot, two of the men from her graduating class at Central High School were pretty regular customers. One, I would say, was stark, raving mad. He heard voices and sometimes claimed to be possessed. His family would occasionally spring him from Whitfield because it was disgraceful to have a family member living there, and he’d end up back on the street.

The other was very sweet, and very kind, and very emotionally even, but also terribly depressed. He might have been gay. It was extremely rare for men in his generation to admit they were gay. Frank Hains did, and when a man went to trial for murdering him, Frank’s sexuality was used as a justification for giving the murderer a light sentence. Sebastian Moore was a great lawyer. He helped my brother, and I hired him once to help a family I knew. He would say or do whatever it took to win, though, and sometimes that was a problem.

Both of these high school friends of my mom drank when they had the chance, but I knew very few people in her generation who didn’t.

My mother’s house was constantly filled with men wanting to talk to my dad, get his advice, win his favor, or hang out. My mother drank Dewar’s White (the cheap stuff). Daddy drank whatever vodka he, Brum, and Rowan were into at the time. When he died, it was Finlandia. Under normal conditions, that’d be two bottles for the entire household, but my mother kept a liquor cabinet about as well stocked as one of the side bars at Hal & Mals. Everyone she knew drank, drank to excess, and drank quite a bit more than these two homeless guys, even though the entire world likes to blame homelessness on addiction.

Pointing out that homeless people use alcohol, heroin, crack, or other substances makes their homelessness their own fault. If it’s their fault, then your average Christian soul no longer has any responsibility to help them.

Drug use may coincide with homelessness, but it’s usually a symptom, not a cause. Using the drugs the doctors give them makes them lethargic and tired. Using drugs from the street maintains the highs of their condition, and they don’t have to have an appointment to get them.

Not feeling responsible for the people around you is a pretty common human trait. You see it with poverty, too. They’re poor because they’re lazy, they didn’t get an education, they voted for Obama, and many other reasons that don’t take into account the vast economic inequities in this country. As long as you can blame somebody for their condition, then your hands are clean. For most people, that’s all that matters.

During the great depression, two men rose up. What remained of the wealthy called socialists and communists. Huey Long and Franklin Roosevelt. Long’s plan to make the oil companies spend some of their profits on the people of Louisiana was hugely successful. Considering a run for the presidency, Long had a pretty good shot.

Like his cousin, Theodore, Roosevelt made the small businessman and banking stability the focus of his economic plan. Seeing that most of the country’s wealth had crept back into the hands of just a few “Robber Barons” again, Roosevelt began a campaign to move wealth from a tiny minority at one end into the middle and working class.

Even during the Great Depression, the argument that the poor deserved to be poor because of their misadventure was pretty common. Roosevelt was able to push beyond that resistance until he died. After he died, the Republicans passed a bill to make sure nobody like Roosevelt would ever happen again by limiting the presidency to two terms. Now that they want Trump to be president well into his nineties, they’re looking for ways around that, but those people might not be mentally stable.

Figuring out when to blame individuals for their place in the world and when to blame society takes a fair amount of maturity. Blaming the poor for their poverty makes people who aren’t poor feel like they accomplished something. That’s important to them.

Recently, a young Puerto Rican member of the House and Bernie Sanders, the perennial legislative old wizard, have been touring the country with a simple message. “Your economic condition may not be your fault.” They’re drawing crowds two and three times larger than the largest Trump rally. Clearly, people are interested in new answers to the same old questions.

I hear a lot of complaints about the homeless in Jackson. There’s a lot to take in. I’m convinced that most of the problem comes from surrounding communities dumping their problem people into Jackson. Part of it is because they know Jackson has facilities like Stewpot that will try to help them when Pearl and Madison never would.

My experience with the homeless makes me feel pretty confident that I can tell the difference between somebody who suffers from disorganized thinking and somebody who drinks too much. Everybody responds when they see somebody who is obviously suffering. Figuring out ways to make it their fault and not our fault is a mechanism of self-preservation.

Whatever you feel about Jesus, the story of Jesus, whether he existed or not, is that of a man who found ways to let in the suffering of the world without letting it destroy him. You don’t have to believe a man can walk on water to see what’s happening here.

For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,

I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’