I'm Begging You...

"Beggars should be entirely abolished! Truly, it is annoying to give to them, and annoying not to give to them!"` -- Friedrich Nietzsche

No illustration today, because who the fuck wants to see a picture of a bum?

I'm pissed. Beyond pissed, actually, and on the verge of building a new Death Star. Unlike the previous versions, this one will be specifically built to target shopping center parking lots, where one of the worst banes of society tend to congregate: the Beggar.

Yes yes, yes, I know: we're not supposed to call them "beggars" because feelz (we opt for the more holistic and less-offensive "Homeless" and "Disadvantaged", which merely  obscure the problem), but I don't give a fuck, anymore. I haven't been able to go anywhere this last week or so without some greasy, filthy, toothless son of a bitch asking me for change, for cash, for cigarettes, a ride, or offering to wash my car -- or provide more, shall we say, personal...services...in return for booze, or cash.

I've fucking had it.

Three days ago (this would be Sunday evening) Your Lord and Master returns from an evening of dinner and jollifications with Mrs. Overlord in honor of her birthday. He gets her back into the house and settled, and then rushes back out for cigarettes. So, off to the 7-11 where he is accosted by a grimy youngin', obviously strung out, asking for $2.

The Overlord tells him to get stuffed.

Upon exiting the 7-11, Grimy Youngins' female companion, an emaciated creature you could smell from 15' away, with am overbite that is reminiscent of a cow catcher on an old steam locomotive, takes up where he left off. Probably in the foolish belief that I might have more compassion when confronted by a filthy female who resembles one of the mummified Egyptian queens currently residing in the British Museum, who repeats the request for $2. I tell her to fuck off, as well, and then she offers to perform oral sex for $5.

Not with a stolen dick, Sweetheart.

And a new phenomenon (at least for me) occurred Monday afternoon, when the doorbell rang. There was a stocky black man who was begging door-to-door. More likely, he was ringing doorbells seeking an empty house to burglarize, but figured, hey as long as I'm here, I might as well ask for $20.

I asked him what made him think I was going to fork over $20 just because he'd asked (because your Overlord, when riled, is fearless, and often stupid that way) and I got a rigamarole about how his disability check was late, and his girl jammed him up, and he needed a little somethin' somethin'. I told him I need a little somethin' somethin', too, and that somethin' was for him to get the fuck off my porch.

I would see the same dude Monday night in the parking lot of the local CVS, and he apparently didn't remember me, because he was asking for $20, again.

Yesterday I hit the beggar lottery in the same parking lot; a pair of middle-aged addicts accosted me --- before I could even get out of the open car door -- intimating that my vehicle was in danger without paying what amounted to protection money. That's when the Policeman's Nightstick -- a gift from a cop  friend, which I keep in the driver's side door pocket -- came out, and suddenly I'm being apologized to profusely.

No sooner do I take care of my business and exit the bagel store with my newly-baked bounty, than another scumbag appears asking for spare change. Apparently, his disability check had failed to arrive, as well. I ignored him and sped off.

And it turns out that it doesn't get any better by leaving the state, as I had to dash into New Jersey this morning, only to be accosted by another asshole with his hand out, only this time in Spanish.

This morning it's a guy hanging around a gas station in New Jersey offering to clean windshields, while the Hindus on duty make it perfectly clear he's not welcome, and doesn't work here. Tell him to get lost, and he's questioning the legitimacy of your birth and your mother's sexual mores in Spanish. With my mother in the car.

Chaos ensured. To put it mildly.

(Incidentally, if you're going to curse me out for telling you "No" when you ask for money, have the decency to do it in a language I don't comprehend. As the poor bastard discovered this morning, El Supremo etiende espanol bien, and his wrath is terrible to behold. Be thankful you didn't get beaten, Pedro.)

And the ridiculous thing is every one of these assholes has the same story -- the government check didn't come; they got robbed; they've "recently" lost their job and need money (really? Because I know that look you have, from close association with all sorts of addicts, it's the look of someone who's only job -- ever -- has been panhandling or petty theft, the proceeds which go straight into your arm, or which are sucked through a glass tube stuffed with steel wool. You're not fooling anyone); I've had a run of bad luck (yeah, like 25 years of it); I'm a homeless vet (and then they can't tell you their MOS and where they were stationed); and so on and so forth.

And it's obvious what they're all doing with whatever money they do manage to collect.

In the old days, it was simply drunks (Disclaimer: Your Overlord was a drunk once, just not a begging one). Now, it's almost exclusively drug addicts, crack , heroin and synthetic pot. And if you give them time to begin their sales pitch, you hear things like "my EBT card is empty", "my food stamps ran out", "my unemployment ran out", "my disability check is -- insert one -- late/not enough/been stolen, or they haven't been approved....yet.

So, we're handing out disability checks for being a junkie, are we?

And in the meantime, the city opens a new outpatient methadone clinic on the island, and the older one was priced and whined out of the neighborhood by the Hipsters escaping the hell they made of Brooklyn. Like the herds of buffalo on the Great Plains, when the grazing is gone, the herd moves on. Which means they move to other parts of the island.

This is 21st Century New York City? This is the home of Wall Street, the World's Economic Engine? This is the United States, where the economic news is all about how unemployment is at historic lows and business can't find enough bodies to hire?

No, it really isn't. It may appear to be New York City, according to the landmarks and the maps, but this is really New Yorkistan, a shinier rendition of Kipling's descriptions of the Northwest Indian frontier, where the fierce mountain tribesman have been replaced with the scruffy, rancid, dirt-encrusted dug addict/mendicant.

Otherwise, the pillage, rape and banditry are exactly the same.

It's well past time we stopped treating addicts as victims, and then mollycoddling them. I've been a great believer that modern medicine leaves much to be desired when it comes to the treatment of addiction, but it's become apparent that the problem is being made far worse by government -- that hands out welfare and disability payments, that opens treatment programs in residential neighborhoods where the users are still close to the suppliers, where municipalities hand out free needles and provide "safe" environments for junkies to get their fix, -- which is making the problem worse, not better.

It's all an inducement to remain a fucking crackhead.

Don't get me started on "Medical" and "Legal" Pot. WORST. IDEA.EVER. As big a scam as Social Security is,  just a more-select pool of suckers who are too stoned to realize they're suckers.

The refusal to go after the "recreational drug user" and punish them the same way the addict and the pusher are punished, further exacerbates the case.

Our programs of law enforcement are too focused upon supply, and the social programs that are supposed to be focused upon demand are, in reality, another government jobs programs for prison guards, judges, prosecutors, defense attorneys, policemen, counselors of a dozen stripes, social workers, and all the administrators who oversee all aspects of their expensive -- and obviously failing -- rice bowl.

No one is in a rush to solve any of these problems; if you solved them, tens of thousands of government employees and billions in government budgets can no longer be justified.

The addicts and the beggars are the same people. If we're not going to treat them the way they need to be treated (locked into a rehab facility until clean, body and mind, and not just caught-and-released on arbitrary 28-, 60-, or 90-day schedules, or incarcerated for lack of anything better to do), and we're not going to just solve the problem by destroying the countries that supply, then we're just going to keep surrendering (Legal Pot) and have to deal with crazy, potentially-violent, entitled fucktards on speed accosting you in parking lots and demanding money.

I really do have SOME sympathy, but at some point, sympathy becomes a waste of time and effort.

Naturally, the Overlord has a solution:

You get two chances -- jail or rehab, or combination of both -- to get clean, and if you get caught a third time, we'll give you that fatal overdose you're angling for anyway just to rid ourselves of the pestilence you've become. Fuck the Christian pieties, fuck the liberal pretend concern for their fellow man. At some point, you have to recognize lost causes and leave them lost...or take proactive measures to lose them permanently..

In the long run, it's cheaper, and I don't have to be flocked by beggars when I'm only out to buy toilet paper.


UPDATE: Corrected a few spelling boo-boo's and grammar.