Homeless Czar Piddle

Lately I’ve been reading about the mental stress of being homeless and how it affects people in the long run. Naturally I take everything I read about that subject as I do any other, namely deeply personally. It’s the habit of a lifetime. No matter what the subject, it’s really about me. I know it.

I’m not paranoid! It’s just that everything is always about me, because the being-about-me-ness is an inescapable fundamental part of the nature of all things in Nature. For example, french fries are about me. They’re telling me I’m fat. They scream it, actually.

Boneless buffalo wings are about me. They're telling me that the makers of boneless buffalo wings think that I, Dr. Wes Browning, am so stupid that I'm going to believe they de-boned the wing of a buffalo and fried it for me, instead of just pounding some chicken breast to a pulp, frying it, and calling it a boneless buffalo wing. Whereas, in fact I know that A) buffalos don’t fly and don’t have wings and B) if they did the wings would taste like cow, not chicken.

Even when I’m specifically not being talked about, it’s about me. "I’m not talking about you, Wes! I’m talking about Christian self-flagellators among the 14th century Flemish," you’ll say, and I’ll say, "What are you saying, I couldn’t flagellate myself? Are you saying I’m not a bit Flemish? I could too be Flemish. And don’t even think of telling me I don’t have any 14th century in my blood. I’ll get 14th century on you right now and see how you like it."

Studies about the long-term mental stress of being homeless are about me. They tell me what a mistake it was for me to have been homeless all those years. They tell me I should have belonged to a different economic class. They tell me I should have lived 150 years ago, and built me a log cabin. They tell me that when insurance companies start offering insurance for mental health care I won’t be eligible to get any.

So I was reading about a study done on the mental stress of homelessness that talked about some ways long term stresses of homelessness screw you up. That’s not exactly what it said but I’m simplifying it so that I, Dr. Wes Browning, won’t have to write down a lot of technical garbage that doesn’t have anything to do with the point I am planning to make.

That point will emerge after I tell you that, in this study as well as in others that I’ve seen, a distinction is implied between the general class of the chronically homeless and the subclass of the now housed chronically homeless. The study found that the housed chronically homeless had much better prognoses than did the other chronically homeless.

And I ask myself, who are the other chronically homeless, who are not the housed chronically homeless? They’re the homeless chronically homeless, that’s who! And realizing that, now I know everybody in the world wants my brain to spontaneously liquefy and pour out my nose! Is there no stupidity people won’t force on my poor overtaxed neurons? Talk about your long-term mental damage!

I distinctly recall warning the world that something like this was going to happen, right after Philip F. Mangano (Bush administration hotshot on homelessness) started promoting the hell out of the concept of the chronically homeless. I said then that it was an idiotic concept that lacked any precision and fooled people into thinking they were saying something when they were saying precisely piddle.

Well, it’s getting piddlier. Much piddlier.

And while we're at it, sticking the word "the" in front of a nebulous concept does not make it less nebulous. Of course those who use the phrase "the chronically homeless," in particular Philip F. Mangano himself, know that. He just does it to annoy me, ” Dr. Wes Browning.

Mainlined headlines

Let's hyperventilate!

Rumsfeld is right. I have become such a CNN junky. I watch the war news 16 hours a day on television and spend the rest of my time reading about it at CNN.com. I have strong opinions about what Aaron Brown has become. I recognize way too many retired army generals.

I know far more than I need to know about the 3-7th cavalry. Unofficial song: the Garryowen (I can even spell it!) Unofficial Martyr: General Custer. Battle cry: "Hoo hah!" And to think I used to credit Mad Magazine with inventing "Hoo hah!" along with "Axolotl?" and "What you mean WE, Kimosabe?" I know what a FARRP is. I know who the tip of the tip of the spear of the rolling wave of steel is, according to CNN's Walter Rodgers (namely the 7th cavalry, of course.)

Then, a couple of days into the conflict, I learned that "stay behinds are eating up our soft logistical tail" from retired Colonel David Hackworth. Thus I began to hyperventilate, precisely as Rumsfeld has described.

It's all those ups and downs of 24-hour coverage. It's the up of watching a rommel of tanks race across the desert a hundred miles unopposed, followed by the down of hearing about an ambush and capture of POWs, followed by the minor up of Gen. Myers calling our strategy "brilliant", followed by the extreme down of watching the British conduct "psychological warfare" as they bulldoze murals of Saddam. Like anyone's dumb enough to fall for that trick. ("Hey, where did big picture of Saddam go? Me guess war is over." – I wonder how much they're saying that in the outskirts of Basra.)

Is it any surprise I need a paper bag to breathe into? I am experiencing the fundamental stress that all thinking organisms experience when we need intelligence and all we get are unconnected facts. This is what I call an adventure in poetry. It's the anxiety that adheres to so-called military intelligence operations like peanut butter to the roof of a dog's mouth. We know all kinds of stuff, but we don't know what matters.

Let me give an example. According to our great spy agencies the Iraqis still had weapons of mass destruction as of March 19, when we started to shoot at them. The whole excuse for shooting at them was the presumed fact I just mentioned, coupled with the equally presumed fact that the Iraqis were willing to USE the afore-mentioned WMDs on us in the future.

But the question that mattered was HOW willing were the Iraqis to use those WMDs.

I mean, what the hell does it take to get an Iraqi to gas you? How much do you have to throttle one of these guys before he blows VX in your face? Don't they know we're conquering them?

OK, maybe by the time you read this the Republican National Guard will have gassed the 7th cavalry and given smallpox to the 101st Airborne, but that won't change the fact THAT THEY HAVE WAITED UNTIL WE WERE ON BAGHDAD'S DOORSTEP. That is not much of an indication of a "willingness to use weapons of mass destruction on us." That indicates instead an unwillingness to use weapons of mass destruction on us except as a last resort (which is by the way when I personally favor using them.)

Our "intelligence" got it wrong because the Saddam regime used weapons of mass destruction on "his own people", hence proving that he was evil, hence proving a willingness to use WMDs on us at the drop of a hat.

Well, that logic didn't work.

Apparently Saddam Hussein, who regards the Kurds as less than animals, respects Americans and British as moral equals who deserve better treatment.

Perhaps he sees himself in us.