Update on TTW and Yoshi

[Syzygy321]

248. I like your integrity through this; always have;

but I think that what is being demonstrated to us Democrats is not "gaps in the system" but the fact that some people put themselves in a place where no system can save them.

TTW has gotten handouts, concern, and the kindness of strangers. She has gotten a social worker who did her best. She has gotten legal advice. She has had library services. She has gotten help from an animal shelter and a breed rescue place and a doggie daycare that reportedly has been boarding her pet without pay. She has gotten jobs. She has gotten a new home, and offers of other homes. She has had cops listen patiently to her tale of msanthrope's "conspiracy". She has gotten oodles upon oodles of sympathy.

And the end result of all these people bending over backward is, what exactly?

And if a kinder gentler more liberal America bends farther over backward, what will the results be?

Listen: Today I met a nice young addict. He has gotten free psychiatric care. He has been given treatment after treatment. Most recently he went through a suboxone clinic. It didn't thrill him so he left it. He gave himself a life-threatening spine infection with a needle. He went to a hospital. He got 3 weeks of free inpatient medical care. Then a random pee test showed he was using illicit drugs in the hospital. When confronted with the evidence, he left AMA. The next day, he showed up at my hospital with his tale of woe and his desperate desire for IV narcotics. From me he will get another 3 weeks or more of free inpatient medical care; the exact same care a rich person would get.

Here is what he told the hospital social worker today: "No, I don't need any help. I don't have a drug problem anymore. I'm over it. I swear. I just want to get better and get home to see my little girl."

It's bullshit. He kinda means it, but it's still bullshit.

He's a nice decent guy who, ten to one, is never going to get well. He wants to, but he doesn't want to. ALong the way he is going to rob his parents, beat his girlfriend, and screw over his kid. He'll feel kinda bad about it all, but he'll tell himself it's not exactly his fault, and that will free him up to keep doing it.

And nothing I or the social worker or anyone can do, will change that.

(Oh, and did I mention his hep C? Sigh. How many people will be infect before he's done?.)

And this guy: he's not crazy or bad. He's just a young man with an addiction. I like him. I wish I could fix him. I've seen a thousand guys like him. It's alcohol or opiates or chronic debilitating psychiatric problems. People like him have the best of intentions and, generally, the worst of outcomes. They blunder along hurting themselves and everyone else. You can call them victims - especially if you stand on a soapbox far away and ignore the truly innocent people they drag down with them.

Their problem, like TTW, isn't some "gap in the system" that the right liberal policy could fix. Their problem is, quite simply, themselves.

You worry about innocent Yoshi. I worry about this guy's toddler daughter. I wonder if the girl's mom is also using; if she will be dead of hep C complications before the child turns 15.

(Or is the mom an innocent victim who had a baby with the wrong guy, and will spend the rest of her life in hell because of it?)

There is no magic system that fixes broken people who don't especially want to be fixed.

To me, that is the moral of this unending fable.