The home invasion and assault against Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, in San Francisco was about politics only inasmuch as she was the actual target. But the coverage was politicized, as is everything in America, and trafficked recklessly by politicians on both sides of the aisle. And all missed the point: The attacker was homeless, a member of a growing number of people who sleep on benches, sidewalks, makeshift tents, viaducts, or vacant buildings. Impoverished and unmedicated, they have become more visible than ever in America’s richest cities and now number as many people as live in Phoenix or Latvia. The accused 42-year-old man was mentally unstable and lived for 20 years in California as an illegal immigrant from Canada. He worked illegally, married, fathered children, had brushes with police, and lived on streets and in storage units. Recently, he got hooked on QAnon and right-wing conspiracies and decided to hurt Nancy Pelosi, but attacked her husband instead. Right-wing extremism was blamed and right wingers accused Mr. Pelosi of complicity without basis. But there was silence about the underlying cause of the attack which is America’s failure to address its problems of mental illness, illegal immigration, and homelessness.
“About a fifth of America’s 1.7 million homeless suffer from untreated schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness. That translates, if you can imagine it, to 385,000 individuals, roughly more than the population of cities such as Dayton, Des Moines, Ft. Lauderdale, or Salt Lake City,” according to Best MSW Programs, a social work journal, in an article entitled “Homelessness and Mental Illness”. The writer pointed out that “at any given moment in time, there are many more people with untreated severe psychiatric illnesses living on America’s streets than are receiving care in America’s hospitals. To wit: approximately 90,000 individuals with schizophrenia or manic-depressive illness are in all hospitals receiving treatment.”
There is insufficient capacity to treat this number of people and, even if there were, they are mentally incapable of seeking help or paying for it. They are isolated from their families (the accused man’s Canadian stepfather told newspapers after the incident that he hadn’t heard from him since 2003). An unknown number are illegal immigrants, as was the assailant, who cannot come out of the shadows to ask for help and aren’t entitled to it either. Adding to the crisis is that the number of undocumented immigrants soars. A recent report estimates that 1.8 million illegal immigrants have entered the United States since President Joe Biden took office, based on census figures. If so, this is a population bigger than Hawaii’s or Maine’s and is higher than the 1.1 million immigrants who entered legally since Biden’s inauguration. Where they go and what they do remains unknown.
Homeless figures vary. Official numbers are usually based on those who have sought or live in shelters, not the total of those forced to fend for themselves. But whatever numbers are chosen, the issue is enormous and is a social time bomb, resulting in street crime and deaths in makeshift camps.
One in every 106 New Yorkers, in a city of more than 8.3 million people, is homeless due to the absence of cheap housing for the poor as well as decades’ old mental health policies that closed down most hospitals for the mentally ill. The majority of homeless in Los Angeles are unsheltered because they can survive year-around in a tent or under a bridge. Homelessness is also a global problem, but mostly due to wars, famine, political instability, or housing un-affordability. Other rich countries with high rates include France, Turkey, Sweden, Latvia, and Britain, due to large influxes of refugees or migrants. By contrast, most European countries have their homeless situation under control.
It’s disappointing, but not surprising, that the Pelosi attack became simply another political football. Even an editorial in the reasonable Wall Street Journal glossed over the underlying problems by writing that the assailant “fits the profile of an alienated, perhaps mentally ill, person who latches on to internet obsessions, some of which turn out to be political. The U.S. is full of such people.” There was no editorializing about the fact that he had been running around the streets of San Francisco for years without being deported as an illegal and without treatment despite brushes with the law. It did not question why so many “people latch on to internet obsessions” or why hateful, false, and violence-inciting content is even allowed on social media, much less why America is “full of such” people.
Hillary Clinton leaped onto the incident by blaming her political opponents and retweeting an article that described how the suspect spread QAnon and far-right theories online. Then she added: “The Republican Party and its mouthpieces now regularly spread hate and deranged conspiracy theories. It is shocking, but not surprising, that violence is the result.”
On the day of the attack, former President Donald Trump made no mention of the Pelosi incident and instead tweeted out his sympathy to the family of Jerry Lee Lewis who died and he described as “the Killer” of rock ’n’ roll. Then another publicity hog, Elon Musk, responded to Hillary’s blast against the GOP and retweeted a story from a discredited right-wing conspiracy site claiming this was somehow Paul Pelosi’s fault:
Musk later deleted the libellous website reference, but should have kicked himself off his own platform for spreading the kind of invalid toxic political garbage that he promises to eliminate from Twitter. Paul Pelosi was a high-profile victim of a festering, sociological nightmare in America’s biggest cities and yet no publication — from the venerable Times to irresponsible Twitter — delved into the human misery that grows and threatens society. All the coverage and commentary missed the mark and America’s frightening social problems which is why they will worsen.
Very important, I'm sending this around. Thanks for this. The Right in the USA defunds mental health, the Left prates about personal freedom, and the disabled wander.
Well said
The sickness in America is from the top down and bottom up to include everyone