Let’s have an Epiphany-tide in irony.
You know, in ancient Greek times, epiphanies happened nearly every other day. Every street, big rock and half decent tree would have his or her own god or goddess, and you’d never know when it would get rolled out during the year. I hear it’s still like that to this day on some of the islands over there.
Speaking of over there, only not so far, a news story on New Year’s Day epiphanized me. In this story, the mayor of a city called Angoulême in southwest France had ugly cages built around the city’s public benches. Fortunately, there were no people sitting on them at the time of their being caged. However, as a result of the caging now no one can ever sit on the benches. The idea was to ensure that homeless people could not sit on them. Mission accomplished! Now no one can.
The epiphanizing I speak of is doubly layered. For, behold: The benches are still there. Yet, behold again, they are unusable, and homeless people truly are not on them (I saw pictures.)
Of course we do things like that here in Seattle. We just don’t stick our heads that deep in it. But we have totally removed most of the benches the city had 20 or 30 years ago, and where we’ve replaced them, we’ve installed those lovely anti-lying-down devices that hurt so much if you land on them wrong.
Sometime in the next week or so, according to a sign, the awnings will be removed from the building on the west side of Second Avenue Extension between Washington and Main streets, for the sake of public safety, because, you know, homeless people (most of them probably either nightly residents or friends and relatives of residents of the Union Gospel Mission across the street) have been using the awning to stay dry for years. Oh, and also, there’s a bus stop there, so bus patrons have been able to use the awnings to stay out of the wet. Forget a bus stop shelter: Metro took any shelter out of there before punk rock happened.
When this de-awning day occurs, we will be epiphanized right here in our own city. A sky will appear above that sidewalk, and rain will pour down, and we will see that no one will be dry at that bus stop. No one.
This is the kind of social engineering that cuts through all the untidy details of making compromises and trying to keep life bearable for someone. Why bother, when you can make everyone equally miserable?
I don’t even know why we have sidewalks anymore. Have you noticed how many homeless people stand around on sidewalks? The mayor of Angoulême has the answer. We can fence off all the sidewalks. That way the awnings could stay, there just wouldn’t be anyone getting under them. Homeless people and carless people can walk in the streets and get run over, if they still insist on existing.
A new day is coming when all the good things in life can and will be fenced off from all of us because homeless people might get them.
You know how when panhandlers ask for quarters, and you think, “Nah, uh-uh, you’d just use that to buy a kilo of heroin”? Did you ever think how you yourself might buy a kilo of heroin with those quarters? I thought not. But now the mayor of Angoulême has the solution. Nobody gets money.
That’s right, we can pass a law that requires everyone get paid with money on an EBT card, and it’s only good for unprepared food. That way no homeless people will accidentally buy heroin or shoelaces. And neither will you.
The beauty of the Angoulême system is that things attain their natural limit. It takes a lack of concern for homeless people, and it carries it all the way to not caring about anybody.
Which is only fair.