lord only knows
Spend any time in a big city, and you'll see them: here in Denver, sometimes on a bench on the 16th Street Mall, eyes shell-shocked or pleading; other times sprawled in the cool shade of a tree.
Like you, I look and wonder whether it was sudden catastrophe or subtle withdrawl that brought them to this, that made them into unpeople the rest of us hurry by and ignore. Like you, I wonder if this was something they saw on their personal horizons, when they were 16 or 33 or 25 or 11. I'll bet some did. I'll bet more did not. That's the saddest part - that that person there was once a child, someone's son or daughter, who played after school and dressed up for Halloween and got excited to go to the high school dance.
But I think the antithesis is worth wondering about, too - what is it that happens to some people, the ones who "make it," or "make good," but do so in a way - not the ones that become monsters, I'm not talking war criminals or zealots far gone in money and God, not the ones who manage to shuck off their humanity and breathe a different kind of air - but the other unpeople, the ones who manage to stay just big enough to make a living off of their decline? Some, no doubt, are bad seeds. But only some.
Ezra Klein, via Digby, wonders why too (Even if sometimes, says Matt Taibbi, a scumbag is a scumbag is a scumbag).
UPDATE - Rereading Klein's post just now, I am reminded of this...
<< Home