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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 11, 2026

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elites live in their pristine multimillion dollar apartments in skyscrapers while the street outside (literally right outside) is squalid, covered in garbage

But enough about San Francisco.

And I'll take the cows over the junkies. I know cows shit a lot, but they'll shit less in public walkways than the junkies do. They're animals but they're not animals.

The San Francisco situation is different. Not only because most of America isn’t like it, and because the truly wealthiest areas of San Francisco have it but less so than eg the tenderloin or whatever, but because we know why San Francisco has its permissive attitude towards the homeless and public squalor. It’s not a mystery. It is, in fact, the core conflict at the heart of the existence of this forum itself. If you ask a progressive San Franciscan elite why they let junkies piss and shit on the street they will tell you. If you ask an Indian elite why they will shrug, maybe mumble something about ‘village people’.

SF has shitting junkies but India doesn't?

I doubt the Indian ones are drug addicts or that they're allowed to shit anywhere near rich people. Designated vs non-designated, etc.

It's hard to exaggerate the very worst I've seen in San Francisco. Having personally seen human shit on the ground right outside comically expensive condos is too obvious a observation.