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Absolutely true.
I also feel similar to the OP. The difference is that I’m a large, very muscular and physically dominant male. I’m an amateur boxer & powerlifter and have been in a few situations where I’ve had to use the skills I’ve developed in adverse conditions.
I’ve lived and worked principally in two cities in my life. Both very blue. One very wealthy and safe but with the growing problems that are discussed here frequently. We will call it city A. Other city much less wealthy, much rougher and with a longer history of violence. Let’s call that city B. Both cities are relatively close tk each other.
Over the last ten years the homeless in city A have gotten increasingly violent, brazen and deranged. They started setting up camps in broad daylight, in the middle of public streets. often the most violently mentally will walk the streets at day and terrify people.
The homeless in city b, while numerous, are largely the same as they’ve even been. They mostly keep to themselves, sometimes annoy tourists, but they are rarely threatening.
While city B has a reputation for violence, I feel much more comfortable there. I once expressed this to a group of people from city A, who were a bit shocked and amused. They asked me why. I told them their homeless are crazy, aggressive and out of control. They asked me why I thought that. I paused for a moment, and said ”If homeless people act like in city B, I think people just beat the shit out of them.”.
I myself had an illustrative example of this personally. Late at night in city A, where I was working, a homeless man locked eyes with me and then took a shit right in front of me.
After the momentary disgust wore off, the rage at this blatant antisocial act set in. I look up, see a security camera staring right at me, looked back at the homeless man, gave him a death stare, and moved on.
I think there are a lot of people feeling like Bernie Goetz out there, but with our growing panopticon and our fully deranged racial politics, that juice is just not worth the squeeze.
so what, you wanted to rage out on some loser who was street shitting, but the all seeing eye prevented you from... what exactly? The guy wasn't shitting on your property, and while it's gross it isn't exactly some rando's wheelhouse to defend the streets from shit.
From where i'm standing i'd rather live in a place where vigilantism is more harshly policed than shitting without a toilet. Vile as it may be, a pile of shit can be safely sidestepped whereas angry men with spurious reasoning can't always be. Obviously in the OP case with the marine, the street shitter WAS the violent man with questionable mental faculties, but without the loud violent shouting a street shitter isn't a good cause for someone to start fantasizing about violence IMO.
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