Canada to Patagonia at a Worrying Age

The problem with coming here from Canada is that it is inevitable one is going to make comparisons. As far as I can tell, Seattle is a good example of a fairly forward thinking city within the US context. But after the relaxed civility of Canada (especially Victoria), Seattle feels just rather too scary.

It isn’t scary, of course. It has a half-decent public transport system and is investing further. It has major attractions in the Public Market and Jimi Hendrix/Space Needle stuff. The people seem generally friendly and they seem to be getting on with their lives the same way most of us are. So what’s wrong? My thought today is that it entirely comes down to what a society deems the acceptable bottom line for it’s vulnerable citizens.

When I got to Toronto over three weeks ago now, there were some beggars, but they weren’t aggressive or numerous. Immediately you get to Seattle the dispossessed are in your face. That could just be an accident of geography, of course, (gang warfare is evident in Toronto’s suburbs and East Vancouver can be rotten in parts) but of the three major cities I’ve visited this month this one sticks out.

The beggars I saw in Toronto and Vancouver were not generally mentally ill. Here, so many are, you wonder if there is any facility at all in the city. And that is the nub, I think. The threshold for leaving people to fend for themselves in an urban environment seems lower here. That may be the price of a low tax, gun wielding society, but it is so clearly self-defeating you wonder why people put up with it.

The problem of mentally ill citizens roaming the streets isn’t just a problem for the individuals concerned, of course. These people are prey to people who see a way of improving their own difficult lives by exploiting the even weaker (the American way?). The result is two levels at the bottom of differently vulnerable people interacting to produce a sub-society which scares the rest. The ‘rest’ are mainly ordinary working people, for the rich have ways in which to avoid all but their own. The ordinary working people then seem to leave large swaths of the urban environment to the dispossessed, who only share this environment with social services (if they exist), charities and law enforcement agencies.

It’s all entirely depressing when the richest nation on earth can’t even spare some loose change to sort this out – but inevitable when a society refuses to accept that decent health is a shared responsibility for all its citizens that can return any basic investment many times over in turns of a shared standard of living.

Or maybe it’s just that it rained today.

Anyway, I’m off out for a pint in an Irish pub where a Liam Gallagher is listed as playing this evening. If it’s the right one, I’ll try to provoke him into getting you all spluttering over your corn flakes in 4 hours or so…

Today’s song is Enjoy Yourself by the Specials.

PS – Still no ciggies

Tags: Seattle, Travel

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