The Bubble Problem
Have you ever tried to put down contact paper on a shelf, or in a drawer? Maybe I’m dating myself.
Have you ever tried to stick a decal on a window? You smooth it down, doing your darndest to get it perfectly flat… but lo, there’s a bubble. Dang it.
You push it down, thinking you’ve fixed it—only for the bubble to pop up somewhere else. Push it there, it migrates again. Unless you’ve made an exit for the trapped air, all you’re doing is moving the problem around.
Most of us learn the best fix is prevention—no bubbles in the first place. Failing that, you’ve got limited options:
- Live with the bubble (unsightly, but possible)
- Work it to the edge so the air escapes
- Or cut a hole in the material and let the problem out directly
When the Decal Is Society
Now, swap the decal for society and the bubbles for people experiencing homelessness.
Suddenly, a lot of folks are fine with just pushing the bubbles around. They don’t want to do the real work—or more to the point, pay anyone to do the real work—of reconnecting those bubbles to the wider world of people with housing.
So they press down on an encampment here, another there, and—surprise—it pops up somewhere else.
Sometimes they get creative and push all the bubbles into one big bubble. Just as unsightly, but they rationalize it because it’s in an area people rarely look.
In San Antonio, they call this place—without a shred of irony—Haven for Hope. Other cities have their versions. And yes, people get offended when I call such places “concentration camps,” but what do you expect when you surround them with big, black, spiky fences?
Still Bubbles
Let’s be clear: a person is just as homeless sitting in a tent under an overpass as they are sitting on a cot in an emergency shelter, or camped just outside city limits.
No matter where you push them under the decal—they’re still bubbles.
There’s also a growing push at municipal, state, and federal levels to criminalize homelessness. Look at Grants Pass, OR. Passing a law against something doesn’t make it vanish. Murder’s been illegal for thousands of years.
What these laws do is find the most expensive way to temporarily move people out of homelessness—without addressing the causes. You just replace old bubbles with new bubbles.
The Military Joins In
And then there’s the real kicker—implemented by Donald Trump this week in Washington, DC—calling in the military to… push bubbles around.
If they were cutting the fabric to let the air out, that’d be one thing. But no—they’re operating on the false belief that homelessness is a choice, and that harsher consequences will make people choose differently.
At best, all they can hope for with this affront to constitutional government is to push DC’s bubbles into Maryland and Virginia.
Ripping the Fabric
Think I’m exaggerating about ripping the fabric of society? Let’s rewind to when West Virginia suffered severe flooding. Housing stock was destroyed, people suddenly homeless.
As a National Guard veteran, I’d seen posts from the Adjutant General praising Guard units for emergency response. So I asked him—an old acquaintance—whether Guard troops could be mobilized to help with homelessness relief.
His answer? The National Guard mission doesn’t include homelessness response.
So I guess the President forgot to check with anyone who actually knows what the Guard does.
A Dictator Move
Using the military—whether active duty or reserve—is a dictator move. It’s especially egregious when it’s done to accomplish nothing.
Homelessness is not “that people can see it.” These are real people, with real lives, in a situation that costs governments at every level.
Spending time, money, and resources just to push the bubbles around—and damage the decal—isn’t responsible. And meanwhile, the self-proclaimed party of “fiscal responsibility” is busy cutting every program that might actually make things better.
Remember when we said “They’re ruining homelessness”? Still true.
The Sad Punchline
The saddest part? The people in charge of homelessness response can’t even manage the basic logic demonstrated by an AI avatar from a fringe “cult” that isn’t even a cult.
