Anatomy of a Random, Unhinged Assault in Portland, City of Professed Benevolence
The question of what constitutes humanity is at the heart of Constantino’s attack and the tensions in Portland, a city buckling under the weight of its ostensible benevolence. Few U.S. cities have offered as fertile an environment for drug addiction and homelessness to take root, via hands-off policies and the idea that a moral society is a tolerant society – all of which might have stood a fighting chance, had the riots and violence of 2020 not kneecapped a city already struggling under COVID.
I voted, in 2020, for Measure 110, the ballot measure decriminalizing the possession of many controlled substances, i.e. drugs, below a certain amount. When I did, I was thinking of my experience with drugs like mushrooms, molly, marijuana, all of which I’ve used and enjoyed. (And not just recreationally — having suffered in the past from severe, debilitating, and suicidal Depression, these drugs have helped me immeasurably. It’s not an understatement to say I owe them my life.)
But slowly, over the last few years, I’ve come to regret my vote. I did not understand the potency of these new synthetic drugs like fentanyl, sent in from China via Mexico.
I voted as I did in hopes that people with mental illness would not be jailed. I still feel this way. But I recognize it’s not compassionate to leave people on the streets either, left in the grip their addiction.
To leave someone to their addictions is not compassion. It is at times necessary, but it is not love.