Commentary: How can we enjoy O.C.’s opulence when so many are without homes?

I was recently down at the Santa Ana riverbed, a mile from the Magic Kingdom, Disneyland, surrounded by the homeless, delivering pillows to the poor, handicapped souls in wheelchairs. They are the forgotten humans, regarded by the intelligentsia as unworthy of life, a point made abundantly clear by the rhetoric at public meetings and expounded upon by local publications.

Distracted by their predicament, I almost felt sad for the homeless people, until I remembered my position as one who has a house and a job, so I turned my back and walked away. It seems to be almost our job today here in Orange County, to look and see, then turn a blind eye — to allow the pain and suffering of others to persist indefinitely. Who am I to disturb the norm?

Suddenly, I was immersed in the abject stupidity of the whole image. Sparkling clean Disneyland and South Coast Plaza, the magnificent mansions in the hills, and even the smaller, million-dollar cookie cutter homes around the delightful resort area and yet, not more than a mile away, tents in the dirt on a riverbed.

As the politicians in Orange County oversee billion dollar budgets, they see, of course, no way out for the homeless people that are the scourge of the county, making us all look bad as we go about subsisting in our over-the-top opulence. How can we do without three TVs in our home and a booze cabinet full of killer, good 30-year-old Scotch? How can anyone in their right mind think we should spend hundreds of millions of dollars to help people who are dying on the streets of O.C.?

What is a human life worth anyway? In some countries, not very much, and here in Orange County, little more. Hey, why help the homeless people anyway? We need the money for more drugs and booze.

This opioid crisis is costing all of us more than new TVs right now. I can tell you now that this alone is a powerful reason not to help the homeless people in tents.

Ensconced in their warm comforters, and immersed in their nice, sweet legal drug-fueled dreams, the truth dawns on the political elite: What we need right now are more police to help corral those evil, out-of-work, broken, handicapped miscreants decorating the dirt with tents.

Dirt is just not the same with a tent on it; it is almost not just dirt anymore. My gosh, how are we to continue on our trek to glorious wealth while these homeless insist on living on the dirt? It is not right.

We expect those people to get out of their wheelchairs, dissect their own brains to make themselves normal like us, and stop taking drugs, except, of course, if they are prescribed by a licensed physician, dispensed and produced by the billion-dollar drug companies. After all, we homeowners take our drugs and drink our booze while still holding down jobs.

Luckily, they do not test for legal, over-prescribed drugs, nor do they refuse to hire you because of it. Were that situation ever to change, I imagine we’d have quite a few of the out-of-work O.C. residents staking their spots on a riverbed.

Then the whole county will be run instead by teetotaler, spiritualists who do not drink, smoke or take even an aspirin, as it might upset their purist, little flat tummies.

But, right away, those uptight types would set out to build homes for the homeless people, not because it is right, not because it saves lives, not because they have a shred of humanity, but because homeless people living in tents in a riverbed negatively affect their feng-shui.

So forget the lives lost, the humanity, the helpless homeless people, the handicapped, the mentally disabled and the addicts living in tents. Know about the billions of dollars meant to help are just sitting in the bank unused, overseen by the beer-drinking, Scotch-sipping, pill-popping leaders right here in lovely Orange County, and remember, what affects one group’s feng-shui affects yours too.

MIKE ROBBINS, a volunteer with Housing is a Human Right OC and The People’s Homeless Task Force, lives in Anaheim.