According to progressives, all problems are everyone's problems, whether we like it or not.

I'm not feeling it.

A few blocks from the scene of the crime.

My kids and I were out for our bicycle ride Sunday morning when something quite unfortunate happened. No, a car didn't run us over and no, we didn’t have a get-off. What did happen was that on an otherwise beautiful Sunday morning when we weren’t bothering anyone at all, my son had an unpleasant, unprovoked encounter with a couple of vagrants that changed his views on life, and not in a good way.

A little about our town. Pocatello is a community of about 50,000 in Southeastern Idaho. We have another town of about 10,000, Chubbuck, immediately to our north. Just north of Chubbuck is Fort Hall on the Shoshone-Bannock reservation. Pocatello is in a narrow valley about a mile wide and five miles from south to north. Mountains surround us to the east, south, and west. If you like mountain biking, skiing, climbing, or anything else that is made better by easy access to mountains and trails, this is the place to be. Or at least is should be.

I’ve written about Pocatello before. It’s an odd place. Though I’ve lived here for decades, I still haven’t figured out why pushing every button on the Yugo’s dashboard, no matter the order or combination, produces the same outcomes. While the physical beauty here is undeniable, the people running the show tend to occupy whatever the next level below godawful happens to be. Though there are some notable exceptions, they are few and far between. And these folks tend to end up burned-out, sad and dejected as the result of their efforts. There is almost no bar too low around here when it comes to parlaying opportunity into civic accomplishment.

One of the oddest things about Pocatello is that it prides itself on being a bicycle-friendly town when it is, in fact, one of the worst places west of the Mississippi to ride a bicycle. A total of 50,000+ folks in a valley five miles long and a few miles wide is tight packing before you subtract the five square mile Union Pacific railroad yard that divides the community almost equally into east and west. The population density in town is quite high. There are few bicycle lanes, few wide shoulders, lots of cars, and the average speed of those cars is generally 10+ mph over the posted speed limit (30+ in school zones or in the university district).

There does exist a network of paved pedestrian and bicycle pathways that wander through town, but these are more of a recreational destination (deliberately so) than a viable alternative for most commutes. Another problem, of late, with these trails is a heretofore unknown-to-me program that apparently provides fast, expensive class 4 e-bikes to helmetless, shirtless, cigarette-smoking vagrants who buzz everyone at incredibly high (and silent) closing speeds, while sipping beer.

So to the streets it is. Besides the physical limitations of our local roadways, there exists here a daily commuting adventure featuring a veritable legion of kid-filled Suburbans driven by housewifes wearing $10,000 worth of cosmetics and chatting on their cell phone while careening through traffic toward various activities for which they are 15 minutes late. This is known around here, somewhat euphemistically, as the Mormon 500.

The determination in this seems to be that as long as my kids get to soccer practice on time, it’s OK if I run over your kids to make it happen. It’s an engrossing spectacle when I’m in my 1-ton dually. It’s terrifying when I’m on my bicycle.

OK, I feel you. Yo, Martin, is all of this going somewhere or are you kind of just running laps? It is a mighty long setup, but we’re getting there.

Because of the Union Pacific yard that divides Pocatello nearly in half, there are only four ways to get across the tracks from the east side of town to the west. One is an overpass several miles south of town, another is an overpass several miles north of town. Both of these are very bicycle friendly but inconvenient by virtue of geography. The other two ways across the rail yard are within a few blocks of each other in the downtown area. One is a decaying urban eyesore of concrete and steel, a 4-lane overpass that involves taking your life in your hands with each crossing. The other is a two-lane traffic tunnel with a set of adjacent pedestrian tunnels. This is the route that I much prefer when cycling into town with my grom posse.

It’s a five-mile commute into town along our preferred route. Because we dislike being buzzed by cars doing 40 mph six inches from the bike lane on the main drag, and the dedicated bike paths are a bit out ot the way and filled with kamikaze derelicts who ain’t afraid to die, we take back streets through the industrial district near the railroad yard. Our route to the aforementioned tunnel involves riding past one of four homeless shelters/halfway houses currently in Pocatello (six if you count the extended stay motels in Chubbuck).

This number was almost one more. A few years ago, a local woman from the faith community started an effort to construct a halfway house in a residential neighborhood just down the street from a preschool. Though this effort was widely lauded by virtue-signalling social justice warriors, faith leaders and city government, it was opposed by virtually 100% of everyone else - especially those in the neighborhood in question. I wrote a 2018 piece for the Idaho State Journal about this that was picked up by the Associated Press.

I do not consider myself to be either unkind or unconcerned about the world around me. I do what I can, and I daresay it’s probably more than many in the virtue-signalling set. I live a simple existence in a 100-year old farmhouse, drive as little as possible, and take in kids that no one else wants. But I have my limits. And if you want to find out, try virtue-signalling around me without any skin in the game. You do that at your considerable peril.

As I mentioned in the AP article, I don’t personally know anyone who’s against transitional housing, halfway houses or whatever else is necessary to solve the transient problem. The need is certainly there. But it’s equally true that the reason that the residents of such facilities are in need is that they have better than average propensity not to make great neighbors. I think that it’s perfectly reasonable for anyone who owns a home in an area where such a facility is being proposed to be concerned. Why should anyone be forced to accept responsibility for the irresponsibility of others?

A summer ago, a homeless encampment sprang up along the street just before the tunnel we ride through to get to the other side of town. After having to ride through a gauntlet of old RV’s, tents in the street, open drug and alcohol use, we had to then ride through a tunnel filled with urine, feces, broken glass and occasionally people having sex. I did my best to get around all of this without exposing the kids to things that they don’t need to see, but the problem was so widespread around this area of town that it was nearly impossible.

One day, while riding around tents in the street, a dog came running out of a RV and nipped at my little girl. Only the fact that I endeavor at all times to model good behavior for my kids prevented me from going Old Testament on it’s owner. The police, when informed, shrugged.

Downtown merchants were losing their minds. You don’t need to talk with me about Portland or Seattle, I sometimes see the same thing, albeit on a smaller scale, right here. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let this deter me from the joy of riding bicycles with my kids on public streets that my tax dollars pay for. And I want to support downtown businesses. My concession has been that concealed carry has become, in some instances, open carry. I have found that a plainly visible Glock 29 Gen 4 is as effective for solving my commuting issue as Moses's staff in parting the Red Sea.

This summer, the homeless encampment never materialized in the previous location. The closing of the underpass tunnel this summer may have had something to do with that. At any rate, we were riding into town yesterday when we encountered a couple of guys standing on the sidewalk outside of the homeless shelter. I tow the girls along on a tagalong bike and trailer, while my son follows on his seven speed. I didn’t think anything about it as the girls and I rode past them except that they looked like a couple of rough characters. What I failed to notice was that my son had fallen behind a bit. When it was his turn to ride by, they didn’t leave him alone.

F&*k you little $hit. I’ll kill you and those little bit%^es.

I’m incredibly proud of my youngest son. He’s smart, kind, brave and full of empathy for those less fortunate than him in a world that he already knows is full of hurt. He’s everything I ever wanted to be, and he’s only eight. I love him to death. And I think that he made the decision not to tell me about this business until later because he knew that my head would have exploded. He looks after his old man.

This, in a nutshell, is the thing that drives me crazy about modern progressives: I’m supposed to put up with this crap. I, as someone outside of their bubble, am supposed to be responsible for everything that’s wrong with the world now and ever has been. The rest of us are always behind the 8-ball. We are supposed to perpetually turn the other cheek, regardless of circumstances.

To hear it told, the rest of us outside the woke bubble are responsible for slavery, poverty, colonialism, misogyny, homelessness, crime, drug abuse, gender confusion, the mental health crisis, red dye #2, Taylor Swift and every unequal outcome in human history. We’re supposed to accept crime, and rampant public drug abuse as some sort of penance for having lived reasonably good lives.

I am, by virtue of my race and ethnicity, expected to pay reparations for things that even my ancestors had no direct connection with. And I’m supposed to put up with homeless people who hassle my kids so that look-at-me types can feel like they are doing some good when what they are actually doing is making their “virtue” someone else’s problem.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve had enough. Turning the other cheek has an expiration date. You don’t want to be the next person, I assure you, who attempts to lay any progressive guilt trip on me. And as for my son’s unfortunate encounter, his was a reasonable call in dealing with it. As is, there are a couple of dudes still able to wander around downtown who will find that vagrancy is only their second worst problem, by a fair amount, if I ever find them.

Associated Press and Idaho Press Club-winning columnist Martin Hackworth of Pocatello is a physicist, writer, and retired Idaho State University faculty member who now spends his time with family, riding bicycles and motorcycles, and arranging and playing music. Follow him on Twitter @MartinHackworth, on Facebook at facebook.com/martin.hackworth, and on Substack at martinhackworthsubstack.com.