There's a huge disparity in this Country, though, and part of the problem is our public perspective. Thanks to de-institutionalization, we now have a gigantic homeless problem and most of them are mentally ill and dysfunctional in society. But the only options are either very few over-crowded facilities, shelters that only offer cots and food, or jail. I'm SURE Charlie has been arrested more than once for stuff, because somewhere someone has had to call the Cops on him rather than let him get his ass kicked. But you know what? Doesn't matter, he can post bail, or get out in a day or two tops and be right back at it. What's that to a guy who doesn't have a job anyway? Plenty of drunks move in the same circle.
So even if he IS mentally ill, which he isn't, you know what can be done about it? Nothing. There's almost no such thing as involuntary commitment anymore. Know how I know this? Because running this Gym, I've gotten all kinds. Drunks with piss all over their pants who want to hit the heavybag, people who literally JUST got out of jail, people who JUST got in a street fight (because they're crazy) and have blood all over them and high on SOMETHING...saying they need to learn to defend themselves against the Government, and I had an incident with a former fighter who is now pretty whacked-out, or at least he's behaving like he is. You ever been stalked by a crazy person? Let me tell you, there literally isn't anything you can do about it until they DO harm you or someone else. The police will absolutely tell you that. The most they can do is come tell them to leave for you, but all they have to do is cross the street and they can stand there and scream death threats all day. They will give you a helpful hint, though, that if this person rushes you at your car and you manage to stab them to death, you won't likely do any time for it.
That's the degradation of how things function regarding this issue. So sure, a concentrated effort can be made to have Charlie removed from every single Gym, have him be ignored, doors shut, and entire groups of people pushing him out the doors (that's what we did as opposed to what could have happened), but if he's going to just follow people around until someone DOES kill him, then that's just what's going to happen because no authority is going to really protect him from himself in that manner. It's akin to women who are eventually badly beaten or killed by crazy lovers where the law claimed powerlessness to stop it because UNTIL the beating/killing, the crazy dude didn't break any laws. Only Charlie's crazy relationship, is with boxing.
P.S. - Considering that sociopathy is a mental illness, everyone we've ever executed for murder, say serial killing, is by definition mentally ill. I don't want to get into a capital punishment argument, but if we deem reciprocity in this regard immoral, then we're just going to be a bunch of people paying for room and board for a large number of people who would just as soon kill every one of us given the opportunity.
I feel about them the way I feel about Charlie, fuck them. If they're going to push to a specific end because that's what they want, then it is what it is. No one is lamenting what happened to Dahmer. Oh and before anyone says Charlie is no killer, understand that he swung at the back of Floyd's head with all his bodyweight. It doesn't take a whole lot of force to the brain stem to kill a man.
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