Everywhere we look, there seem to be tents and makeshift shelters in our public spaces. The issue of homelessness is taking a greater toll on our psyche, dividing us between our desire to be our Brother’s Keeper, while striving to prevent the Tragedy of the Commons.

This is a complex problem because America’s growing population of the unhoused is made up of a toxic combination of the economically disadvantaged, the non-confirming Hobo, the mentally ill, the drug addict, and the outlaw.

As I write this note there are seven tents within 100 feet of my bedroom window, with nightly fights and screams, along with the occasional knife stabbings, clubbing, overdosing, rounded out by the random Meth Lab featuring an indoor gas tank with a protruding chimney.

To get a feel for what’s really going on, we might go back to the 19th century when the British military defeated Chinese forces, thereby allowing the British to reap fortunes by trading addictive opium to the Chinese population for the tea that quenched the thirst of Britain's Victorian population. James Clavell’s 1981 novel, Noble House, is a must-read story about the founding of Hong Kong to enable this trade.

The opium provided by the British to the Chinese was so powerful and addictive that it caused the near collapse of their society, thus ensuring that the Chinese would suffer centuries of civil war, economic collapse, and the eventual loss of their empire.

Chinese culture is endowed with a long memory, so now that the Chinese dragon has finally awakened, we find ourselves at war with her on many fronts. Since a traditional war over Taiwan is as unacceptable as a nuclear war, we are now engaged in a war with China on other fronts such as manufacturing, trade, currency, space, military, germ, as well as the manufacture and export of copious amounts of cheap and deadly fentanyl – “a synthetic opioid that is ~100 times stronger than morphine, killing at least 70,000 Americans every year ages 25-44, far exceeding deaths by homicide, suicide, and traffic accidents."

Like it or not, the West in general, and America in particular is at war with China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea but, unlike Vietnam where we saw American soldiers fighting and dying in rice fields, we now see our young addicted and dying under bridges and in our public parks.

It is time to wake up and act, rather than talk and stumble in the dark. We must ask, what American moral rut is allowing Chinese drug traffickers to act with impunity?!

— Sina.