If anything, the growing condemnation of Matt Shea by local officials, in response to the latest details about our region’s foremost conspiratorial, paranoid, gun-worshipping, anti-government zealot, will just fuel his appetite for martyrdom. Shea’s end-times worldview, in which he casts himself as a righteous warrior against evil, requires the presence of an enemy, after all. The government, liberals, the media, Islam, the sheriff – the more that sane people object to Shea, the more he likes it.

Often, when social issues become politicized – whether it’s homelessness in Spokane or gun violence nationwide – there is a brief, urgent flare of interest in “treatment” as a solution. Treatment for addicts. Treatment for the mentally ill. Sounds good. Makes sense. And it’s too simplistic by half, because the scope and complexity of the problem dwarfs the available resources and, with addiction in particular, there is the stubborn problem at the heart of recovery known as human motivation.

Everyone agrees we need affordable housing and services for the poor. Everyone has, they assure everyone else, a heart for the suffering among us. And everyone concludes, over and over again, that right next to them is simply not the right place.

Every single day of 1999, the air was safe to breathe. Imagine.