The hot ticket wasn’t for a Broadway show in the late 1800s — most of the guidebooks of the day gave directions on how to visit the local insane asylums and gawk at the less fortunate. The German word “schadenfreude” is the word that best describes the pleasure many people gained from their visit.
Today most major cities, including in Alaska, have cut out the need for a tour guide to view the less fortunate, because hundreds of people with a severe mental illness are living on the streets in plain view. There has to be some question if the people today are still receiving the same pleasure at viewing the less fortunate.
It almost seems by design that in a country as rich as America, not just in dollars, but also in what seems to be an endless supply of psychiatrists, social workers and people with law degrees, no one has come up with a workable plan on how to provide care for people with a mental illness living on the streets.
— Dorrance Collins
Anchorage
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