DON SURBER: Fetterman Nation.

We have devolved into a big, dull, goofy, confused, barely functioning nation that given the choice between obvious and ridiculous chooses the ridiculous every single time.

Consider homelessness. Despite spending trillions of dollars on welfare, urban development and mental health over the last quarter-century — driving the national debt to $31 trillion — we now have homeless taking over cities.

Security.org reported on “Homelessness in America 2023: Statistics, Analysis, & Trends.”

It said, “In December of 2022, HUD calculated that 582,462 people were experiencing homelessness in the United States and its territories. That number represented an increase of nearly 2,000 individuals over the last complete accounting of 2020, yet remained steady at 0.18% of the nation’s population.”

If we can count to the last digit the number of people sleeping on the streets, we can get every one of them in a bed, even if it is in jail.

Instead, they sleep in pup tents in the street and do drugs unabated by law enforcement. Local and state governments even give junkies free needles and places to buy and use drugs. We call it humane, but this is the opposite.

Treating the homeless is a great racket that puts many an unemployable nephew of a politician on the government payroll.

Insider reported, “San Francisco has a ‘Poop Patrol’ to deal with its feces problem, and workers make more than $184,000 a year in salary and benefits.”

That is just one of the more glaring examples of exploitation. The number of social workers, advocates and programs rise but the problem grows.

Well yes. “Despite its spending more money per capita on homelessness than any comparable city, [San Francisco’s] homeless problem is worse than any comparable city’s,” SF Weekly noted a decade ago, stumbling into the Fox Butterfield effect.