Why is it that truths are the most shrieked about?

This is certainly impolitic from Elon Musk. It’s also rather broadbrush and so not wholly, 100% and exactly true. But there is still a great deal of truth to it:

Musk’s new obsessions (beyond the validation and human affection that he mistakenly believes he will find on social media) are attacking public servants, slashing social spending and going after the most vulnerable. “In most cases, the word ‘homeless’ is a lie,” Musk tweeted recently. “It’s usually a propaganda word for violent drug addicts with severe mental illness.”

Homeless has a different meaning over in the US. It’s not that claim from Shelter - the 300,000 homeless in this country - which is not about people rough sleeping at all. That’s about those in housing that Shelter thinks should be better. In the US homeless does rather mean sleeping in a tent on the pavement.

But, as here, those who are that sort of homeless - rough sleeping - are preponderantly those with one or more mental health or addiction problems. Those who are simply without housing tend to, as here, get picked up by the varied services designed to do so. There’s a transience to being homeless through housing problems that is. The long term version is not, in fact, something about housing at all.

It’s about the closure of the asylums perhaps - tho’ that is also a fairly brutal way to put it and again a version that is not wholly and exactly true.

But the thing we’d really like to know. Why is it that the things which cause the most shrieking over at The Guardian are the things that are - largely and usefully - true?

Tim Worstall