Okay, but you have to understand, when you say things like "Oakland == Syria" it's incredibly hard to take you (and the people who make complaints like this) seriously.

I can walk four blocks and buy, like, 19 different lattes. I can walk two blocks and get on a train that takes me to downtown SF in 18 minutes. In a 10-minute drive I can get to literally any cuisine the world has to offer, and it's fucking delicious. These are not amenities available in third-world countries (or, I might add, in many cities in the U.S., at least not at this density and quality).

Do I see homeless people on the way? Yeah. I live in the Bay Area, an area going through a horrifyingly serious homelessness crisis. Parks are bad. The encampments under and along the highways are massively depressing.

But there's not rubble in the streets. Families are not starving to death in their homes. People are not being gunned down against walls.

Shit is bad right now, and I am afraid it's going to get worse before it gets better. But let's not pretend it's a third-world country. That helps neither your cause nor mine.