I mean... as an American who has been peripheral to grinding homelessness for the past 25 years, none of this was surprising to me. It was interesting observing it through the eyes of Germany, however. "This is Nowhere" is now 18 years old. I'd be curious for the takes from our continentals and astralasians. One of my most striking experiences of the past several years was observing the gun room at Bass Pro Shops through veen's eyes.
I haven't watched much of it (yet), but I'll comment based on the assumption that it's a similar documentary to others I've seen here in Australia (like this one). We have homeless people in Australia (their visibility has increased very significantly over the past couple of decades), and there is certainly no shortage of poor people. If I were to comment on one point where the US departs from Australia, it's that in Australia you would not expect to see somebody who has a steady job also be homeless. The metropolitan rental market in Australia is very expensive (probably worse than the US), but the minimum wage is sufficient that anyone who has a job can expect to be able rent somewhere. While COVID19 is awful, one of the most interesting policy developments we've seen since the outbreak is the very sizeable reduction in Melbourne's homeless population. The State Government is paying to put them all up in new public housing or hotel accommodation. There is significant public interest in maintaining that support post-pandemic.
The NRA shirts and gun vaults in particular were eyebrow-raising. I'm not at all unfamiliar with US gun culture, yet the normalcy of it all surprised me. "Oh yeah over there we have the Death Machines corner, where you can buy specific brushes and 72 types of oil. Plus some cool kid's toys!"
I think you're seeing them after they've struggled, and before they've found a new avenue. Not everyone gives up, but it sure looks like it if you catch people at the right time. Others? I mean, they're just making the most of it. Sometimes that's all you can do.
By the way I did a series of commercials for Aspen Dental in like 2009 or so. It was kind of amazing because we rolled sound on 9 hours of footage for five 30 second spots. That doesn't include two cameras worth of b-roll. I was unfamiliar with "Aspen Dental" because it sure seemed like a used car lot that sold teeth. What the producer told me is it's basically a hang'n'bang denture store for places that know what Mountain Dew Mouth is whereby you pay zero money down and you sign up for payments and they rip your teeth out and like foreclose on your dentures and shit. A year later it was a goddamn Frontline documentary. As an aside? It pisses me off SO MUCH that liberals still swoon over JFK without acknowledging that he was a racist who was cheated into office so he could nearly start WWIII and mire us in Vietnam because no one was minding the store while he was on vacation so we fucking accidentally let Diem be assassinated. Meanwhile LBJ passed the Civil Rights Act, created food stamps, and was so fucking unpopular because of it that he didn't even run for fucking re-election. Because he was a Texas hick who worked for a living, rather than a fucking blue-blood illuminati east coast asshole princeling like all the Democrats really want.