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The identity of the man who choked Jordan Neely on the NYC subway has been made public.
The man now gets to become the center of a media firestorm, and will certainly be subjected to credible threats, to say nothing of the likelihood that the activists in charge of Manhattan’s criminal justice system will indict him. If he ever gets to live a normal life again, it certainly won’t be in New York, and probably not in any urban blue-heavy environment in this country. Future prospective employers will know him as the guy who murdered a defenseless man and beloved Michael Jackson impersonator who was experiencing homelessness and needed help. This will be how he’ll be perceived by a substantial number of important people who will have the power to determine important things about the future of his life, regardless of any legal outcomes for him, favorable or otherwise.
I told the story previously of how I was assaulted on public transit by a mentally-ill black lowlife, and how I was very close to being severely injured and nobody in the vicinity would have been able nor willing to stop it from happening. (Sorry, the comment search functions both here and on Reddit are terrible, such that it would be too much work for me to track down that comment thread.) Since posting that story, a very similar situation happened to me yet again - with a predictably similar antagonist - and once again, I was sickened and humiliated not only by the actions of the schizophrenic loser who accosted me, and by my relative inability to effectively defend myself if the guy had started attacking me, but also by the inaction of the other grown men standing nearby. Without telling the whole story, I ended up in that position because I attempted to stop the lunatic from harassing a different guy, and then that guy stood around and watched the assailant menace me and did not intervene in any way.
I have fantasized about doing exactly what Daniel Penny - the NYC subway hero - did. Except for in my fantasies, I didn’t unintentionally end the man’s life due to a tragic and unforeseen accident; I just kicked the absolute shit out of him, taking him by surprise and beating him within an inch of his life, or stabbing him before he could get a hand in me. These fantasies are just that: unrealistic power fantasies, the stuff I would do if I were a much stronger, taller, more physically-powerful, more experienced with interpersonal violence than I actually am. I’ve never been in a proper fistfight, and even if I knew how to properly defend myself, in both this situation and the previous one, I allowed the guy to close distance on me and get into an advantageous position, such that they had me right where they wanted me.
I’ve stewed and ideated about what I could have done differently, why I’m a grown man who let myself be treated like a pathetic plaything by individuals who are my social and biological inferiors in every imaginable way except for that I’m diminutive and even-tempered while they’re large, high-testosterone, and well-acquainted with violence because it’s literally the only tool in their toolbox.
I’ve also thought about what would have been the consequences for me if somehow I really had been able to put these guys in their place and seriously injure or kill them. I’ve imagined being at trial - a highly-publicized media shitstorm of a trial, given the demographics involved - and having to answer questions that are designed to get me to hang myself with their rope. I’ve thought about what would happen if they found my posts on The Motte. If they asked me, “Are you glad that Mr. Schizo is dead?” How could I credibly answer “no, this is a terrible tragedy, I never wanted to take someone’s life” when I’ve got a backlog of posts here saying explicitly that I believe that schizophrenic street criminals’ lives have no value whatsoever and that the world would be better if all of them were summarily rounded up and sent to gulags or executed? If they were to ask me “did you do this because Mr. Schizo is black”, no matter how sincerely I would answer “no, it’s because he was attacking me”, how can I be confident that they won’t drag up all my posts here and paint me as a “hate criminal”?
I have no idea how racially-aware Daniel Penny is. I have no clue if he has similar opinions about the scourge of worthless criminal crazies and what to do about them, and I have no reason to assume that his lawyers are lying when they say that he’s devastated that Jordan Neely died, that Mr. Penny never wanted nor foresaw this outcome, etc. It’s very easy for me to say “I’m glad Jordan Neely is dead, you did the world a favor, this was a wonderful thing you did and you shouldn’t feel an ounce of guilt or sadness about it”, but in the actual event that I did what Mr. Penny did, I probably would be pretty shaken-up about it. For most people, taking a life - especially when you hadn’t planned to - is probably pretty psychologically destabilizing, even if it was totally necessary and justified.
Still, though, what if Penny thinks the same way I do about the homeless population? What if he truly does believe, as I do, that Jordan Neely was human garbage who had no redeeming value, and that his death is a great boon to the entire population of NYC? He can’t say that in court, even if it’s true. He would be pilloried and convicted of manslaughter and sent to prison. His only legal hope is to vociferously insist that Neely’s death is a tragedy, that he would never have done what he did if he could have foreseen that it would result in a death, that he is 100% innocent of the crime of racial consciousness or animus toward the experiencing-homelessness population. His future depends on his ability to persuasively perform colorblind egalitarian liberalism, regardless of whether or not he believes in it or not.
Outside of the edgy dissident-right spaces I frequent, every other commentator, even putatively conservative ones, are doing the expected throat-clearing about how Neely’s death is a tragedy, that we all wish he “could have gotten the help he needed”, etc. If anyone believes, as I do, that the first step to saving our civilization is for tens of thousands of people to pull a Daniel Penny on their local subway-screaming bum, they’re sure not saying it out loud. The veil of self-censorship and paying homage to liberal pieties will persist no matter what happens to Daniel Penny, and nobody will get the public catharsis of hearing a powerful or important person say out loud that Jordan Neely’s death was a good thing and we need more of it. Those who do say something like that out loud better hope and pray that they’re never thrust into a courtroom and asked to defend those opinions under oath; the defense stand is no place for hard-nosed honesty, and neither is our society.
Amusingly enough, there is a sentiment in much of the alt right, from the likes of Vox Day and even our own @KulakRevolt, that is basically "Yup, if you're small and weak, suck it up and endure whatever your more powerful superiors choose to inflict upon you. It sucks to suck."
Your power fantasies are just that, the revenge fantasies of every bullied nerd ever, the copes of someone telling himself he's smarter and better and "biologically superior" to the jocks picking on him.
Now, I say this not out of a lack of sympathy for your experience (I am hardly a Batman or Punisher myself), or even disagreement with your central point (that it's terrible that we allow schizophrenic homeless losers to threaten people because we don't have the political will to do something about them, especially when they're black). But to point out that basically, you're not complaining that it's bad for the strong to dominate the weak. You're just complaining that the current social order doesn't put you among the strong.
I think this leans in the right direction from the previous poster but perhaps too far. They think that they already are "the strong" it's just for some peculiar political eddy the weak are given limited local situations where they can exercise a limited kind of crude power. It's difficult to model homeless schitzos as actually powerful rather than circumstantially able to exercise power because the State doesn't equally enforce the rules on everyone.
True enough. But "A homeless black guy harassed me, this is why I wish we could go all Turner Diaries" is the direction I see.
Outrage at being bullied and essentially rendered helpless by a criminal psychopath in public is understandable, but all the stuff about "large, high-testosterone, social and biological inferiors" is just racial seething.
I definitely agree, and I am also baffled sometimes that more of the smart types with those opinions don't just start hitting the gym. Healthy body, healthy mind and being muscular has all sorts of advantages with practically no drawback besides a couple hours a week during which you can get your motte posting in.
I don't disagree with the advice in general, but specifically here, being physically fit can also lead you to a false sense of security.
There's a reason every single 'street fight' guru tells you to run away every single time if you can. Even if you are in shape, even if you know how to fight, you are potentially one moment away from a knife in an artery, just to name a single life ending risk out of a thousand.
Sure, but even insane and belligerent people are more careful around big people.
Deterring fights by being physically imposing (or at least not being the inverse) is a useful complement to running away if a fight actually happens.
To both you and @aqouta , I feel like you are missing the point. You are still helpless sitting in the subway car whilst some maniac, hopefully I guess, molests someone else. 'Feeling like you could take them' is, again, just a false sense of security. Hoping that they will see you alone because you believe you look swole is, again, just a false sense of security. The actual problem, the schizo in the subway car, is still there. Feeling confident about your chances of not being the unlucky one to catch his attention, knife or a bullet is completely irrelevant to the actual problem.
Not saying this applies to either of you, but it feels like there is this sentiment dominating this thread of conversation that hinges on the idea that physically fit or fight capable people don't have power fantasies, or don't feel the constraints of society around them when faced with potentially physical altercations. They do. But the more smart or experienced of them usually recognize that choking out the schizo on the subway is a very risky thing. Not just in the moment but every moment after that. You kick the schizos ass and then what? Wait for him to find you on your regular commute? Ah, the schizo lunatic is holding a grudge against me, what a great spot to be in.
I can't stress enough, again, the feeling of security you get from having a high opinion of yourself is always liable to be false. You might be helping yourself improve your chances if you ever are unlucky enough get into a bad spot, but you are not getting away from all the other things that weigh everyone down anyways. Not to sound to bellicose but it's literally a cope.
Sure but that was not my point. My point was that being physically imposing causes people to not fuck with you, even insane and violent people. This isn't about my confidence, it's about theirs. It's about whether they feel that they could take me.
Me being large confers an advantage to me but as you state it's smaller than one might imagine and any individual violent encounter carries an unacceptably large risk. Making people not wanting to start altercations is therefore useful, regardless of whether their assessment of your capacity to defend yourself is accurate or not.
Its not that I can kick the shit out of the schitzo lunatic because I am large, it's that I don't have to because I am.
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We've moved a good distance from where I originally, as an aside, expressed how I thought it was strange that many smart people do not see the obvious boons of becoming strong. Only a small facet of those boons is being mostly left alone by crazy people. I was very much not saying "just get buff and there is no problem, lol" so much as "this is another example of why I think everyone should make themselves more fit. There is a sense, and one I saw somewhat in the OP that raw strength is beneath a sense of personal excellence that I find wrongheaded.
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Right, I wasn't meaning to imply being strong to actually get into fights with bums, but even crazy bums tend to leave the bigger guys alone. At least this is my experience from going from a slightly chubby nerd to a fairly buff man over ~6 years in Chicago.
This matches my observation, which is one reason that I question just how crazy the bums are. I mean, sure, they obviously have self-destructive personalities, are frequently addicted to narcotics, and have extremely poor impulse control, but I think people are entirely too willing to accept the idea that this is about schizophrenia or that the gentleman in the subway was "having a mental health crisis". Maybe he's just, in the colloquial sense, a complete asshole. If a given belligerent vagrant is suffering more from just being a complete asshole than being mentally ill, I would expect them to exercise some degree of discretion when picking targets to harass for fun and profit, which seems more consistent with what I actually see. There's a continuum here as well as significant group overlap between those groups.
I agree that a lot of the cases of random attacks are just stupidity (sometimes drug-induced, sometimes not) interacting with being an asshole / wanting to fight, but I don't think the 'avoiding big people' is good evidence against it. "Don't directly challenge large enemies" is a fairly old instinct that almost every living thing that moves has, if despite meth mania you have enough instincts left to perceive where other people are and fight them, you probably have enough left to avoid 6'4 270lb powerlifter bubba
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Even animals recognize big and imposing as something to steer clear of, so I'm not sure it's evidence against being mentally unwell that they prefer to pick on women, old people, and small people.
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