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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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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.

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

This part sounds bad. I am not sure whether you intended it or not, but it sounds like you'd be ok if you were humiliated by you social or biological superiors (wtf is that anyway? More Aryan? More muscular? Longer dick?), but the fact that wrong people assaulted you is upsetting. I don't think it is a very good position.

As I made clear in another comment, this passage had nothing to do with race - I get why people assume that everything is racial in my mind, but actually there are other things I care about as well - and everything to do with the fact that the guy has a massive criminal rap sheet, is homeless and wholly dependent on others, and is a drain on society; also the fact that he has a (currently) incurable mental illness that renders him a permanent danger to other people. He’s a perfect example of someone who needs to be removed from the gene pool, improving the genetic stock of humanity immediately.

As for whether or not I’d be fine with being humiliated by my betters… it depends on the reasons they’re humiliating me in this hypothetical scenario, and whether or not I stand to ultimately gain from it. While I’m skeptical about some elements of the structure and culture of military initiation - basic training, boot camp, etc. - I recognize that the whole “the drill sergeant treats you like dirt and makes a humiliating example out of you” thing has an impressive history of creating an effective fighting force. This would be a scenario where a man is being dominated by his social better, in order to forge him into something improved. He’s suffering a temporary loss in status in order to not only enhance his own status later on down the line, but also to increase the total quotient of effectiveness and status of the group as a whole.

This is markedly different from a situation in which I’m being dominated by my social inferior; it lowers my own status immensely, but produces no corresponding rise in status later on - unless, of course, I respond with force that could get me judicially lynched by a regime that hates me and finds the schizos useful/sacred - and it also immiserates others around me who watch the situation and either feel powerless to intervene, or who have to sublimate the shame of being too apathetic to care.

He’s a perfect example of someone who needs to be removed from the gene pool, improving the genetic stock of humanity immediately.

Would we immediately improve the genetic stock of humanity by killing all the spastics, speds, psychos, schizos and spergs? I think we would destroy it. It is said that the line between genius and lunatic is very thin, because while mental illnesses have many negative effects, they also have positives - most importantly they provide diversity of thought, the only diversity that matters. As a result the intelligent have often been viewed with suspicion throughout history, new paradigms of thought often look like madness to the unenlightened.

Of course this doesn't mean we should coddle the mentally ill or excuse them when they harm others. But doctors are currently hard at work developing treatments for heritable disorders, and with advances in genetic engineering the possibility of ameliorating their negative effects grows nearer and nearer. It might even be the case that society resolves these issues in our lifetimes, meaning no one will have to suffer the adverse effects of conditions like schizophrenia, psychopathy, adhd and autism. Then the mentally ill will be both your genetic and social superiors, instead of just the second.

Because that's another thing you are missing - you might be genetically superior to a schizophrenic hobo, but you aren't his social superior. And you will always be a white nationalist thespian manlet cowering in fear from society's dregs, seething that society doesn't do more for your safety because you can't - you have said as much yourself. So it is possible - probable even given current trends - you will be accosted again. And people don't cower before a social inferior, that's an oxymoron. You wish you lived in a society where people you consider genetically inferior were your social inferiors, but you don't. You live in this society, where you get dominated by hobos.