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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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I'm definitely on the "normal people should be able to ride a subway without being harrassed and threatened with immediate violence" side. Unfortunately, there's no foolproof way to achieve that that doesn't carry some risk. Penny should've been a feckless coward putting up with it like every other New Yorker; the subway will continue to be a miserable experience, it's just now one life is over and another likely ruined.

It sounds like we agree, except that I wouldn't call anyone a coward for not acting. I've only been able to find 1 witness statement and no video from prior to Penny acting, but the one statement I found said Neely wasn't being violent. Maybe that's wrong, and the rest of this paragraph will turn out to be irrelevant. But being able to sit there and distinguish something that is aggravating or annoying, but not dangerous, and not respond to the former with violence, is essential to being able to participate in society. If you go to /r/IdiotsInCars, you'll see, among other things, a steady stream of people who go absolutely nuts in response to the slightest behavior they don't like. In my opinion, these are the people who are antisocial and disruptive to the community--the same accusations that many Motteizans have leveled at Neely.

It's tempting to just go something something healthcare system but it's gotta be more than that; the US creates way more wackadoos per capita regardless of their later (lack of) treatment.

I don't really know enough about all of those other countries to have more of an explanation than healthcare or locking up wackadoos (whether in prison or hospitals). Social contagion is in vogue recently, and American culture probably encourages more acting weirdly than other cultures, so maybe that provides part of an explanation. Americans do drive a lot, so maybe it just looks like there's a higher portion of wackadoos because fewer regular people take transit, but even in NYC there's a famously high number of wackadoos. Maybe they are forced to congregate in the few cities you can live without a car. Or perhaps other countries have stronger familial ties, and the family takes on the responsibility of sheltering the wackadoo--one article I saw claimed that Neely's problems largely started after his mother died.