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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   30965 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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Witness to Jordan Neely chokehold death calls Daniel Penny a 'hero'

Whoops, wrong link, not sure how that happened. Lets try again.

Witness to Jordan Neely chokehold death calls Daniel Penny a 'hero'

"He’s a hero," said the passenger, who has lived in New York City more than 50 years.

The witness, who described herself as a woman of color, said it was wrong for Bragg to charge Penny with second-degree manslaughter.

"I’m sitting on a train reading my book, and, all of a sudden, I hear someone spewing this rhetoric. He said, ‘I don’t care if I have to kill an F, I will. I’ll go to jail, I’ll take a bullet,’" recalled the woman, who is in her 60s.

"I’m looking at where we are in the tube, in the sardine can, and I’m like, ‘OK, we’re in between stations. There’s nowhere we can go,’" she said. "The people on that train, we were scared. We were scared for our lives."

Penny stepped in when Neely started using the word "kill" and "bullet."

"Why in the world would you take a bullet? Why? You don’t take a bullet because you’ve snatched something from somebody’s hand. You take a bullet for violence," she added.

Freelance journalist Alberto Vazquez began recording the confrontation after Neely was already in a chokehold and offered a second account of the homeless man’s conduct.

"He started screaming in an aggressive manner," Vazquez told the New York Post. "He said he had no food, he had no drink, that he was tired and doesn’t care if he goes to jail. He started screaming all these things, took off his jacket, a black jacket that he had, and threw it on the ground."

I do wonder if words can do justice with how threatening Neely was being on that train. I'm reminded of the Always Sunny bit about "the implication".

This is a tough one where more video would help immensely. In the absence of more video, the pro-Penny side might beclown themselves by doing the same thing that a bunch of leftists did with Rittenhouse and hallucinate, when imagining the event, things that did not actually happen.

The people who are convinced that Penny was in the right without having a lot of information about what actually happened somewhat remind me of those who think that it was justified for people to attack Rittenhouse because he was allegedly being dangerous and intimidating by carrying a rifle around at the riot, or because "what if he was a right-wing mass shooter or something?".

If we had video, we would be able to see whether Neely had made any overt violent moves towards anyone before Penny took action, or whether Neely was just ranting but was not actually in the process of attacking someone when Penny took action.

I think here is the key: some witnesses report that Neely was throwing trash at people. If that was actually the case, then I think that it was reasonable for Penny or anyone else to attempt to restrain Neely. If Neely was just ranting and threw nothing, then I am not so sure. This is all aside from the other question of whether Penny's particular method of restraint was reasonable.

I think that the people who take Penny's side because of the alleged trash throwing make sense. However, I notice that many commentators do not refer to the alleged trash throwing or any other alleged overt violent act by Neely, they just act as if it would obviously be reasonable for someone to put Neely in a chokehold even if Neely had done nothing other than rant about violence. And that, to me, is a lot more questionable, since if Neely was just ranting then there are many stages of escalation that an onlooker could have taken between "do nothing" and "chokehold". For example, Penny could have just walked a little bit towards Neely and made it clear with his body language and words that he was ready to intervene if Neely did anything.

For all I know, maybe Penny did do just that.

To sum up, yeah if Neely was throwing trash then I think Penny trying to restrain him was reasonable. If Neely was just ranting then I think Penny trying to restrain him was probably not reasonable.

A bunch of people on the two main sides of the culture war have whipped themselves up into a frenzy about this event, but I think that surely there is some room for nuance here.

Some people might think that I am being naive, but I have been in a number of violent incidents as a participant and a number of others as an onlooker. I have encountered crazy ranting people, I have encountered crazy ranting violent people, I have been mugged, I have been in street fights, I have been at riots. So I hope that people do not take this as pure armchair theorizing.

and hallucinate, when imagining the event, things that did not actually happen

Not to call anyone out, but this community in particular had egregious problems with this when discussing the murder of Ahmaud Arbery. Some people would start describing the situation and then add in a larger fictional context that would justify shooting a burglar.

I wasn't around when Arbery was a live issue, but the hallucination seemed to be limited to the non-traditional-conservative Trump-supporting circles of mine.

The hard core rightwingers pegged them as going down for murder 1 first day, so it is a bit odd that this place went for the weirdo side of it.

Frankly no one knows the full history re Arbery. I remain convinced Arbery was a criminal and the McMichals acted like idiots.

"Jogger" briefly became a meme! Just saying it feels cringe, but "both sides" love to claim that obviously the most recent CW incident fits neatly into my political claims and if you even doubted otherwise for a moment you're dumb / don't get it / are a useful idiot. But there's an awful lot of contingency and idiosyncratic attributes of individuals and situations that go into something like a homicide, that don't necessarily have anything to do with (black) or (racism). (And conversely, this means indexing too much on individual media incidents is a mistake, even if the last three big rape accusations were [true/false] it's still possible about half are [false/true]).

Not to call anyone out, but this community in particular had egregious problems with this when discussing the murder of Ahmaud Arbery.

This community has egregious problems with it in any fraught story, because it's a very human thing to do. It's just the game of telephone: people hear something and misinterpret it, don't realize they have, and continue to argue based on the misconception.

Although I agree with your point, this community has a specific mission not to do that. So "everyone else does it too" isn't an excuse.

Sure, but it takes the sting out of

this community in particular had egregious problems with this

When in fact it's a general problem and not particular to this community.

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