One huge issue that’s not being addressed is that paranoid schizophrenics aren’t compliant with taking meds. Unless their family can house them and keep them on their meds, they’re going to be on the streets. And they’re going to be crazy and violent and threatening. We throw money at programs that don’t work & likely the only ones that will work won’t be enacted. And we will continue to have the mentally ill on the streets. Alvin Bragg should be recalled, he is a disgrace.
"A city of people who feel empowered to take the enforcement of public order into their own hands will only lead to more chaos and more unnecessary violence..."
Well, since the powers-that-be have decided that demonizing cops and misrepresenting the facts to kowtow to the "trained Marxists" running the "Black Lives Matter" scam, they have pretty much told responsible, law abiding citizens that they're on their own in dealing with this kind of situation. Maybe they should've thought about that beforehand, but then again, our "elites" are now largely miseducated, performative fools.
In the 80s, when Bernie Goetz defended himself with deadly force, it was not a sign of people "feeling empowered". It was a sign of people feeling desperate because the rule of law had broken down and no one was stepping up to restore order.
The situation with Neely is the same. When governments don't keep public order, individuals step up out of desperation, not desire.
"And then there's this person who is out of their mind, through no fault of their own"
So it's the fault of the passengers it would seem, as there were no other parties present. Where does the responsibility lie? Where does the buck stop? Don't the innocent passengers -- and taxpayers, who are bled dry to fund a completely collapsed mental health system -- have a right to safe passage on a public transport which, again, their taxes are subsidizing?
Alvin Bragg won election by only a hair's breadth, meaning a solid 1/2 of NYC did not vote for him, yet they daily suffer the brutalities and depredations of those whom he and his office deem "too poor to jail". There is a chasm of difference between 'woke' and actually cognitively aware.
I have agreement with both arguments. Folks with psychotic mental illness need to be on medication. Problem is they sometimes don't take it. In this country sometime around the 60's the institutionalized people with severe mental illness where released and their care was assigned to community mental health centers. Funding over time for those centers has dwindled to the point where most of these people are living on the street, unsafe to themselves and others. We need to establish a system of mental health care for these severely mentally ill people. We have abandoned them to live on the streets and put others in jeopardy.
I didn't hear two arguments; I heard a pretty wan restatement of the problem from a couple of smart guys who ought to know better.
These problems are not new. Folks with mental health challenges have been with us for millennia or longer. There was a solution (institutionalization) in place more than a century ago, and "enlightened" folks deemed it barbaric or inhumane, and in too many cases, it was. Antipsychotic medications came along and were a "cure," so the institutions were emptied. But the "cure" worked only as long as you maintained the right dosage and if you could put up with the anhedonia and other side effects. When you stopped taking the drug, or forgot to take it, or couldn't get it, you were psychotic again, but there was no place to put you because all the inhumane places were gone. There are no easy answers, but political leadership is unwilling to tell -- and voters unwilling to hear -- the bitter truth that it is a permanent affliction, that intervention is expensive because it needs to be ongoing, personalized, and scrupulously adhered to. So it devolves into a battle of "rights." Society's right to be free from fear of assault or battery, always upsetting and sometimes lethal, vs an individual's right not to be forcibly medicated. And there has now arisen a huge bureaucracy/industry receiving and wasting billions every year pretending to address "the unhoused," most of whom would be far better served by programs to make sure they got the right meds on the right schedule, thereby freeing them from their demons, freeing the rest of us from the threat they represent, and allowing the afflicted to lead dignified and productive lives.
Actually, in the 60's and 70's, the Democrats initiated a "community mental health" movement designed to provide easily accessible mental health services. I was a social worker at the time. Reagan was the one who came in and defunded the movement leading to community clinics and institutional facilities closed down and residents basically thrown into the streets. I think the argument Reagan used was that private entities and the community itself should provide mental health care.
"Community mental health" movement, like a lot that emanates from the Progressive left, sounds benign, but how would it improve on the government-run institutions that devolved into inhumane snake pits? I am not familiar with it, but as you describe it, Reagan's notion sounds less like "defunding" and throwing people out in the streets and more like delivery of services through private or charitable entities rather than through bloated bureaucracies. Did it gain any traction? Or did government unions and progressive politicians torpedo it? And before you get defensive, look at the present condition of public education and how it has comprehensively failed to deliver results while wasting millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Then look at the burgeoning homeless populations in cities that spend tens of thousands per each homeless person and provide tents and clean needles instead of homes. Then note the ballooning popularity of school vouchers as folks seek ways of making public money more useful by not letting so many "public servants" touch it.
The essence of personhood is an irreducible element of responsibility for one's choices and deeds. It seems the lesson of Caudine Forks is more illuminative of the dilemma...or perhaps the parable of Atticus Finch shooting the rabid dog. John McWhorter's formulation seems to suggest that society doesn't have a first principle to provide safety. I think it ceases to be society if it cannot provide safety. In an Aurelian sense, inquire of that "thing" what is its purpose to understand the thing.
..."A city of people who feel empowered to take the enforcement of public order into their own hands will only lead to more chaos and more unnecessary violence, without doing anything to address the sad, underlying issues of mental illness and homelessness."
Where did you get this idea? The Faculty lunch room at Brown? Threat of physical violence is an extraordinarily good deterrence. Elitist progressives don't like it though because it's scary to think that all the unwashed masses might take matters into their own hands. Because after all they're just ignorant violent monsters who lacked the sophistication and Nuance to make proper decisions and should not be empowered to do anything but die like sheep on their knees while they're betters speak in sympathetic tones for their plight. These sorts of statements strike me as paternalistic elitist condescension although I'm sure they're well meant.
People have a right to defend themselves. It's that simple. And there's zero connection between self-defense measures and addressing the "underlying issues" of mental health and homelessness. And exactly how does people defending themselves lead to "unnecessary" violence? Not having enough police does that. Not enforcing the laws also. But my defending myself? Very illogical and yes, paternalistic and elitist.
I just wanted to mention that I and many others are sick and tired of the false equivalencies being made by those eager to punish Daniel Penny who point out that people handle mentally ill and violent people without killing them in residential facilities all the time. It is not reasonable to equate the amount of fear a scared civilian (even a Marine) or even barely trained police officer would feel wrestling a mentally ill person on the floor of a crowded subway car, where there are simply too many unknowns (is he on drugs? Is he hiding a weapon? Will someone else attack me?) to the people who work in a residential facility where they need to restrain residents who they know are not armed, are not on any illegal substances, and where they can be assured of assistance from the other orderlies. Most importantly they also have injections which can deliver a sedative. Daniel Penny had none of these things and yet you wish to punish him - solely because Neely was black and Penny was white. We know if the races were reversed or both the same, this wouldn't even be getting national coverage. You are helping to create a toxic and divisive society with your flagrant racial double standards- as is the Biden administration and mainstream media.
Penny is being charged with manslaughter because he is on video killing another person…the jury will decide if his use of force was reasonable or not. I don’t think Neely meant to kill him but it looks to me like his chokehold killed him.
Penney is being charged, because Alvin Bragg is a racist with a political agenda. If their respective races were reversed--Penny being black and Neely being white--not only would Penny not be charged, the public would never even have heard of this. The whole situation is a tragedy, and it is terrible that Jordan Neely died because of our country's abdication of addressing mental illness, but the criminal charges against Daniel Penny are politically motivated. Period.
In a country with self-governance, authority lies with the individual. The "authorities" are the authorities because the people gave them the authority to (supposedly) prevent people like Neely from hurting people just going about their reasonable lives. We gave them that authority so that we could be safe and not have to take the actions Mr. Penny was forced to take. When the authorities cede the authority given to them and just let the dangerous victimize the ordinary citizen, the authority still resides with the citizen (who granted it in the first place) to take matters into their own hands to keep themselves and their fellow citizens safe. Penny was exercising authority that was his to begin with, that was on loan from the citizens to the police and the police decided to not wield.
I come down to this each and every time. Who has a greater right to live? The mentally-ill person who refuses to take meds so they can interact in society without hurting others or the victims of that mentally ill person who were just going about their reasonable lives? I don't think you can reasonably argue that the victims were the ones who deserved to be injured or killed.
Yeah, Neely's death is a tragedy as was his life as an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic. But a greater tragedy would have been if an innocent bystander had been injured or killed that day. Penny prevented that. No, we don't want people just doing that whenever they want, but if the police won't do their authorized duty, then citizens have the right to reclaim the authority we gave them in the first place.
I don't live in New York so won't be sitting that jury, but yeah, I'd nullify and be the last person standing voting for acquittal. It's the reasonable thing to do.
I call Trump a cult leader because - according to all polling - the majority of Republicans are following him like lemmings to their (and the country's) "death". I think you are drawing a false equivalency here. Hilary lost the nomination when Obama came around. Dems weren't devoted to her. As for Obama: he was an unknown and not an already established figure who already had lost an election and alienated at least half the country (like Trump demonstrably has). As for Biden (who I despise and will never vote for), the majority of liberal voters don't even want him as the nominee. It's only the Democratic party that is keeping him around. (And why not? He beat Trump the last time.) However, Trump lost to Biden once already AND has alienated at least half the country who are driven into a frenzy by the mere sight of him. Can you explain to me why the majority of Republicans are still so devoted to this maniac, established loser that they want to nominate him again when someone like DeSantis who liberals like me would vote for in a heartbeat is standing right there? Why they are ignoring the fact that Dems very much want them to nominate Trump because he will be far easier to beat (again)? Is this need to nominate an established loser no matter what, not "cult-like" behavior?
McWhorter states several times "through no fault of his(their) own" and "it's society's fault". While that is surely, at least, partly true, I'm a bit surprised of the absolute lack of personal responsibility that is assigned to Neely and the others that John uses in his example of riding the subway. John seems to be saying that it's undoubtably all "our" fault. I don't believe in absolutes.
Americans have got to find a way to change their individual and collective minds about what it means to be human, to live in a large society and mature economy, and especially how they think, feel, and act with regard to violence. Permanent war has probably kept Americans from discovering and holding in mind the irreplaceable value of each individual’s life. Our country’s gruesome past, and the after effects of cutthroat competition in a zero sum game, have left people feeling isolated, disillusioned, disenfranchised, angry, hopeless, and a result is seen in crime statistics. Rapes, robberies, homicides occur dozens by the minute while people go on about their business as usual. News makes a huge deal out of a handful of cases while hardly commenting on underlying causes at scale, and never diving deep into the weeds of what’s going on that results in so much bad blood among the citizenry. People often disengage or accept there’ll never be reconciliation, but that doesn’t move us toward a solution. Each case adds to the larger problem which contributes to and plays conditional causal roles in new individual incidents. Each individual makes decisions that result in events, but each event is also at least partly independent, and each individual could exercise self-control to prevent incidents; instead, context and contributory causes influence individuals to rationalize loss of control, and ultimately those individuals then use their justifications to perpetrate harm on others, who potentially pay it forward in our excruciatingly retributive culture. Most Americans probably need a shock to the system, a hard reset, or re-education...but one that works rather than only perpetuates the system and cycle of harms.
Lotsa words. No meaning to any of them in their current configuration. Hit the "TOSS" button again, and let's see if the next word salad is any more nutritious...
You get more of what you allow. Crime and other asocial behavior continues because the authorities allow it to continue. And what actions like Bragg's do is make it far less likely for one person to go to the aid of another. They'll be sure to take out their smartphones, though; wouldn't want to miss that all important opportunity to post something on social media. Never mind that another human being is being injured just a few feet away.
Eventually, there will be a Bernard Goetz moment. It is almost inevitable. The cynic in me says the same people who hand-wave social disorder and chaos want such a moment to happen. Then what? They'll scream about guns again? Right now, there are dozens and dozens of videos showing criminals gone wild. Many have a racial component but not all, not that it makes a difference. Either way, law-abiding people are facing a govt-created threat. I saw where Philly's new mayor, a black woman, is a fan of stop and frisk and seems ready to use it. That will probably make her the latest 'new face' of white supremacy, joining several other non-white people.
I remember hearing about a story of a woman in Philly being raped on a public train late at night and bystanders filmed it without doing anything to intervene on her behalf. Shit's crazy.
Self protection will continue to increase, and rightfully so. The left WANTS this chaos and lawlessness so they will have an excuse for implementing the tyranny they so deeply desire. I believe we are staring at the beginning of some very violent times, and when the "government" - be it city, state, or federal - tries to crack down they will evoke even more violence.
We all know the meaning of the phrase "the wild, wild west". That will be tame compared to what is about to come down on us.
> I read a well-known columnist who was writing that Neely shouldn't have been restrained. No. I know that that columnist doesn't live in New York City, and I highly suspect that that columnist doesn't have kids. No, we need to have a procedure where someone like him can be taken away.
We used to have one. We would put the mentally ill in an asylum where they could be cared for by well-trained specialists who knew how to deal with people like them, and kept away from people who didn't (such as everybody in that subway car.) The system worked, quite well in fact, until it was sabotaged by activists.
This is how you destroy a working public program. It's been done over and over again, the same two-part pattern: First, you starve it. Cut funding, or increase its workload without increasing funding, the two are one and the same: you end up with a system that's not able to handle all the work it's given. Then you point to the system that's not working anymore because you sabotaged it, point out that it's clearly not working, and proclaim that the solution is to shut it down. (This, of course, does nothing to fix the problem that the system you just wrecked was solving, but it's proven remarkably effective at destroying working systems over the years!)
Jordan Neely was killed by the people who shut down the mental institutions he should have been committed to long before the fateful subway ride. This didn't happen out of nowhere; it's since come to light that Neely was on NYC's "top 50 list" of mentally ill residents of especially high degrees of concern. The city knew he was a ticking time bomb; they were simply unable to do anything about it. If we want tragic incidents like this to stop happening, we need to address the root cause.
Say its name: Deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization killed Jordan Neely, and deinstitutionalization should die in return. Bring back the asylums that would have saved his life, and averted countless other problems of violence, crime, and abuse involving the severely mentally ill throughout this country on an all-too-regular basis!
Yeah, deinstitutionalization created this subset of modern homelessness. And there were good reasons for deinstitutionalization (remember the Geraldo reports?), but it was supposed to come with community-based group homes for all the deinstitutionalized folks. That was never implemented, at least not at the scale and quality required to really effectively serve folks who couldn't or wouldn't stay in treatment, couldn't care for themselves, and/or might act out violently in public.
(Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) is supposed to serve that function for homeless SMI folks, but is also not adequately scaled or targeted (or designed) for the folks who would otherwise need institutionalization to protect themselves and the public.)
As with most things that are social problems, my side (left of center, also long time working in the homelessness space) came from a good place but (combined with not enough funding to implement things effectively, that actually does matter), then completely lost any pragmatism and made things worse.
Next time (lots of opportunities there!), you lefties need to remember to run small "pilot programs" to demonstrate the efficacy and efficiency of your alternatives to the status quo. Once you do so, you'll either find out why those alternatives are not practical or you'll have come up with a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path...
Oh, and for your hare-brained schemes which, by their very nature, can only be done on a national scale, try them out first in Haiti. The Haitians will let you stage anything there for a couple billion bucks (pocket change compared to what we're paying for your previous mistakes and boondoggles). And, if your best laid plans somehow all go to hell—as they surely will—you'll only have wasted the time of a some do-gooders (a truly good deed), given the Haitians some sorely needed amusement (they'll love swindling you), and saved the world's pre-eminent economy (and thus the entire world) from ruin, starvation, and war. Not bad for a day's work...
> And there were good reasons for deinstitutionalization (remember the Geraldo reports?)
Yeah. That's step 2 of the destruction process I mentioned above: point out how badly the system that you sabotaged is broken now that you broke it, and get it shut down rather than fixing it.
Do you think doing so might draw mentally ill people to Florida from other parts of the country, or tempt those places to "ship" their problem populations to the Sunshine State? That could put the kibosh on the whole enterprise...
This has been a difficult issue to talk about and I greatly appreciate you two gentlemen having a honest conversation about it and allowing us to listen. There are no simple solutions to the problem of severely mentally ill people being homeless and on the streets. I was accosted by a clearly deranged man in broad daylight on a downtown sidewalk in Austin, Texas a few years back. I was scared but able to break his hold and run away, even though I’m in my sixties.
I have also recently experienced a man beating on the hood of my car while I was stopped at a red light in downtown Austin. In this instance the man’s eyes were up wild, he was screaming obscenities and I assumed he was either mentally ill, very high on meth or both. When the light turned green, I proceed on. The wild man remained in the intersection awaiting the next stopped car.
Mr Penny had the courage to intervene to protect his fellow subway riders. The final result was tragic. But this was not intentional murder with malice of forethought.
Having had mental illness in my own family, I know there is treatment. We as a society have failed to address the homeless/drug addicted/mentally ill issue for far too long. As terrifying as these people can be to those of us not in their condition, please know that the terror taking place in their deranged minds is worse than we can ever imagine. This is not a “housing” problem and these are not people “experiencing homelessness.” These are very, very sick people who need to be removed from the streets and taken to facilities where they can be cared for -- many on a long term basis. Most will not go on their on accord. They will have to be legally committed and this will likely require legislation. It WILL NOT be easy. But it MUST be undertaken.
Will it be expensive? And will we need to build facilities designed specifically to care for this population? The answer to both is yes. But my God, we waste tens of billions of dollars in this country (federal and state) every year on utterly useless programs and obscure academic research like the breeding habits of the Australian platypus. To say our priorities are screwed up is the understatement of the last and current centuries.
One huge issue that’s not being addressed is that paranoid schizophrenics aren’t compliant with taking meds. Unless their family can house them and keep them on their meds, they’re going to be on the streets. And they’re going to be crazy and violent and threatening. We throw money at programs that don’t work & likely the only ones that will work won’t be enacted. And we will continue to have the mentally ill on the streets. Alvin Bragg should be recalled, he is a disgrace.
"A city of people who feel empowered to take the enforcement of public order into their own hands will only lead to more chaos and more unnecessary violence..."
Well, since the powers-that-be have decided that demonizing cops and misrepresenting the facts to kowtow to the "trained Marxists" running the "Black Lives Matter" scam, they have pretty much told responsible, law abiding citizens that they're on their own in dealing with this kind of situation. Maybe they should've thought about that beforehand, but then again, our "elites" are now largely miseducated, performative fools.
In the 80s, when Bernie Goetz defended himself with deadly force, it was not a sign of people "feeling empowered". It was a sign of people feeling desperate because the rule of law had broken down and no one was stepping up to restore order.
The situation with Neely is the same. When governments don't keep public order, individuals step up out of desperation, not desire.
This is the line which caught my eye:
"And then there's this person who is out of their mind, through no fault of their own"
So it's the fault of the passengers it would seem, as there were no other parties present. Where does the responsibility lie? Where does the buck stop? Don't the innocent passengers -- and taxpayers, who are bled dry to fund a completely collapsed mental health system -- have a right to safe passage on a public transport which, again, their taxes are subsidizing?
Alvin Bragg won election by only a hair's breadth, meaning a solid 1/2 of NYC did not vote for him, yet they daily suffer the brutalities and depredations of those whom he and his office deem "too poor to jail". There is a chasm of difference between 'woke' and actually cognitively aware.
I have agreement with both arguments. Folks with psychotic mental illness need to be on medication. Problem is they sometimes don't take it. In this country sometime around the 60's the institutionalized people with severe mental illness where released and their care was assigned to community mental health centers. Funding over time for those centers has dwindled to the point where most of these people are living on the street, unsafe to themselves and others. We need to establish a system of mental health care for these severely mentally ill people. We have abandoned them to live on the streets and put others in jeopardy.
I didn't hear two arguments; I heard a pretty wan restatement of the problem from a couple of smart guys who ought to know better.
These problems are not new. Folks with mental health challenges have been with us for millennia or longer. There was a solution (institutionalization) in place more than a century ago, and "enlightened" folks deemed it barbaric or inhumane, and in too many cases, it was. Antipsychotic medications came along and were a "cure," so the institutions were emptied. But the "cure" worked only as long as you maintained the right dosage and if you could put up with the anhedonia and other side effects. When you stopped taking the drug, or forgot to take it, or couldn't get it, you were psychotic again, but there was no place to put you because all the inhumane places were gone. There are no easy answers, but political leadership is unwilling to tell -- and voters unwilling to hear -- the bitter truth that it is a permanent affliction, that intervention is expensive because it needs to be ongoing, personalized, and scrupulously adhered to. So it devolves into a battle of "rights." Society's right to be free from fear of assault or battery, always upsetting and sometimes lethal, vs an individual's right not to be forcibly medicated. And there has now arisen a huge bureaucracy/industry receiving and wasting billions every year pretending to address "the unhoused," most of whom would be far better served by programs to make sure they got the right meds on the right schedule, thereby freeing them from their demons, freeing the rest of us from the threat they represent, and allowing the afflicted to lead dignified and productive lives.
Actually, in the 60's and 70's, the Democrats initiated a "community mental health" movement designed to provide easily accessible mental health services. I was a social worker at the time. Reagan was the one who came in and defunded the movement leading to community clinics and institutional facilities closed down and residents basically thrown into the streets. I think the argument Reagan used was that private entities and the community itself should provide mental health care.
And then what happened?
"Community mental health" movement, like a lot that emanates from the Progressive left, sounds benign, but how would it improve on the government-run institutions that devolved into inhumane snake pits? I am not familiar with it, but as you describe it, Reagan's notion sounds less like "defunding" and throwing people out in the streets and more like delivery of services through private or charitable entities rather than through bloated bureaucracies. Did it gain any traction? Or did government unions and progressive politicians torpedo it? And before you get defensive, look at the present condition of public education and how it has comprehensively failed to deliver results while wasting millions of lives and trillions of dollars. Then look at the burgeoning homeless populations in cities that spend tens of thousands per each homeless person and provide tents and clean needles instead of homes. Then note the ballooning popularity of school vouchers as folks seek ways of making public money more useful by not letting so many "public servants" touch it.
The essence of personhood is an irreducible element of responsibility for one's choices and deeds. It seems the lesson of Caudine Forks is more illuminative of the dilemma...or perhaps the parable of Atticus Finch shooting the rabid dog. John McWhorter's formulation seems to suggest that society doesn't have a first principle to provide safety. I think it ceases to be society if it cannot provide safety. In an Aurelian sense, inquire of that "thing" what is its purpose to understand the thing.
..."A city of people who feel empowered to take the enforcement of public order into their own hands will only lead to more chaos and more unnecessary violence, without doing anything to address the sad, underlying issues of mental illness and homelessness."
Where did you get this idea? The Faculty lunch room at Brown? Threat of physical violence is an extraordinarily good deterrence. Elitist progressives don't like it though because it's scary to think that all the unwashed masses might take matters into their own hands. Because after all they're just ignorant violent monsters who lacked the sophistication and Nuance to make proper decisions and should not be empowered to do anything but die like sheep on their knees while they're betters speak in sympathetic tones for their plight. These sorts of statements strike me as paternalistic elitist condescension although I'm sure they're well meant.
I don't think they are well meant at all. Condescending and elitist. See Thomas Sowell - The Vision of the Anointed .
Further, it is true of most of the Anointed's ideas. Since they are not affected, it is easy for them to dictate what the unwashed masses must suffer.
People have a right to defend themselves. It's that simple. And there's zero connection between self-defense measures and addressing the "underlying issues" of mental health and homelessness. And exactly how does people defending themselves lead to "unnecessary" violence? Not having enough police does that. Not enforcing the laws also. But my defending myself? Very illogical and yes, paternalistic and elitist.
I just wanted to mention that I and many others are sick and tired of the false equivalencies being made by those eager to punish Daniel Penny who point out that people handle mentally ill and violent people without killing them in residential facilities all the time. It is not reasonable to equate the amount of fear a scared civilian (even a Marine) or even barely trained police officer would feel wrestling a mentally ill person on the floor of a crowded subway car, where there are simply too many unknowns (is he on drugs? Is he hiding a weapon? Will someone else attack me?) to the people who work in a residential facility where they need to restrain residents who they know are not armed, are not on any illegal substances, and where they can be assured of assistance from the other orderlies. Most importantly they also have injections which can deliver a sedative. Daniel Penny had none of these things and yet you wish to punish him - solely because Neely was black and Penny was white. We know if the races were reversed or both the same, this wouldn't even be getting national coverage. You are helping to create a toxic and divisive society with your flagrant racial double standards- as is the Biden administration and mainstream media.
Penny is being charged with manslaughter because he is on video killing another person…the jury will decide if his use of force was reasonable or not. I don’t think Neely meant to kill him but it looks to me like his chokehold killed him.
Penney is being charged, because Alvin Bragg is a racist with a political agenda. If their respective races were reversed--Penny being black and Neely being white--not only would Penny not be charged, the public would never even have heard of this. The whole situation is a tragedy, and it is terrible that Jordan Neely died because of our country's abdication of addressing mental illness, but the criminal charges against Daniel Penny are politically motivated. Period.
In a country with self-governance, authority lies with the individual. The "authorities" are the authorities because the people gave them the authority to (supposedly) prevent people like Neely from hurting people just going about their reasonable lives. We gave them that authority so that we could be safe and not have to take the actions Mr. Penny was forced to take. When the authorities cede the authority given to them and just let the dangerous victimize the ordinary citizen, the authority still resides with the citizen (who granted it in the first place) to take matters into their own hands to keep themselves and their fellow citizens safe. Penny was exercising authority that was his to begin with, that was on loan from the citizens to the police and the police decided to not wield.
I come down to this each and every time. Who has a greater right to live? The mentally-ill person who refuses to take meds so they can interact in society without hurting others or the victims of that mentally ill person who were just going about their reasonable lives? I don't think you can reasonably argue that the victims were the ones who deserved to be injured or killed.
Yeah, Neely's death is a tragedy as was his life as an unmedicated paranoid schizophrenic. But a greater tragedy would have been if an innocent bystander had been injured or killed that day. Penny prevented that. No, we don't want people just doing that whenever they want, but if the police won't do their authorized duty, then citizens have the right to reclaim the authority we gave them in the first place.
I don't live in New York so won't be sitting that jury, but yeah, I'd nullify and be the last person standing voting for acquittal. It's the reasonable thing to do.
I call Trump a cult leader because - according to all polling - the majority of Republicans are following him like lemmings to their (and the country's) "death". I think you are drawing a false equivalency here. Hilary lost the nomination when Obama came around. Dems weren't devoted to her. As for Obama: he was an unknown and not an already established figure who already had lost an election and alienated at least half the country (like Trump demonstrably has). As for Biden (who I despise and will never vote for), the majority of liberal voters don't even want him as the nominee. It's only the Democratic party that is keeping him around. (And why not? He beat Trump the last time.) However, Trump lost to Biden once already AND has alienated at least half the country who are driven into a frenzy by the mere sight of him. Can you explain to me why the majority of Republicans are still so devoted to this maniac, established loser that they want to nominate him again when someone like DeSantis who liberals like me would vote for in a heartbeat is standing right there? Why they are ignoring the fact that Dems very much want them to nominate Trump because he will be far easier to beat (again)? Is this need to nominate an established loser no matter what, not "cult-like" behavior?
McWhorter states several times "through no fault of his(their) own" and "it's society's fault". While that is surely, at least, partly true, I'm a bit surprised of the absolute lack of personal responsibility that is assigned to Neely and the others that John uses in his example of riding the subway. John seems to be saying that it's undoubtably all "our" fault. I don't believe in absolutes.
I jumped the gun. I wrote this before watching it to the end, where Glenn makes the exact point I was trying to make. I should have waited.
Americans have got to find a way to change their individual and collective minds about what it means to be human, to live in a large society and mature economy, and especially how they think, feel, and act with regard to violence. Permanent war has probably kept Americans from discovering and holding in mind the irreplaceable value of each individual’s life. Our country’s gruesome past, and the after effects of cutthroat competition in a zero sum game, have left people feeling isolated, disillusioned, disenfranchised, angry, hopeless, and a result is seen in crime statistics. Rapes, robberies, homicides occur dozens by the minute while people go on about their business as usual. News makes a huge deal out of a handful of cases while hardly commenting on underlying causes at scale, and never diving deep into the weeds of what’s going on that results in so much bad blood among the citizenry. People often disengage or accept there’ll never be reconciliation, but that doesn’t move us toward a solution. Each case adds to the larger problem which contributes to and plays conditional causal roles in new individual incidents. Each individual makes decisions that result in events, but each event is also at least partly independent, and each individual could exercise self-control to prevent incidents; instead, context and contributory causes influence individuals to rationalize loss of control, and ultimately those individuals then use their justifications to perpetrate harm on others, who potentially pay it forward in our excruciatingly retributive culture. Most Americans probably need a shock to the system, a hard reset, or re-education...but one that works rather than only perpetuates the system and cycle of harms.
Lotsa words. No meaning to any of them in their current configuration. Hit the "TOSS" button again, and let's see if the next word salad is any more nutritious...
Is Josh Gravit a real person or a made up name?
Made up name, John does this sort of thing a lot.
You get more of what you allow. Crime and other asocial behavior continues because the authorities allow it to continue. And what actions like Bragg's do is make it far less likely for one person to go to the aid of another. They'll be sure to take out their smartphones, though; wouldn't want to miss that all important opportunity to post something on social media. Never mind that another human being is being injured just a few feet away.
Eventually, there will be a Bernard Goetz moment. It is almost inevitable. The cynic in me says the same people who hand-wave social disorder and chaos want such a moment to happen. Then what? They'll scream about guns again? Right now, there are dozens and dozens of videos showing criminals gone wild. Many have a racial component but not all, not that it makes a difference. Either way, law-abiding people are facing a govt-created threat. I saw where Philly's new mayor, a black woman, is a fan of stop and frisk and seems ready to use it. That will probably make her the latest 'new face' of white supremacy, joining several other non-white people.
I remember hearing about a story of a woman in Philly being raped on a public train late at night and bystanders filmed it without doing anything to intervene on her behalf. Shit's crazy.
People are catching on. They know why this story and the Karen bike story are getting pushed and the Lawrence Herr story is nowhere to be found.
Self protection will continue to increase, and rightfully so. The left WANTS this chaos and lawlessness so they will have an excuse for implementing the tyranny they so deeply desire. I believe we are staring at the beginning of some very violent times, and when the "government" - be it city, state, or federal - tries to crack down they will evoke even more violence.
We all know the meaning of the phrase "the wild, wild west". That will be tame compared to what is about to come down on us.
Well, just do your best to adapt in your own set of circumstances, see to you and yours and try not to get anything on you.
It is what it is.
> I read a well-known columnist who was writing that Neely shouldn't have been restrained. No. I know that that columnist doesn't live in New York City, and I highly suspect that that columnist doesn't have kids. No, we need to have a procedure where someone like him can be taken away.
We used to have one. We would put the mentally ill in an asylum where they could be cared for by well-trained specialists who knew how to deal with people like them, and kept away from people who didn't (such as everybody in that subway car.) The system worked, quite well in fact, until it was sabotaged by activists.
This is how you destroy a working public program. It's been done over and over again, the same two-part pattern: First, you starve it. Cut funding, or increase its workload without increasing funding, the two are one and the same: you end up with a system that's not able to handle all the work it's given. Then you point to the system that's not working anymore because you sabotaged it, point out that it's clearly not working, and proclaim that the solution is to shut it down. (This, of course, does nothing to fix the problem that the system you just wrecked was solving, but it's proven remarkably effective at destroying working systems over the years!)
Jordan Neely was killed by the people who shut down the mental institutions he should have been committed to long before the fateful subway ride. This didn't happen out of nowhere; it's since come to light that Neely was on NYC's "top 50 list" of mentally ill residents of especially high degrees of concern. The city knew he was a ticking time bomb; they were simply unable to do anything about it. If we want tragic incidents like this to stop happening, we need to address the root cause.
Say its name: Deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization killed Jordan Neely, and deinstitutionalization should die in return. Bring back the asylums that would have saved his life, and averted countless other problems of violence, crime, and abuse involving the severely mentally ill throughout this country on an all-too-regular basis!
Yeah, deinstitutionalization created this subset of modern homelessness. And there were good reasons for deinstitutionalization (remember the Geraldo reports?), but it was supposed to come with community-based group homes for all the deinstitutionalized folks. That was never implemented, at least not at the scale and quality required to really effectively serve folks who couldn't or wouldn't stay in treatment, couldn't care for themselves, and/or might act out violently in public.
(Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) is supposed to serve that function for homeless SMI folks, but is also not adequately scaled or targeted (or designed) for the folks who would otherwise need institutionalization to protect themselves and the public.)
As with most things that are social problems, my side (left of center, also long time working in the homelessness space) came from a good place but (combined with not enough funding to implement things effectively, that actually does matter), then completely lost any pragmatism and made things worse.
Next time (lots of opportunities there!), you lefties need to remember to run small "pilot programs" to demonstrate the efficacy and efficiency of your alternatives to the status quo. Once you do so, you'll either find out why those alternatives are not practical or you'll have come up with a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path...
Lol and you righties need to loosen the purse strings to make sure the good ideas can go to scale!
;)
Sequence is everything.
You first. And you fund the pilot programs locally.
Deal!
Oh, and for your hare-brained schemes which, by their very nature, can only be done on a national scale, try them out first in Haiti. The Haitians will let you stage anything there for a couple billion bucks (pocket change compared to what we're paying for your previous mistakes and boondoggles). And, if your best laid plans somehow all go to hell—as they surely will—you'll only have wasted the time of a some do-gooders (a truly good deed), given the Haitians some sorely needed amusement (they'll love swindling you), and saved the world's pre-eminent economy (and thus the entire world) from ruin, starvation, and war. Not bad for a day's work...
> And there were good reasons for deinstitutionalization (remember the Geraldo reports?)
Yeah. That's step 2 of the destruction process I mentioned above: point out how badly the system that you sabotaged is broken now that you broke it, and get it shut down rather than fixing it.
If Ron Desantis is smart that's exactly what he'll use some of Florida's budget surplus for.
Do you think doing so might draw mentally ill people to Florida from other parts of the country, or tempt those places to "ship" their problem populations to the Sunshine State? That could put the kibosh on the whole enterprise...
This has been a difficult issue to talk about and I greatly appreciate you two gentlemen having a honest conversation about it and allowing us to listen. There are no simple solutions to the problem of severely mentally ill people being homeless and on the streets. I was accosted by a clearly deranged man in broad daylight on a downtown sidewalk in Austin, Texas a few years back. I was scared but able to break his hold and run away, even though I’m in my sixties.
I have also recently experienced a man beating on the hood of my car while I was stopped at a red light in downtown Austin. In this instance the man’s eyes were up wild, he was screaming obscenities and I assumed he was either mentally ill, very high on meth or both. When the light turned green, I proceed on. The wild man remained in the intersection awaiting the next stopped car.
Mr Penny had the courage to intervene to protect his fellow subway riders. The final result was tragic. But this was not intentional murder with malice of forethought.
Having had mental illness in my own family, I know there is treatment. We as a society have failed to address the homeless/drug addicted/mentally ill issue for far too long. As terrifying as these people can be to those of us not in their condition, please know that the terror taking place in their deranged minds is worse than we can ever imagine. This is not a “housing” problem and these are not people “experiencing homelessness.” These are very, very sick people who need to be removed from the streets and taken to facilities where they can be cared for -- many on a long term basis. Most will not go on their on accord. They will have to be legally committed and this will likely require legislation. It WILL NOT be easy. But it MUST be undertaken.
Will it be expensive? And will we need to build facilities designed specifically to care for this population? The answer to both is yes. But my God, we waste tens of billions of dollars in this country (federal and state) every year on utterly useless programs and obscure academic research like the breeding habits of the Australian platypus. To say our priorities are screwed up is the understatement of the last and current centuries.
We have the capacity,but we lack the will.
As a native Texan, my advice is to avoid Austin. Unless you have urgent business there, it's better to remain in Texas.