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Rugosa's avatar

I take the T in Boston. One winter day on the way home from work, a man got on the train and immediately began a loud rant. He didn't appear to be homeless, he was clean and well groomed, but apparently had been drinking. He was raving about everything under the sun - this, that, the other thing, and his wife too. People backed away from him while he ranted on. Suddenly he announced "I'm drunk. Yes, I'm drunk. I'm drunk because my son just took his life." and got off at the next stop.

I think about that incident everytime I hear about someone having a breakdown in a public place. You don't know what brought that person to that state. You don't know your own breaking point, either, because you just haven't been there. Do you deserve to die because life has thrown too much at you?

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SundayStyle's avatar

I split my time these days between suburban Philly and New York (thank you, remote work), so I spend maybe around 10 days a month back home in NYC. I’m more likely to take cabs and Ubers than the train these days, but I’ll still ride once or twice a month. Drawing from that experience, I can say that the behaviors of my youth when riding the subway are still in effect: when someone is being loud and obnoxious for whatever reason, mental health crisis or otherwise, New Yorkers observe the time-honored traditions of 1) ignoring it and not making eye contact, 2) switching cars, or 3) simply getting off the fucking train if the situation looks like it’s about to escalate.

Apparently the provocation was Neely yelling that he was hungry and throwing his jacket on the floor. Seriously? I’ve been on trains where guys were urinating or masturbating, where fights broke out, where a mugging happened in plain view. Nobody got killed. And I think we all know if Neely had been white and the marine who killed him was Black, the vigilante would have been charged, his name, photo, and any unsavory thing he’d ever done dating back to childhood would be on the front page of the NY Post, and he certainly wouldn’t have been released from custody.

So of course conservatives love the Neely killing. They live in a Death Wish 24/7 world, and they want revenge against people they never see but whose mere existence enrages them.

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