My mom used to say to my dad, after he’d dropped one of his laid back jokes: Ya know, Bill, the only way you’re gonna develop that act is if you open up a little club somewhere…
Well, y'see, liberals, Y'SEE? Your Soros-backed gun grabbing laws are MEANINGLESS, because you can still kill a guy while unarmed! "So how about THAT, Mr. Smarty-pants Communist?"
There was a weird story out of Australia, a guy deciding to commit suicide-by-cop, so he goes to a shopping center with a plan to murder some people, but maybe because the gun laws are stricter there, I'm not really sure, what he brings is a compound hunting bow and two hammers. Thankfully, no one was killed, but one young woman was seriously wounded by an arrow after being stalked through an Aldi for five minutes. Nope, can't see how any of that would have turned out differently if he had an AR-15.
I listened to audio from that dumbass Kid Rock video where he fires his AR at some Bud Light, and it was a truly terrifying number of shots for just a couple seconds.
Gun enthusiasts always hitch up their pants and push their glasses up on their noses when they point out that the standard AR-15 is SEMI-auto and not FULLY auto. Which means you need to twitch your index finger once for each person you kill. Yeah, makes a BIG difference, guys.
At least, in the Goetz incident, his victims were alleged to have threatened him. Or, at least his defenders troubled themselves to come up with that story.
Oh, man, too much overviewing of our nation’s exceptional ability to hate...
Adams is acting exactly as could be predicted. Apparently, our equally awesome governor has little more compassion for Neely than Adams has. Again, as expected.
Meanwhile, add to the list: Having an incredibly fucked up life while Black is a capital crime.
When he's talking about a vigilante homicide in the same wishy-washy way they all do about police homicides, that's not a good sign; he might as well cut to the chase and say "You know, if you're in A Situation, and you're Forced To Do What's Necessary, we won't prosecute, because something something Public Safety, so be alert out there".
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.
Just thinking back to a decade or so back when the chuds were really really into zombie apocalypse stuff and you knew damn well it wasn't really zed they wanted to unload on so much as their Usual Suspects.
"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." My experience as well
Is it really a bad thing that all this shit talk keeps the Rubes home in Cousinfuck Hollow?
It's not just the folks in Cousinfuck. A dozen years or so ago an acquaintance of my wife's, a nice lady who worked at Sears, received a promotion into management and had to go to Chicago to the Sears headquarters for training. Being simple people from the suburbs of Dayton her and her husband lost their shit about having to go to the murder capital of the world. They were really freaked because she was flying up and couldn't take a gun with her. She said something about staying at home and shooting herself so at least someone wouldn't steal her purse. Being Rough and Ready Suburban people, used to living off the land and fending for themselves they came up with a plan that involved the husband driving up meeting her at her hotel and slipping her a handgun so she could be safe.
Everything went off according to plan until the next morning when she actually tried to enter this Sears world headquarters with her gun. Seems like security minded people like her and her husband would figure out that the Sears world headquarters in the murder capital of the world would have metal detectors at the door.
She was sent home and a month or so later got a job working at the Bath and Body works store at the other end of the mall from the Sears.
The mall closed a few years ago I don't know where she's at now.
While exploring the wide world of podcasting a couple years back, I happened across one from the "tactical awareness" crowd - you know, the fuckers with the custom quick-draw holsters and the stupid acronyms and all the mall ninja bullshit, and for once I'M the one thinking about how I could never live like that. (No, I didn't listen to it, but the guy's show notes were bad enough.)
I've heard this can be a problem for soldiers returning home from combat, how constant vigilance and "keep your head on a swivel" keeps you from getting killed in wartime but is not so helpful back home. Maybe it's satisfying to hear from someone that no, it's everyone else who is crazy, you're the normal one.
It has been my experience that people who genuinely do prefer living in rural areas don't give a shit what happens or how people live their lives in cities. They like the quiet, simple life with plenty of room to roam around. And they view people who constantly obsess about the evil cities as weirdos who need to get a life.
me too, mostly. i’ve had the opportunity to live in cities, towns and deep in the woods - most folks keep to themselves (maybe moreso in the woods) and those what gets in yer face are seldom.
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?
What a great example of the principle that we never know what burdens other people are carrying, so we should try to be tolerant and gentle with each other whenever possible. Thank you for the reminder.
The guy used too much force, anyone who learns martial arts learns not to use certain moves because they can be deadly. But I think the pile-on is unwarranted. There are people on subways doing very threatening things--pushing people on the tracks etc. I don't think the guy got on the subway intending to kill a black person. He probably should not have intervened at all, tho we don't have all the evidence yet for why he and the other men on the train (who weren't white) also intervened. I think making this into a racial drama is just b.s. frankly. It's a very sad situation, and what's to blame is really our mental health system or LACK of one. Anyone who's ever gone to a mental hospital knows how useless they are. They keep you for a week, dope you up, then let you out again--with little to no followup. Obviously Neely was not getting the help he needed, and it's an easy out to just blame misplaced vigilantism for why he died.
"Misplaced vigilantism" is the proximate cause of Neely's death, I'm sorry to say. I have no intention of absolving the killer for that. There are structural problems & inequities aplenty, including lack of care options for houseless humans & a dearth of mental care facilities. And they put Neely and thousands of others at risk of harm.
Trump & other RWers are gibbering about placing the houseless into concentration camps. How's that for a possible contributor to this act of vigilantism?
Per the NY Daily News, buried way down in a story about his grieving father losing track of Neely, who was autistic and lost it after the murder of his mother: "The NYPD busted Neely 42 times across the last decade and he had a documented mental health history with police, with his most recent arrest in November 2021 for slugging a 67-year-old female stranger in the face. A warrant for his arrest on felony assault charges was issued on Feb. 23." So yes, he could unfortunately be randomly violent. A tragic life for sure.... So all this should be weighed before we just call out the vigilante for being a racist murderer
I went back and reread what Roy wrote just to be sure, but he's not calling the murderer* a racist. But the people who are cheering this on from a distance? They're not being threatened, no need to make a split-second decision about whether someone is dangerous, so what's their excuse? You don't think racial bigotry plays a role in that? Roy does ask what the response would be if the races of the murderer and victim were reversed, but that's not a question about the motives of the murderer himself, it's about how some people react to the murder. And it's a fair question.
Homicide is different from being charged for murder, which requires intent.... so it's more likely some kind of manslaughter charge if he is charged. We don't know if they were threatened yet, so all of this snap judgement on social media is just people fronting on a tragedy. I am reacting to the headlines calling the vigilante a "murderer" and the head of the City Council calling it a race crime. That's just bogus and inflammatory. We don't know the background of the vigilante, if he's a Trumper or whatever... I know people see the choke and it echos the Floyd and Garner murders and I'm not defending that as a practice. I'm objecting to folks making broad conclusions without the facts
There's video of him being restrained, which includes video of a black man kneeling on his body while the white man has him in a chokehold. What I haven't seen is any video of what led up to them taking these actions. Are they just gung-ho marines who took it upon themselves to police this unruly person? Or was he seriously threatening people. Again, I'm not defending a chokehold. What I am questioning is the rush to pile on and to view this as a racist event. If a crazy white person was on the train threatening to harm people, I do actually think these guys would have done something similar, if that's their MO...But again, we don't have the facts so I'm against the rush to judgement, and also the refusal to look more deeply at the multitude of factors that led up to this guy going off on the train. It's easy to in a sense scapegoat the chokehold guy and call him a murderer. How about all those who did not provide Neely with the help he needed, so he would not have been so desperate that day?
This is where it all went wrong for Derek Chauvin, a cop can shoot someone and claim it was a split-second decision and juries are reluctant to second-guess, but strangle someone with your knee in a process that takes 9 minutes and it's natural to ask, "You could have stopped, why didn't you?"
Oh, we know goddamn well what happens in the opposite situation, because, as I pointed out, this "we don't have all the facts" bullshit ALWAYS happens in cases like this, but NEVER in the case of violence by "a criminal". It's always "we need to see the video" in the former but "THUGS LIKE THIS MUST BE ERADICATED" in the latter. Every. Goddamn. Time.
I can totally understand being scared in the same situation, but it seems we've now moved on to "Because I'm scared, I'm justified in murdering someone. " Which used to be reserved for cops, for whom "I was in fear of my life" were the magic "get out of jail free" words (we've made so much progress on the issue of police shootings that this now only works 99 times out of 100.)
Then "Stand Your Ground" extended "Scared = Permission to murder" to everyone, or at least everyone paler than a brown paper bag.
That's not what I did. I referenced his sad circumstances because they are indeed tragic--his mom was murdered! And now him... that is abysmal. But I quoted the Daily News to give his arrest record and history of engaging in at least one violent, unprompted assault against a stranger to suggest there is a POSSIBILITY that he was being threatening enough for these guys on the train to feel they had to intervene. They intervened to protect themselves and other passengers. They didn't get on the train intending to jump and tackle a black man. That said, a trained marine should have known better than to use a chokehold. The black guy is kneeling on him and others helping restrain him and others watching...why didn't they tell him to stop? It was no doubt a chaotic situation, so all this rubbernecking strikes me as a lot of virtue signalling till we know the facts.
"That's not what I did." Sure it was. I was responding to the plain meaning of the words you wrote.
And in your attempt to restate, I see you focus on "the POSSIBILITY that he was being threatening enough" based on his history -- which supports my reading that you only brought up his "sad circumstances" to justify his murder.
Now you say those of us who are appalled at this killing are "virtue signaling." (Boy, *there's* a tell!) Since you're working overtime to justify his death, I'd say you're signaling for virtue's opposite.
No that's not what I did. I brought up Neely's sad circumstances to acknowledge them--which you did not--and then cited his past arrest record, which included unprovoked violent behavior. I looked that up precisely to see if there any past history of violence on his part that might explain why these guys on the train felt they needed to intervene so aggressively. I.e. if he was ever known to be violent. That doesn't mean necessarily that he was violent in this case...we don't have those facts yet that I can see. But it does suggest that he could have been acting in a threatening fashion, as some witnesses said. I too am appalled at his killing and saddened by his whole life story--and now wven more saddened by folks who want to overlook that history, when it's obvious that Neely was failed so many times before. Writing this as someone who was once nominated for a Pulitzer for deadline feature writing on the homeless crisis for the Village Voice. Been at this a long time ya know... Don't appreciate the rush to pigeonhole me.
You do know the papers do enough victim-blaming & digging up criminal histories whenever Black men are killed by white men (including cops of course)? I mean I guess I understand you're trying to fill in the whole story -- but this is a very structural & socially-conditioned response to the murders of Black men.
How does this make it OK to kill him? Neeley was not actually threatening the murderer as far as I can tell and the murderer could not have known about the assault charges. I think you may want to justify your own feelings of fear and hatred
I agree with you wholeheartedly about our failure as a society to adequately meet the needs of people suffering from mental health issues. Which is why I object when many if not most cities peel off more and more funds from much-needed social services and instead redirect those monies toward more policing.
The racism issue here doesn’t need to be about personal animus. I have no idea what was in heart of the vigilante or whether he would have acted in the same way if Neely was a white man, or even if the vigilante himself believes he would have acted in the same way if Neely was white. I don’t see that as the most important factor.
How racism plays a role here is in how this killing is being framed based on who used force and who was the victim, on how politicians and the press react to it, and of course in how conservatives champion these kinds of incidents when the “avenger” is a white man who takes down a perceived Black threat. And very few things in life are 100% or 0% racist when white and Black people are involved, more often than not racism is one of several factors in the mix and plays a greater or lesser role depending on the specifics of the situation.
Not that this is new or anything, but we certainly are getting a heaping helping of "oh no the homeless are threatening us (and our property values" these days. I don't know if this man was homeless, certainly he was having a mental health crisis, and it feels like we are being trained to fear and hate. More and more moves to punish them or push them away, toward somewhere (anywhere) else. These obviously are not solutions to the root problem. The kicker is the most ruthless promoters of the fear and loathing are the same people who claim to stan the Prince of Peace, old Jesu himself. Who had a "thing" about lost and unlucky.
Absolutely, which is why I have no respect for, and give no credibility to, the faith of white conservative Christians. They specialize in pasting a thin decoupage of Jesus on top of their authoritarian/fascist ideology, which is really their true religion.
And yeah, the victim blaming of the mentally ill is increasing. I mean, of course it’s unsettling and even occasionally frightening to be on a bus or in a subway car with someone who is having an episode. But none of these people have deliberately chosen to have mental health issues. Had they been asked as children what they wanted to do with their lives, they would not have said “I want to be the screaming guy on the subway who has pissed his pants.” The lack of help and services is a systemic failure based on who our society prioritizes and who is expendable.
Don't know if you're familiar with the term "less dead", but it refers to murder (especially serial killer) victims who are POC and/or poor and as a result are less likely to be investigated seriously by the police. Suppose that you could call this attitude towards the mentally ill as "less alive".
Been in Inpatient a couple times, and, while being on the unit locked in is miserable and thank god it's only five days (but it seems longer), I was never "doped up". Got proper meds, got some CBT/DBT education, got a month or so of outpatient group, and reference to an ongoing treatment plan. But there's no way an intervention like that cures what's maybe years of untreated mental illness, any more than an ER visit makes up for a lack of preventative care. And for whatever reason (and I Have Some Words on the subject) we feel in this country that intervention is good enough, and it ain't.
Was that hospital stay in NYC? Because from what I've seen, there is often very little aftercare offered to people when they leave the hospital and they received no individual therapy while IN the hospital--just craft classes and group therapy that was useless for people in severe crisis.
I think that's true everywhere. In fact, you probably have a better shot at aftercare in NYC than a lot of other places. It's just not something we're willing to invest in.
Ah, you're more street-wise than I am, my experience of New York City, based mostly on multiple viewings of Guys and Dolls would have led me to respond, "Sorry, I forgot my dice."
Not Travis Bickle; these people are D-fens (Michael Douglas) from 1993's "Falling Down." "An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them," according to the pitch. The fact that Douglas is dressed like Dilbert makes it even more spot on.
I just had to click on that "Biden wants to abolish suburbs" link because What The Fuck, and I won't bother you with the "argument", I'll just note it was written in June of 2020 and writer Stanley Kurtz is pretty obvious in his desperate attempt to stop suburban voters - and especially suburban women - from fleeing the Republican party. Judging by the results of the 2020 election and the more recent Supreme Court race in Wisconsin (where the Milwaukee suburbs still went Republican but by much smaller margins than in the past) Stanley's scare-mongering isn't working.
The new Communist regimentation trope is the "5-Minute City", which, if I understand right, is a planned city where everything is organized so as to make it accessible in 5 minutes - walking, biking, mass transit. Presumably this will make it easier to take all our possessions, have us wear shapeless grey clothes in shapeless grey dorms, force us to eat bugs and soylent, and brainwash whatever of our children they don't confiscate for adrenochrome production. I, as a long time cyclist and shitty mass transit victim, think the concept is cool, but what the hell do I know?
I always chuckle at this concept, because this is the majority-Black South Shore neighborhood I grew up in. Here it is forty years later, and so-called intellectuals are just now getting to this?
Pretty sure the "reasoning" here goes like this: "Hey, we're losing support in the suburbs, what can we do?" And because "Stop being a fucking asshole" isn't an option, the strategy is to look around for anything the Biden administration has been done that could be misrepresented in a way that might be SCAAAARY to white people in the 'burbs. Judging by how the last few elections went, it's not working, LOL.
Roy, you've done it again - said so many of the same things I am thinking right now. It really feels like an attack on my city, all these fucking attention-craving knobheads and bellends with money and power (or aspire to have money and power) that recognize nothing beyond their own terror of the unknown.
God, so much to unpack with this one. I was talking to my therapist yesterday about how much I just want to GET THE HELL OUT of this neighborhood and the creeps and how I felt so racist for saying that because it's something my Dad or sister would say (remember - they're MAGA conservatives) and she pointed out (paraphrasing) "You're not doing it because of the ethnicity of your neighbors, but the crime, right?". I have a hard time explaining my family's attitude when they (rarely) come over, but you can sense the paranoia even if they've never SAID anything, and I know damn well that they're expecting trouble entirely BECAUSE of the Black and Puerto Rican folks. So even if the "how can you live like that" is never articulated, it's there, and I was afraid it'd slopped over onto me.
Hey, back in the 90s I was living just a couple of blocks from a notorious housing project in a racially and economically mixed neighborhood. You can bet I didn't go walking through the housing project and none of my black neighbors would have called me racist for it. In that neighborhood at that time, it did pay to be aware of young men in groups because gang violence was an issue. It sucks to live in an environment where you always have to be on your guard - it literally keeps your cortisol level high all the time. It's not racist to get out of a stressfull environment. It is racist to be so stressed by the fact of other races existing.
Oh, having been abused by father and schoolmates for years, I have a constant low-level paranoia and heightened awareness as it is, but it's nothing like the pants-pissing fear chuds apparently consider appropriate. As I always say, I've had more problems from the assholes living in this house than I've ever had out on the street.
Roy, I know you probably don't have any control over it, but the Substack app is truncating longer sentences that have hyperlinks, and it troubles our strumpot when we click through to see what the rest of the sentence might be about and it's a hidden paywalled article. Doesn't happen with the email version.
Bernie Goetz redux.
the only thing that stops a bad guy with arms is a good guy with arms
Which is why you never want to go around unarmed.
In long sleeves
No no no, the Second specifies bare arms!
Right arms only
Flexes: "Guns instead of (shea) butter"
*slow clap*
You 3 guys (Bern, Derelict, Pere Ubu) need to develop this act and take it on the road.
We could do it in the road, but nobody's watching.
So you will get hit by a car
My mom used to say to my dad, after he’d dropped one of his laid back jokes: Ya know, Bill, the only way you’re gonna develop that act is if you open up a little club somewhere…
somewhere way, way out in the desert maybe…
Bad old joke:
“Did you hear Willie Nelson got hit by a bus? He was playing On the Road Again.”
And that, my friend, is why we don’t do it in the road.
Zeppo wants to know if there's room for a fourth in this act.
Zeppo: one Marx.
Now if youda mentioned Gummo as well …
Well, y'see, liberals, Y'SEE? Your Soros-backed gun grabbing laws are MEANINGLESS, because you can still kill a guy while unarmed! "So how about THAT, Mr. Smarty-pants Communist?"
There was a weird story out of Australia, a guy deciding to commit suicide-by-cop, so he goes to a shopping center with a plan to murder some people, but maybe because the gun laws are stricter there, I'm not really sure, what he brings is a compound hunting bow and two hammers. Thankfully, no one was killed, but one young woman was seriously wounded by an arrow after being stalked through an Aldi for five minutes. Nope, can't see how any of that would have turned out differently if he had an AR-15.
I listened to audio from that dumbass Kid Rock video where he fires his AR at some Bud Light, and it was a truly terrifying number of shots for just a couple seconds.
Gun enthusiasts always hitch up their pants and push their glasses up on their noses when they point out that the standard AR-15 is SEMI-auto and not FULLY auto. Which means you need to twitch your index finger once for each person you kill. Yeah, makes a BIG difference, guys.
I'm getting the impression that the only difference between semi auto and full auto is how soon you need to reload.
If you watch the video you will see that, for all that ammunition, someone from the right, off screen, actually blew away the Bud Light.
At least, in the Goetz incident, his victims were alleged to have threatened him. Or, at least his defenders troubled themselves to come up with that story.
And Goetz got arrested!
That was before NYPD had their White Guys Catch n' Release Program all worked out.
"Why yes, I have $5 for each of you"
Oof.
Oh, man, too much overviewing of our nation’s exceptional ability to hate...
Adams is acting exactly as could be predicted. Apparently, our equally awesome governor has little more compassion for Neely than Adams has. Again, as expected.
Meanwhile, add to the list: Having an incredibly fucked up life while Black is a capital crime.
Did I say exceptional?
well, “Trailer Park” Thomas is exceptional, so…yeah…
Huh?
In the American Grifter sense, and perhaps others.
When he's talking about a vigilante homicide in the same wishy-washy way they all do about police homicides, that's not a good sign; he might as well cut to the chase and say "You know, if you're in A Situation, and you're Forced To Do What's Necessary, we won't prosecute, because something something Public Safety, so be alert out there".
Clearly, the decision not to arrest the killer sends that message with a wink and a nod.
Say no MOAH!
It is Mayor Copbrain. Do not try to understand Mayor Copbrain.
Wise words. Let's remember he's also said he wants store owners to ban mask-wearing in their stores, in case Butch & Sundance make a comeback.
For sure.
NY State needs a Gretchen Whittmer. Hochul and (you need God in your life) Adams need replacing.
I ship Whitmer.
One of those posts I hate to “like.” (Because I hate that it needs even to be written.)
Well put, Roy.
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.
Just thinking back to a decade or so back when the chuds were really really into zombie apocalypse stuff and you knew damn well it wasn't really zed they wanted to unload on so much as their Usual Suspects.
Usual Suspects R US
"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." My experience as well
Bernhard Goetz, anyone?
You gotta look on the bright side -
Is it really a bad thing that all this shit talk keeps the Rubes home in Cousinfuck Hollow?
It's not just the folks in Cousinfuck. A dozen years or so ago an acquaintance of my wife's, a nice lady who worked at Sears, received a promotion into management and had to go to Chicago to the Sears headquarters for training. Being simple people from the suburbs of Dayton her and her husband lost their shit about having to go to the murder capital of the world. They were really freaked because she was flying up and couldn't take a gun with her. She said something about staying at home and shooting herself so at least someone wouldn't steal her purse. Being Rough and Ready Suburban people, used to living off the land and fending for themselves they came up with a plan that involved the husband driving up meeting her at her hotel and slipping her a handgun so she could be safe.
Everything went off according to plan until the next morning when she actually tried to enter this Sears world headquarters with her gun. Seems like security minded people like her and her husband would figure out that the Sears world headquarters in the murder capital of the world would have metal detectors at the door.
She was sent home and a month or so later got a job working at the Bath and Body works store at the other end of the mall from the Sears.
The mall closed a few years ago I don't know where she's at now.
so traumatized she retreated from the material plane and got her to a gunnery.
While exploring the wide world of podcasting a couple years back, I happened across one from the "tactical awareness" crowd - you know, the fuckers with the custom quick-draw holsters and the stupid acronyms and all the mall ninja bullshit, and for once I'M the one thinking about how I could never live like that. (No, I didn't listen to it, but the guy's show notes were bad enough.)
I've heard this can be a problem for soldiers returning home from combat, how constant vigilance and "keep your head on a swivel" keeps you from getting killed in wartime but is not so helpful back home. Maybe it's satisfying to hear from someone that no, it's everyone else who is crazy, you're the normal one.
I really don't think this is meant for trained, experienced veterans, so much as milwank cosplayers with Death Wish fantasies.
Hearted for Milwank
It has been my experience that people who genuinely do prefer living in rural areas don't give a shit what happens or how people live their lives in cities. They like the quiet, simple life with plenty of room to roam around. And they view people who constantly obsess about the evil cities as weirdos who need to get a life.
me too, mostly. i’ve had the opportunity to live in cities, towns and deep in the woods - most folks keep to themselves (maybe moreso in the woods) and those what gets in yer face are seldom.
Just don't drive up the wrong driveway or ring the wrong doorbell.
I don't want to make the mirror-image mistake of the right-wingers and assume every trip into Rural America ends like Deliverance.
“you’ve got your good things and I’ve got mine”
when you sing in the radiator everything is fine…
I have no clue as to the plot of Eraserhead, but I remember more scenes from that movie than most I’ve seen.
The ritual pulling out of the suitcase from under the bed is one of the great slapsticky scenes in film history.
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?
I try to remember some version of your point at all times and feel bad those times i forget. Thanks for the reminder.
What a great example of the principle that we never know what burdens other people are carrying, so we should try to be tolerant and gentle with each other whenever possible. Thank you for the reminder.
The guy used too much force, anyone who learns martial arts learns not to use certain moves because they can be deadly. But I think the pile-on is unwarranted. There are people on subways doing very threatening things--pushing people on the tracks etc. I don't think the guy got on the subway intending to kill a black person. He probably should not have intervened at all, tho we don't have all the evidence yet for why he and the other men on the train (who weren't white) also intervened. I think making this into a racial drama is just b.s. frankly. It's a very sad situation, and what's to blame is really our mental health system or LACK of one. Anyone who's ever gone to a mental hospital knows how useless they are. They keep you for a week, dope you up, then let you out again--with little to no followup. Obviously Neely was not getting the help he needed, and it's an easy out to just blame misplaced vigilantism for why he died.
"Misplaced vigilantism" is the proximate cause of Neely's death, I'm sorry to say. I have no intention of absolving the killer for that. There are structural problems & inequities aplenty, including lack of care options for houseless humans & a dearth of mental care facilities. And they put Neely and thousands of others at risk of harm.
Trump & other RWers are gibbering about placing the houseless into concentration camps. How's that for a possible contributor to this act of vigilantism?
Per the NY Daily News, buried way down in a story about his grieving father losing track of Neely, who was autistic and lost it after the murder of his mother: "The NYPD busted Neely 42 times across the last decade and he had a documented mental health history with police, with his most recent arrest in November 2021 for slugging a 67-year-old female stranger in the face. A warrant for his arrest on felony assault charges was issued on Feb. 23." So yes, he could unfortunately be randomly violent. A tragic life for sure.... So all this should be weighed before we just call out the vigilante for being a racist murderer
I went back and reread what Roy wrote just to be sure, but he's not calling the murderer* a racist. But the people who are cheering this on from a distance? They're not being threatened, no need to make a split-second decision about whether someone is dangerous, so what's their excuse? You don't think racial bigotry plays a role in that? Roy does ask what the response would be if the races of the murderer and victim were reversed, but that's not a question about the motives of the murderer himself, it's about how some people react to the murder. And it's a fair question.
*The examiner has ruled this a homicide.
Homicide is different from being charged for murder, which requires intent.... so it's more likely some kind of manslaughter charge if he is charged. We don't know if they were threatened yet, so all of this snap judgement on social media is just people fronting on a tragedy. I am reacting to the headlines calling the vigilante a "murderer" and the head of the City Council calling it a race crime. That's just bogus and inflammatory. We don't know the background of the vigilante, if he's a Trumper or whatever... I know people see the choke and it echos the Floyd and Garner murders and I'm not defending that as a practice. I'm objecting to folks making broad conclusions without the facts
"We don't know if they were threatened yet"
Not sure what you mean by this, isn't there a video of what happened?
There's video of him being restrained, which includes video of a black man kneeling on his body while the white man has him in a chokehold. What I haven't seen is any video of what led up to them taking these actions. Are they just gung-ho marines who took it upon themselves to police this unruly person? Or was he seriously threatening people. Again, I'm not defending a chokehold. What I am questioning is the rush to pile on and to view this as a racist event. If a crazy white person was on the train threatening to harm people, I do actually think these guys would have done something similar, if that's their MO...But again, we don't have the facts so I'm against the rush to judgement, and also the refusal to look more deeply at the multitude of factors that led up to this guy going off on the train. It's easy to in a sense scapegoat the chokehold guy and call him a murderer. How about all those who did not provide Neely with the help he needed, so he would not have been so desperate that day?
I remember this discussion from the Kyle Rittenhouse case.
There's colloquial speech and there's legalese.
Guy strangled him for 15 minutes.
I say it was murder and I say to hell with it.
This is where it all went wrong for Derek Chauvin, a cop can shoot someone and claim it was a split-second decision and juries are reluctant to second-guess, but strangle someone with your knee in a process that takes 9 minutes and it's natural to ask, "You could have stopped, why didn't you?"
"I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it."
Oh, we know goddamn well what happens in the opposite situation, because, as I pointed out, this "we don't have all the facts" bullshit ALWAYS happens in cases like this, but NEVER in the case of violence by "a criminal". It's always "we need to see the video" in the former but "THUGS LIKE THIS MUST BE ERADICATED" in the latter. Every. Goddamn. Time.
Actual AP headline after the murder of Ralph Yarl:
"Can a doorbell ring justify a ‘stand your ground’ shooting?"
Because when a white person is the murderer, suddenly everything is a third-year law school exam question.
Forget it, Steve, it’s AP.
Alt. version:
Forget it, Steve, it’s a headline in the form of a question.
Also, it's a little weird to use the sad circumstances of Neely's life as a reason to give his killer the benefit of the doubt.
Circumstances which his killer was not aware of, not having a copy of tomorrow's New York Daily News on his person at the time of the murder.
"Oops, forgot my telepathy pills! Guess I should just strangle him."
"Weird, this future copy of the NY Daily News tells me all about my victim's criminal history... oh wow, it also says 'Dewey Beats Truman'... Cool."
The Duchess is scared and grasping for any straw to beat back that fear. It's kind of pathetic
I can totally understand being scared in the same situation, but it seems we've now moved on to "Because I'm scared, I'm justified in murdering someone. " Which used to be reserved for cops, for whom "I was in fear of my life" were the magic "get out of jail free" words (we've made so much progress on the issue of police shootings that this now only works 99 times out of 100.)
Then "Stand Your Ground" extended "Scared = Permission to murder" to everyone, or at least everyone paler than a brown paper bag.
The same thing happened with Kyle Rittenhouse.
That's not what I did. I referenced his sad circumstances because they are indeed tragic--his mom was murdered! And now him... that is abysmal. But I quoted the Daily News to give his arrest record and history of engaging in at least one violent, unprompted assault against a stranger to suggest there is a POSSIBILITY that he was being threatening enough for these guys on the train to feel they had to intervene. They intervened to protect themselves and other passengers. They didn't get on the train intending to jump and tackle a black man. That said, a trained marine should have known better than to use a chokehold. The black guy is kneeling on him and others helping restrain him and others watching...why didn't they tell him to stop? It was no doubt a chaotic situation, so all this rubbernecking strikes me as a lot of virtue signalling till we know the facts.
"That's not what I did." Sure it was. I was responding to the plain meaning of the words you wrote.
And in your attempt to restate, I see you focus on "the POSSIBILITY that he was being threatening enough" based on his history -- which supports my reading that you only brought up his "sad circumstances" to justify his murder.
Now you say those of us who are appalled at this killing are "virtue signaling." (Boy, *there's* a tell!) Since you're working overtime to justify his death, I'd say you're signaling for virtue's opposite.
No that's not what I did. I brought up Neely's sad circumstances to acknowledge them--which you did not--and then cited his past arrest record, which included unprovoked violent behavior. I looked that up precisely to see if there any past history of violence on his part that might explain why these guys on the train felt they needed to intervene so aggressively. I.e. if he was ever known to be violent. That doesn't mean necessarily that he was violent in this case...we don't have those facts yet that I can see. But it does suggest that he could have been acting in a threatening fashion, as some witnesses said. I too am appalled at his killing and saddened by his whole life story--and now wven more saddened by folks who want to overlook that history, when it's obvious that Neely was failed so many times before. Writing this as someone who was once nominated for a Pulitzer for deadline feature writing on the homeless crisis for the Village Voice. Been at this a long time ya know... Don't appreciate the rush to pigeonhole me.
Yeah, The NY Daily News, there's a reliable unbiased outlet. 🙄
You do know the papers do enough victim-blaming & digging up criminal histories whenever Black men are killed by white men (including cops of course)? I mean I guess I understand you're trying to fill in the whole story -- but this is a very structural & socially-conditioned response to the murders of Black men.
How does this make it OK to kill him? Neeley was not actually threatening the murderer as far as I can tell and the murderer could not have known about the assault charges. I think you may want to justify your own feelings of fear and hatred
I agree with you wholeheartedly about our failure as a society to adequately meet the needs of people suffering from mental health issues. Which is why I object when many if not most cities peel off more and more funds from much-needed social services and instead redirect those monies toward more policing.
The racism issue here doesn’t need to be about personal animus. I have no idea what was in heart of the vigilante or whether he would have acted in the same way if Neely was a white man, or even if the vigilante himself believes he would have acted in the same way if Neely was white. I don’t see that as the most important factor.
How racism plays a role here is in how this killing is being framed based on who used force and who was the victim, on how politicians and the press react to it, and of course in how conservatives champion these kinds of incidents when the “avenger” is a white man who takes down a perceived Black threat. And very few things in life are 100% or 0% racist when white and Black people are involved, more often than not racism is one of several factors in the mix and plays a greater or lesser role depending on the specifics of the situation.
Not that this is new or anything, but we certainly are getting a heaping helping of "oh no the homeless are threatening us (and our property values" these days. I don't know if this man was homeless, certainly he was having a mental health crisis, and it feels like we are being trained to fear and hate. More and more moves to punish them or push them away, toward somewhere (anywhere) else. These obviously are not solutions to the root problem. The kicker is the most ruthless promoters of the fear and loathing are the same people who claim to stan the Prince of Peace, old Jesu himself. Who had a "thing" about lost and unlucky.
Absolutely, which is why I have no respect for, and give no credibility to, the faith of white conservative Christians. They specialize in pasting a thin decoupage of Jesus on top of their authoritarian/fascist ideology, which is really their true religion.
And yeah, the victim blaming of the mentally ill is increasing. I mean, of course it’s unsettling and even occasionally frightening to be on a bus or in a subway car with someone who is having an episode. But none of these people have deliberately chosen to have mental health issues. Had they been asked as children what they wanted to do with their lives, they would not have said “I want to be the screaming guy on the subway who has pissed his pants.” The lack of help and services is a systemic failure based on who our society prioritizes and who is expendable.
Don't know if you're familiar with the term "less dead", but it refers to murder (especially serial killer) victims who are POC and/or poor and as a result are less likely to be investigated seriously by the police. Suppose that you could call this attitude towards the mentally ill as "less alive".
Been in Inpatient a couple times, and, while being on the unit locked in is miserable and thank god it's only five days (but it seems longer), I was never "doped up". Got proper meds, got some CBT/DBT education, got a month or so of outpatient group, and reference to an ongoing treatment plan. But there's no way an intervention like that cures what's maybe years of untreated mental illness, any more than an ER visit makes up for a lack of preventative care. And for whatever reason (and I Have Some Words on the subject) we feel in this country that intervention is good enough, and it ain't.
We like our solutions simple and cheap. Bootstraps!
You forgot final.
Was that hospital stay in NYC? Because from what I've seen, there is often very little aftercare offered to people when they leave the hospital and they received no individual therapy while IN the hospital--just craft classes and group therapy that was useless for people in severe crisis.
I think that's true everywhere. In fact, you probably have a better shot at aftercare in NYC than a lot of other places. It's just not something we're willing to invest in.
Um, duh. I’m a total idiot, I guess. What did the word “throw” mean in that context?
(slang, idiomatic, intransitive) to fight, incite to fight, or approach with the intent to fight; to make a stand.
Ah, you're more street-wise than I am, my experience of New York City, based mostly on multiple viewings of Guys and Dolls would have led me to respond, "Sorry, I forgot my dice."
What, you don't carry your math rocks with you at all times?
He got thrown outta the club when he tossed a 20-sided die. ‘Cause NOBODY wants D&D players in a respectable establishment.
Well, I'm just gonna take my dodecahedron and go home, then.
I'm going to throw my tetrahedron down where Bern will walk on it barefoot. That'll show him!
Thank you, Bern! I figured it meant something like that. But it was such a terrific anecdote I wanted to make sure
Diminutive of "throw down."
As in "throw down".
Not Travis Bickle; these people are D-fens (Michael Douglas) from 1993's "Falling Down." "An ordinary man frustrated with the various flaws he sees in society begins to psychotically and violently lash out against them," according to the pitch. The fact that Douglas is dressed like Dilbert makes it even more spot on.
Isn't one of the things that sets him off that he can't get breakfast at a McDonalds past 11am?
Wouldn't have to worry these days! Now, Wendy's, on the other hand...
Maybe, but at least at Mickie D’s you get served by an adorable little third grader.
I just had to click on that "Biden wants to abolish suburbs" link because What The Fuck, and I won't bother you with the "argument", I'll just note it was written in June of 2020 and writer Stanley Kurtz is pretty obvious in his desperate attempt to stop suburban voters - and especially suburban women - from fleeing the Republican party. Judging by the results of the 2020 election and the more recent Supreme Court race in Wisconsin (where the Milwaukee suburbs still went Republican but by much smaller margins than in the past) Stanley's scare-mongering isn't working.
Even suburban women want bodily autonomy.
"Ah, now that they're coming for ME, I think I get it! Hey, where did all the Jews and Trade Unionists go, could use a little help here!"
Mistah Kurtz, he braindead.
The new Communist regimentation trope is the "5-Minute City", which, if I understand right, is a planned city where everything is organized so as to make it accessible in 5 minutes - walking, biking, mass transit. Presumably this will make it easier to take all our possessions, have us wear shapeless grey clothes in shapeless grey dorms, force us to eat bugs and soylent, and brainwash whatever of our children they don't confiscate for adrenochrome production. I, as a long time cyclist and shitty mass transit victim, think the concept is cool, but what the hell do I know?
You forgot turning every last parking space into a trendy little cafe or pickle ball court.
I always chuckle at this concept, because this is the majority-Black South Shore neighborhood I grew up in. Here it is forty years later, and so-called intellectuals are just now getting to this?
Pretty sure the "reasoning" here goes like this: "Hey, we're losing support in the suburbs, what can we do?" And because "Stop being a fucking asshole" isn't an option, the strategy is to look around for anything the Biden administration has been done that could be misrepresented in a way that might be SCAAAARY to white people in the 'burbs. Judging by how the last few elections went, it's not working, LOL.
Roy, you've done it again - said so many of the same things I am thinking right now. It really feels like an attack on my city, all these fucking attention-craving knobheads and bellends with money and power (or aspire to have money and power) that recognize nothing beyond their own terror of the unknown.
It IS an attack on your city -- the same bombardment they've been doing for decades.
God, so much to unpack with this one. I was talking to my therapist yesterday about how much I just want to GET THE HELL OUT of this neighborhood and the creeps and how I felt so racist for saying that because it's something my Dad or sister would say (remember - they're MAGA conservatives) and she pointed out (paraphrasing) "You're not doing it because of the ethnicity of your neighbors, but the crime, right?". I have a hard time explaining my family's attitude when they (rarely) come over, but you can sense the paranoia even if they've never SAID anything, and I know damn well that they're expecting trouble entirely BECAUSE of the Black and Puerto Rican folks. So even if the "how can you live like that" is never articulated, it's there, and I was afraid it'd slopped over onto me.
Hey, back in the 90s I was living just a couple of blocks from a notorious housing project in a racially and economically mixed neighborhood. You can bet I didn't go walking through the housing project and none of my black neighbors would have called me racist for it. In that neighborhood at that time, it did pay to be aware of young men in groups because gang violence was an issue. It sucks to live in an environment where you always have to be on your guard - it literally keeps your cortisol level high all the time. It's not racist to get out of a stressfull environment. It is racist to be so stressed by the fact of other races existing.
Oh, having been abused by father and schoolmates for years, I have a constant low-level paranoia and heightened awareness as it is, but it's nothing like the pants-pissing fear chuds apparently consider appropriate. As I always say, I've had more problems from the assholes living in this house than I've ever had out on the street.
Roy, I know you probably don't have any control over it, but the Substack app is truncating longer sentences that have hyperlinks, and it troubles our strumpot when we click through to see what the rest of the sentence might be about and it's a hidden paywalled article. Doesn't happen with the email version.
Can you show me what that looks like because I don't see that at all. Also, what browser do you use?