"He scared the living daylights out of everybody." The woke left damns Daniel Penny for trying to save others from a clearly disturbed black man. Would they laud him if the colors were reversed?
‘The system’ unquestionably failed Jordan Neely. The clearly mentally disturbed Michael Jackson impersonator with a lengthy rap sheet shouldn’t have been on the New York City subway that fateful May afternoon. Or anywhere else. He needed to be off the streets.
He had the right to live, but others have the right to ride the subway without fear for their lives.
A black man went crazy on the F Train, a white man intervened, and America instantaneously transformed into a nation of mind-readers who knew exactly what the white man, Daniel Penny, was thinking as he brought Jordan Neely down in a chokehold reminiscent of George Floyd nearly five years ago. Except Penny used his arm rather than his knee.
And it was all, like, white supremacy. Thus spoke social media and later, the prosecution.
I don’t know if anyone on site took a poll of the political views of the people who were in the subway car at the time, but the ones who spoke to the media were 100% clearly afraid of Neely, regardless of their race.
Maybe you have to have been in a situation like that to understand how non-partisan people can become when some lunatic is threatening them.
Due process is for wussies
I’ve been riding the Toronto subway for twenty years and the scary encounters I’ve had—none directed at me—compel me to empathize with the commuters on that hellish day, in a city with many times more mentally unbalanced people.
The Toronto Transit Commission system has become a more perilous journey than when I first moved here.
I only remember a handful of crazies terrifying the passengers. Like, four racist (non-white) ranters, none of which resulted in violence, thankfully. Just some intimidation, aggressive language about ‘white POS’s’, and man-spreading displays.
I remember a couple of wild-eyed young people, clearly strung out, huddled together against the subway doors, uttering random, unfocused threats. I got off at the next stop and ran to the next car. They were white, in case you were wondering.
When someone acts up I don’t make eye contact. I pretend to read the book I was reading a moment ago. I plan how I’ll react and what I’ll say if he directs his anger at me.
I remember a Buddhist story I read about an observed violent man neutralized by a kindly older man who responded to his aggression with kindness and friendliness.
I guess Daniel Penny didn’t read that book. I’m not sure he’d have remembered it if he had. Marines are trained to handle trouble their own way and their job is to neutralize the threat by reacting first and thinking later, unlike us civvies pondering what we’ll say and do if the miscreant turns on us. Military recruits are trained to perform many different threat situations over and over until their body reacts before their brain stops them.
My scariest encounter was a few years ago on the bus when a man directed his aggression at a woman sitting behind me and higher up. I don’t know why he picked her out but he got right in her face and directly threatened her. The terrified, high-pitched answers she gave clearly indicated she was scared. Fortunately, he didn’t hurt anyone.
Toronto, like most large cities, has gone a bit mad since the pandemic. I’m always aware. I keep a small can of hair spray in my purse, and my Mighty Keychain O’ Death close at hand. TTC passengers and drivers have been shot, assaulted, and slashed. A woman was set on fire by some out-of-it dude rather a lot like that poor homeless soul brutally burnt alive in, you guessed it, NYC just before Christmas.
Consider all the preposterous action movies Americans consume, where we cheer on caricature heroes taking down the bad guys on their own and never suffering the consequences of their egregiously criminal behavior. No need to involve the law; the bleeding hearts will just let Serial Pedo-Ax Rapist go because he was diaper-trained too soon, and Stallone or Schwartzy or Van Dammit will ride off into the bright morning with his new lady love on the back of his motorcycle, because the law absolutely won’t arrest him for hanging a bad guy suspected of several murders, but never given due process, who the renegade hangs on a giant iron hook in a factory and then pushes into a furnace.
Due process is for liberal wussies, yet the American moral compass spins like it’s atop a magnetite quarry when confronted with real life ‘good guy/bad guy’ scenarios.
Armchair critics
Penny was found not guilty of criminally negligent homicide and absolutely needed to go to trial. It’s what happens when you kill someone, however accidentally.
Of course, for the armchair critics whose critical theory has already taught them everything they need to know about life, L’Affaire Neely/Penny was a cinch to parse.
Penny is white. Neely was black. So of course it was Strange Fruit.
I wonder how many of those riders celebrated Christmas last month thanks to Penny.
His chokehold was ruled the cause of Neely’s death, the prosecution portraying it as a racial killing, and the defense as protection of others. Social media, of course, didn’t bother waiting for actual facts.
As the trial progressed, one Black Lives Matter activist threatened riots if Penny was acquitted, which he was. The riots never materialized, but Americans do believe if they don’t like the way democracy or justice works, they can throw destructive collective world-class tantrums. The left did it during the Burning of Minneapolis and the right did it several months later when their boy lost the election.
Yet it’s clear from the videos of Penny’s six-minute hold on Neely that the passengers held hostage believed Neely was a threat. He was on a NYC Top 50 list of homeless people in most desperate need of help. He’d been been arrested forty-two times, and had attacked other subway riders before, including a 67-year-old woman. He was depressed and schizophrenic. He needed serious help, and I understand the left’s sympathy for him.
But only lounge-chair liberals can afford to damn Penny when, if any of them had been on that Subway Ride From Hell, might have sat back clutching their chests with relief at the sight of Penny holding down the threat.
"He scared the living daylights out of everybody,” is how one woman described Neely.
Privileged white and Black Lives Matter social critics, both programmed to arbitrate guilt by virtue of skin color the way an extra finger or third nipple once evidenced witchcraft, took to social media to jump on Penny for ‘murdering’ a black man, while pretending he wasn’t a threat. Or that he’d have been just as terrifying if he was white.
Damning Daniel Penny is a luxury belief that will never impact those who never ride public transit. Americans endlessly carp about skyrocketing crime, and police and justice officials who do nothing, but then hyperventilate when someone steps forward to defend others.
I’ve mentally rehearsed what I’d do if someone on the TTC was in real danger. I’d like to think I would try and do something. Maybe jump the guy or whack him with my keychain.
Maybe I’d just sit there pissing my pants. Unless he was in my face. I might try Buddhism. I might try kindness and compassion. Or I might shoot hair spray into his face, which won’t permanently harm his eyes or choke him to death. It will likely get me arrested.
But I won’t be dead.
What his childhood was like or what bad breaks he got will be irrelevant when it’s life vs death, me vs the saber-toothed tiger or the hostile tribesman from a neighboring cave.
If you possess a basic understanding of human survival, the Daniel Penny case, with no evidence of membership in a white supremacist organization or angry screeds against black people somewhere on a blog, was pretty clear-cut. Whatever his story, no one present disagreed with the narrative that Neely was terrifying. The jury agreed.
Contrast it, then, to the social media treatment of Luigi Mangione, a more photogenic hero than the curly-haired, angular-looking, thin-lipped Daniel Penny, who does look like an extra in Black Klansman. Mangione, whose darker Mediterranean looks play more into the social justice image of the dusky-skinned Hero taking down The Man, especially those then-terrorist eyebrows that must make Columbia University hearts skip a beat, is worshipped and lusted after for murdering a rich, privileged white man in an industry highly unpopular with most Americans, who neither attacked nor threatened others, but simply walked to an investors meeting.
Oh, Brian Thompson was evil because of denied coverage and ionospheric healthcare costs and little babies dying of leukemia? Well then, Jordan Neely deserved what he got because he had spent his life committing crimes, assaulting old ladies and threatened to kill someone on his last day.
Right?
The woke left luv Luigi, also, because he killed someone they can’t stand. They hate Daniel Penny because he killed a black man, infallibly an angel because, black. The woke right hates both victims.
Jordan Neely deserves our compassion. He shouldn’t have died the way he did, and the failure is shared by us all. The problem of the mentally unwell and homeless goes far beyond anything we can comprehend. Maybe the City of New York should have invested more in mental health care, but how do you get people who can’t be forced to avail themselves of it? How about the parents who raise children they never wanted, who fail to provide love and support they may themselves not understand?
If Americans had the collective moral understanding of a five-year-old, they wouldn’t damn Daniel Penny, average-looking white guy, but instead a full-of-himself self-important kid who looks like he belongs on Survivor.
Penny said something on Fox News that really resonated, something I might think about if I’m in Penny’s position some day. Would he, Jeanine Piro asked him, do the same thing if faced with a similar situation one day? To which Penny replied, emotionally, “Yah. Totally. I would not be able to live with myself if I didn’t do anything in that situation and someone got hurt. I would feel guilty for the rest of my life.”
The few times I’ve come close to death I’ve thought, “This will kill Mom if I die!” But both my parents are gone now. Knowing what I know—how violent some people are on the TTC, or on the street, where a homeless guy here was murdered by eight teenage girls a few years ago, that few if any people will try and help. I’m 61 and I want to think I would help. If I died, I might save a probably younger person attacked, and I’d feel like the world’s biggest chickens—t if I didn’t do anything when maybe I could have (although, not taking on a six-foot-four dude with a knife). It might be worth it knowing I could face my Maker saying, “I failed, but I really tried.”
Then again, I might go down cringing and mewling like a dying kitten drowning in my own blood. You never know what you will do in a fight for your life until and unless you’re there.
I hope I never find out. I hope you don’t either. But I hope there’s a Daniel Penny there to help.
Because I will fight for him in court, and damn the next media hottie Death Wish wannabe action hero.
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