December video, ft Kate Kooyman is ready, + some thoughts on the Army-Navy game (kind of)
The video of our December gathering with Kate Kooyman is ready!
Jamelle Bouie is a columnist at the New York Times. He recently posted some analysis of the New York subway case that concluded with the acquittal of Daniel Penny, who had choked a homeless man, Jordan Neely, to death.
Neely was acting in a threatening manner on the subway. That does not seem to be in dispute. Penny was seen by many as a good Samaritan who helped to protect other passengers. It does seem clear that Penny had no intention of attacking Neely, but decided that the risk was too great to do nothing.
Jordan Neely, the homeless man who was killed, suffered from mental illness. This is also not in dispute. Was he a legitimate threat to the passengers? The other passengers seem to think so. Ultimately, a jury of Penny’s peers decided that this was a tragedy, but not a crime. I trust their decision. This was a tragedy. But Bouie sees something more sinister here, and I fear that he is correct.
This past weekend, Trump and Vance invited Daniel Penny, the man who choked Jordan Neely to death, to sit with them in a luxury box at the Army-Navy football game. Some conservatives were outraged over the fact that Penny was charged at all with criminally negligent homicide. This came after some liberals complained that the incident was a form of vigilantism that should not be tolerated. It should be noted that Neely, the homeless man who was killed, was black, and Penny, a former Marine, is white.
Bouie explains the deeper symbolism of this incident, which is ultimately about the elimination of what Bouie terms “social undesirables,” people who do not belong. People like Neely, a black homeless man, deserve to be harassed, coerced, and eliminated whenever possible. Penny did what Trump, Vance, and many in the MAGA movement would like to do: He inflicted violence on a “social undesirable.” It’s a provocative analysis. Give it a listen.