We’re living in a world gone mad, as evidenced by some “new normals” that Democrats are proposing that are not normal at all.
Take, for instance, some suggestions we heard in the aftermath of the death of 30-year-old homeless man, Jordan Neely, who died on May 1st after being subdued by multiple passengers on a New York City subway for allegedly behaving in an aggressive and threatening manner, saying he was hungry and didn’t care if he got arrested.
Prior to the incident, Neely, who was a well-known fixture on NYC streets and subways and had an extensive arrest record of over 40 arrests, with four of them for alleged assault.
24-year-old Marine Daniel Penny, seen in the video clip putting Neely in what some have called a “submission hold” or “headlock,” has been charged by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg with second-degree manslaughter over Neely’s death, though some witnesses have described Penny as a reluctant “hero” who only intervened after Neely became more erratic and unpredictable.
In a commentary on what happened, far-left “Majority Report” co-host Emma Vigeland actually suggested that people who were being victimized should check their privilege and feel more sympathetic for the plight of the person harassing/assaulting them than they should for themselves. Incredibly, Vigeland talked about how she herself was allegedly a victim of a mentally unwell subway passenger assaulting her, but that her heart went out to the person who hit her in the course of an outburst.
“My fear is not the primary object we should be focusing on right now,” Vigeland suggested. “It’s the fact that this person is in pain.”
“And so, like, the politics of dehumanization, privileges, the bourgeois kind of concern of people’s, like, immediate discomfort in this narrow, narrow instance, as opposed to larger humanity and life. It’s really freaking twisted,” she continued.
In her reaction to Neely’s death, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) insinuated that mentally ill people have the right to intimidate and harass others.
“Neely’s last words were literally about how going to jail was easier than accessing the social safety net support to get back on his feet and lead a life,” she tweeted. “Yet leaders want to raise his record as if that warrants a public execution on the subway?”
Though multiple witnesses have described how Neely was acting on the train, Rev. Al Sharpton stirred the pot during the eulogy he gave for Neely, claiming “Jordan was not annoying someone on the train” and that people like Neely “don’t need abuse, they need help.”
While everyone would agree that people with mental health issues need help, what’s astonishing is that there is disagreement on whether it should be ok for people to defend themselves when someone else is going through a mental episode to the point they are threatening others and perhaps putting them in danger.
I like to consider myself a compassionate person, but I’m pretty sure the first thing I’m going to think about if I’m on a bus or train and someone is harassing me is not “I feel so bad for this person and what they’re going through on the inside.”
I’m going to do what I can to defend myself and also pray that the person is apprehended before they can hurt me or someone else.
If the Emma Vigelands and the AOCs of this world want to sit back and take being abused by someone who is mentally ill in the name of political correctness and wokeness, they can go right ahead. But for pretty much everyone else, the survival instinct is understandably going to kick in, and they are going to do what they need to do to protect themselves and others.
As they should.
North Carolina native Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah and is a media analyst and regular contributor to RedState and Legal Insurrection