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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30402 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 8, 2023

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Culture War in Ireland

The Enoch Burke saga is coming to a close, with the courts deciding not to prosecute him for trespass for repeatedly showing up at the school he was fired from over a dispute about gender pronouns (he aggressively questioned the principal on the matter and she claimed it was assault, it's not clear what really happened), though his fines have reached 74,000 euro and he has already spent time in jail for contempt of court. The Burke family are conservative activists so this wasn't just about him trying to get his job back, he was trying to draw attention to the issue and he succeeded massively given that this is the first big news item I can think of regarding this issue in Ireland. The principal has apparently quit in the meantime so I guess he can count that as a personal victory.

There was some violence around a refugee encampment this week as right-wing protestors clashed with socialists. A Turkish man came out and shouted 'this is my country' as the right-wingers were tearing down 'No War But Class War' signs and swung at them with a metal pole before getting beaten up. Apparently the Turk is deemed a terrorist by the Turkish government and he spent some time in Poland before coming to Ireland. It looks like the encampment has since been destroyed as the right-wingers burned it down in the night. Not the first time people have burned down asylum seeker accomodation but the other instances were in small towns rather than in the middle of Dublin. The police weren't present for any of this but I'm guessing we'll see some arrests down the line, though a lot of the people involved look like minors so I doubt there'll be real jailtime.

Sinn Féin have dropped their pledge to withdraw from NATO and EU defence agreements if they ever get into power. As far as I am aware all big parties are now pro-NATO and Ireland might end up joining at some point. Neutrality was once something we took pride in, and something that the Irish left valued especially, but the malleability in response to current trends that was exemplified by the lockdowns seems to only be accelerating. One consequence of joining NATO might be British troops training in Ireland, maybe we'll even see the Parachute Regiment show their face under a Sinn Féin government. I see this scenario as being much more inflammatory than the Brexit border issue but that risk isn't discussed in the media. The paramilitaries are basically incompetent nowadays but having obvious and hated targets appear can only help them.

A senator has spoken out against the new hate speech bill. Senators don't really have any power in Ireland (we had a referendum a few years back on abolishing the Seanad altogether) so it probably won't come to anything, but it's certainly another tributary in what could become an organised opposition to the way things are going.

A senator has spoken out against the new hate speech bill.

I went to a protest today organised by the Irish Freedom Party. (I've never voted for one of their candidates in a general election before, but given that every major party, including the Greens for whom I usually vote, has backed this piece of legislation, I may have no choice come the next general election.)

The more I hear about this bill the more it draconian it sounds. Literally any police officer, regardless of rank, can tell a judge "I believe so-and-so possesses materials likely to promote violence or hatred against a person or group on the basis of their protected characteristics" and the judge can grant a search warrant. This search warrant gives the police license to search the person's home (using force if necessary), search the property of any person present in that person's home, force the person in question to hand over the passwords for any electronic devices in their possession, and seize anything they so choose from that person's home.

What I find most frustrating about this is that I'm quite confident that if I told an Irish person, in 2019, that Trump was trying to pass a piece of legislation intended to grant sweeping powers to the police to anyone suspected of collusion with Islamic terrorist groups, they'd say it was grotesquely Orwellian insanity. But because this legislation is being proposed with the ostensible goal of combatting racism and transphobia, the response has been a collective shrug (there were a mere ~500 people at the protest today). "Just don't be a cunt and you'll be fine" according to one denizen of /r/ireland.

I'll have to look into the Irish Freedom Party. I was pleasantly surprised with how intelligent Justin Barret seemed in his interview with Keith Woods but a National Party protest doesn't seem like something you'd want to risk showing your face at.

Some of the speakers went a little off-topic and the party as a whole does seem to be anti-immigrant, anti-refugee and anti-LGBT (not just T-sceptical).

Who is Keith Woods?

"Just don't be a cunt and you'll be fine"

First they came for the Communists; but I was not a Communist, so I stayed silent....

I'd have thought that the more poignant counter would be "imagine if the British did something similar pre-independence."

That parallel was repeatedly drawn by the speakers at the protest.

I think this is a big problem with Irish political tradition.

We have two main forms of immune system against bad policy: precedent, which up until recently was a strong conservative force in Irish politics (despite a revolution we kept the common law and many of the older British institutions), and an aversion to making the same mistakes that the British did.

We do criticise our own politicians for doing wrong, but still some threats just have no precedent in our history and we lack the general suspicion of government that allows the Americans to shout tyranny whenever the government crosses certain lines. If hate speech laws and whatever else the government passes in the next few years are going to lead to some soft form of tyranny, it will have to be a painful lesson we learn for the first time rather than something we wouldn't allow to happen in the first place.

And for some reason I can’t fathom the leopard ate my face!

I was following the Irish protests against asylum seekers on various Telegram channels for months. It was something rarely reported in the media but it must have scared TPTB, hence the draconian anti-speech bill.

I think Irish nationalism suffered from two main flaws. First, it was based on Catholicism against the English Protestants, in a world where Pope Francis is trying to outdo himself at every turn in how liberal he can be. Second, it was based on an ethnicity which, let's be frank, barely has any distinction from the English at this point. Even the language war was lost ages ago.

So the old rationales for Irish nationalism have faded one by one. It will take time for the Irish to re-tool and re-adjust. Another fact that needs to be acknowledged is that Ireland has taken in a lot of European migrants. So we may be at the start of a new "melting pot" in Ireland, where various white ethnicities meld into one larger white identity, the way it happened in America during the early 20th century. I suspect this process has just begun and will need time to play itself out.

Even the language war was lost ages ago.

The language was lost even before Ireland gained independence, Irish nationalism is based more on a hope of reviving it rather than asserting it as a fact that already distinguishes us.

So we may be at the start of a new "melting pot" in Ireland, where various white ethnicities meld into one larger white identity, the way it happened in America during the early 20th century. I suspect this process has just begun and will need time to play itself out.

That may happen but the Poles especially are very patriotic and a lot of them either have plans to go back one day or have already done so as Poland catches up economically. They're also surprisingly disinterested in Irish politics, unlike white immigrants in the US who changed the political landscape the Eastern Europeans have mostly kept to themselves (not in daily life, but politically). Having the rights of citizens of an EU member state a lot of them don't even see the point in applying for citizenship.

I suspect most Poles will stay, though the wave of emigration has almost certainly stopped. Your point about EU membership superceding the need for citizenship is well-taken. It probably will act as a break of further rooting themselves. In a way that is a success of the European project, which aims for all Europeans to see the entire continent as their homeland.

I see this scenario as being much more inflammatory than the Brexit border issue but that risk isn't discussed in the media. The paramilitaries are basically incompetent nowadays but having obvious and hated targets appear can only help them.

Really? I could well be mistaken, but I was under the impression that, while not inclined to be particularly favourably disposed to the British armed forces, nor were the Irish notably supportive of nationalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, and the anti-British feeling was only virulent among northern nationalists, not especially any more among Irish themselves. Even if it weren't, these things can't exert influence forever. You'd have be, what, pushing 70 to be 18 at the time of Bloody Sunday?

the anti-British feeling was only virulent among northern nationalists, not especially any more among Irish themselves.

The two main political parties in Ireland are Fine Gael and Fianna Fail. They (or their predecessors) have been 1st and 2nd in every Irish Parliamentary election (Ireland uses PR) since independence, except for 2011 (when Labour pushed Fianna Fail into 3rd) and 2020 (when Sinn Fein, FF and FG all got about the same number of seats). A non-diaspora Irishman would be able to explain the true horror better than I, but their policies on social and economic issues are basically the same establishment centre-right slop. They are famously "as different as shit and shite". Why do two separate parties exist? Because FG historically favoured normalising relationships with the UK, whereas FF favoured developing an Irish national identity based on anti-Britishness - which hit peak cringe with De Valera's letter of condolence to Admiral Donitz after the death of Hitler.

Anti-Britishness is sufficiently controversial in Ireland that for most of the 20th century it was able to replace economic and social issues as the main driver of a two-party system - even though Duverger's Law says that Ireland shouldn't even have a two-party system at all because it uses PR.

They are famously "as different as shit and shite". Why do two separate parties exist?

"What is the difference between Fianna Fail and Fine Gael?"

"We win more elections" - W.B. O'Carolan, Fianna Fail senator.

I could well be mistaken but I was under the impression that, while not inclined to be particularly favourably disposed to the British armed forces, nor were the Irish notably supportive of nationalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, and the anti-British feeling was only virulent among northern nationalists, not especially any more among Irish themselves.

This is all true, but you don't need to be generally anti-British to have qualms about their armed forces. A couple of years back the Irish government ran into some embarrasment over a planned commemoration for the Royal Irish Constabulary and the Dublin Metropolitan Police. People in the Republic were still not comfortable with the idea of honouring a since dissolved organisation which committed atrocities 100 years ago, the government misjudged this and ended up cancelling the event. The memory of the British military is much fresher, and news stories about the extent of MI5 and British Army Intelligence Corps' collusion with paramilitaries during the Troubles still rile people up.

You'd have be, what, pushing 70 to be 18 at the time of Bloody Sunday?

That quote about 100 miles being a long distance in Europe and 100 years being a long time in America seems relevant. Some very old soldiers have been brought to court for their role in Bloody Sunday and the Ballymurphy massacre and that being in the news has brought a lot of memories back.

It looks like the encampment has since been destroyed as the right-wingers burned it down in the night. Not the first time people have burned down asylum seeker accomodation but the other instances were in small towns rather than in the middle of Dublin.

I cannot believe I, an Englishman, am looking with envious eyes and a hopeful heart at Ireland.

hate speech bill

Oh right, nevermind. Although I do remember it being widely unpopular? Not that that matters.

So for the unfamiliar, why is Ireland the leader in pushing back against the tide of refugees? What unique facet makes its population so much more willing to resist than other Euro nations? And how to we emulate, amplify and export that factor across the continent?

I cannot believe I, an Englishman, am looking with envious eyes and a hopeful heart at Ireland.

Regarding the street fights, with the rise of Antifa it didn't take long for right wingers to get violent too. A couple of hundred members of the National Party were attacked at a hotel last year during a conference with an acquaintance of mine being one of 5 hospitalised. Since then everyone knows a confrontation between the far left and right will probably get violent so they come prepared.

Arson has been going on for much longer. I can think of quite a few incidents in relation to this issue in the past few years. If a building has been earmarked for becoming an asylum centre, simply getting rid of the building works pretty well (especially in small towns where that might be the only suitable building for miles around).

A few examples: Kildare, 3 times in Donegal, Leitrim, Dublin.

Although I do remember it being widely unpopular?

Yes, 70% of people responded negatively in a public consultation on the law. When questioned, our Taoiseach (prime minister) said that the public consultation was likely swayed by organised groups of dissenters and dismissed it as unrepresentative, when asked why they did the public consultation in the first place if it was so flawed he answered "because this is a democracy" and that public consultations aren't the way things are decided.

Yes, 70% of people responded negatively in a public consultation on the law. When questioned, our Taoiseach (prime minister) said that the public consultation was likely swayed by organised groups of dissenters and dismissed it as unrepresentative, when asked why they did the public consultation in the first place if it was so flawed he answered "because this is a democracy" and that public consultations aren't the way things are decided.

I think he is right here. It's useful to know what public opinion is, but it would be a craven politician indeed who dropped a proposed law he believed in just because it wasn't popular. I do have sympathy for a lot of politicians these days because of this; when they follow public opinion at the expense of principle they are called careerists and unprincipled cowards, when they do what they think is right they are accused of being out of touch and ignoring public opinion, you can't win.

Yeah I mean it's a principle of representative democracy that politicians aren't just delegates carrying out their constituents wishes, but representatives with the right to go against the crowd and hopefully be vindicated by the time of the next election.

Still, it's an honest politician that says 'I know you don't like it but here's why we must do it', it's more worrying when they deny the fact that people oppose these policies in the first place, or paint everyone who does as far right (he didn't do that here but they've been using that one more and more).

Again though politicians are only reticent to boldly contradict public opinion and say that they are doing it because the public reaction is/would be so strong. So they always have to try their hardest to at least appear to be in line with public opinion, or at least appear to think they are in line with it, because if they don't even make the effort the electoral cost is so high.

I’ve thought about this question a lot.

There are a few ways to slice it.

  1. Generally defer to public opinion unless it is an area you feel really strongly on.

  2. Generally keep your own counsel unless public opinion is very much against your position.

  3. Some combo of the above.

I think here, with 70% against, there is a strong argument for No 2.

I suppose there's no correct answer, but once you start sacrificing your own judgement to public opinion you're on a slippery slope; surely the same principle that applies at 55% opposition applies at 70% or even 90%?

No, I think you can easily distinguish. At 55%, it is fair to describes public opinion as mixed with a slight lean. In contrast, at 70% there is a clear preference.

It reminds me of overriding a veto. You only need a bare majority to pass a law but a super majority to override a veto.

In lots of legal systems, there’s actually legal recognition of a difference between 50%+1 and a supermajority for certain purposes, so it’s fair to draw the distinction somewhere as part of democratic principles even if exactly where is arbitrary.

why is Ireland the leader in pushing back against the tide of refugees? What unique facet makes its population so much more willing to resist than other Euro nations?

Ireland has a really long history of ethnically driven non-state violence against outsiders. It's just that other countries with the same history have a GDP of something teen thousand a year, so it doesn't come up because "refugees" don't want to live in the balkans.

And how to we emulate, amplify and export that factor across the continent?

Make Croatia wealthy.

I follow Razib Khan on twitter who mostly writes about where different ethnicities came from.Which I do find fascinating.Anyway he has a long post on Ashkenzi Jews - who have had a huge impact on 20th century history - but were a footnote before.And thinking about it I don’t know another “people” who never had their own land in history with an army protecting it and all that. As far as culture war goes I feel like Jewish history fits but I’ve never discussed it or read much more than Nazis kills a bunch of them.Here’s the post:

How and when did the Ashkenazim come to be?

Sometime after the year 1000 AD, a group of Jews began migrating eastward across Europe, into the principalities of Germany and the kingdom of Poland, attracted by the combination of religious tolerance and economic opportunity. These territories were beyond the frontiers of the Roman Empire; they were lands that Jews had traditionally not occupied. By the time these pioneers arrived in the small towns of Germany and the hamlets of Poland, Jewish communities had already been established in Persia and Egypt for 1,500 years.

For the next 800 years, these Jews waxed in numbers due to their essential economic position in the developing lands of Eastern Europe, but unlike the Hebrews of antiquity, they became culturally invisible to their gentile neighbors, quietly navigating a closed social universe organized around adherence to their own laws and focused on their own texts. Their ultimate origins were a mystery to the gentiles around them, and indeed became forgotten even to themselves. Were they the descendants of the ancient Hebrews, converts to the religion, or a mix of both? These possibilities were hidden from the Jews of Eastern Europe as their memory of their past faded and their written culture focused purely on matters of religion.

This curiosity is worth pausing over. Ashkenazi Jewish luminaries have recorded such outsized contributions to every aspect of human output in culture and knowledge over the past two centuries, it’s natural to assume that the familiar intellectual restlessness and insatiable curiosity of the community’s standouts have deep cultural roots. But if the textual record is anything to go by, nothing could be further from the truth. Hunting for attested evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish passage from antiquity to the 19th century is like trying to catch a glimpse of a secretive nocturnal creature. Not only did Jews receive unhelpfully scant coverage from gentile chroniclers, but the community itself also appears to have trained its considerable literacy and intellectual power solely on matters Talmudic, to the complete exclusion of any historical records of the various communities.

And yet, it was these people that flourished in the unknown and wild lands of Eastern Europe who would go on to beget 80% of the modern Jewish diaspora, and join the mainstream of Western civilization after 1800. These are the more than ten million Ashkenazim, whose members have left indelible marks on world history and culture so far out of proportion to their numbers, from Karl Marx to Albert Einstein, since their reintegration into the stream of Western civilization after the Enlightenment.

In the Bible, Ashkenaz is one of the descendants of Noah, and Jewish scholars associated his scions with various points north, initially Scythia, but eventually Germany. So the Ashkenazim were the Jews of Ashkenaz, of Germany and parts east, and their native language, Yiddish, was a dialect of German. The Jews of Spain and Portugal, the Sephardim, loomed large during the medieval period between 1000 and 1500 AD, producing the great rabbi Moses Maimonides and polymath Judah Halevi, and persisting in prominence into early modernity, with philosophers like Baruch de Spinoza. It was only in the 19th and 20th centuries that the history of Jewish prominence and cultural achievement became so disproportionately the story of the Ashkenazim, who were 92% of the world’s Jews in 1930, and have shared in fully 20% of all Nobel Prizes awarded.

And yet, though the Jews are a people whose history is extensively documented, from the Bible to Josephus’ Roman-era The Jewish Wars, the origins of the Ashkenazim remain a bit of an enigma. In 1096 AD, Christian crusaders infamously massacred Jews in the German Rhineland as warm-up for the slaughter they would inflict upon people in the Middle East, and the German-speaking lands saw widespread pogroms in the mid-14th century, at the height of the Black Death. But in comparison to their ubiquity in the 19th century, the Ashkenazim are mentioned only glancingly in the histories of this earlier period. They came to be notable only with their demographic ascendence in the massive dominion of Poland-Lithuania, as the Middle Ages gave way to the Renaissance 500 years ago. Not to mention in their later cultural explosion in the modern world.

Given Ashkenazi Jews’ newfound prominence and mysterious origins, in the late 19th century, European intellectuals began to explore the “Khazar hypothesis” for the origin of the Ashkenazim: the strange idea that Eastern European Jews descended from an ancient Turkic steppe confederacy destroyed by Kievan Rus 1,000 years ago. The Khazars are notable because much of their elite reputedly converted to Judaism while other groups were adopting Christianity or Islam. The Khazar hypothesis’ argument was that the Ashkenazim descended from the scattering of Khazar Jews westward into Europe. It is only with genetics in the 21st century that this theory has been able to be tested, and ultimately found wanting. The Ashkenazim are the synthesis of ancient Levantine Jews and various Mediterranean European populations with whom the former mixed. Their origins date back to the fall of Rome, not the fall of Khazaria.

In the intersection

To understand when and where the Ashkenazim come from, it is important to understand what they were before they became the distinctive people we know from history and fiction. The ancient King David was a simple shepherd, while the Babylonian Talmud outlines how farmers must maintain adherence to the laws of the Torah despite the agricultural season’s cycles. 2,000 years ago, the Jews were both pedestrian and unique. Pedestrian in that they were a nation of farmers and shepherds, as extensively documented in the Bible. Yes, large communities of urban Jews flourished in Alexandria, Rome and other large cities, but on balance, the Jews were not particularly urban. Like the Jews, Greeks outside of their homeland tended to be urban as well, but the average Greek was still a farmer or a shepherd, as were the vast majority of humans in the ancient world (not to mention, incidentally in the world as a whole until the 20th century). The ancient Jews were tillers of the soil and drivers of flocks, like all their contemporaries.

Where the Jews were unique was their strict adherence to a set of laws handed down to them by a god whom they held to be the one true god above all others. The Jews were zealous in their religious particularity, a reality which led to a war of liberation against the Greeks in 167 BC, where they rebelled against the imposition of pagan syncretism by raising an altar to Zeus in the Jewish Temple. Today we know of this war mostly through its commemoration at Hanukkah. Once Rome rose and conquered the Eastern Mediterranean, the Jews rebelled twice against the Roman imperium, once in the first century AD and once in the second. Again, the cause of their rebellion was the fact that they chafed at the rule of the religiously tolerant but unabashedly polytheistic Romans. The first rebellion was triggered by riots that erupted in 66 AD when pagan Greeks provocatively sacrificed birds in front of a synagogue, an act of sacrilege in Jewish eyes meant to inflame tensions in Jerusalem. The first rebellion ended a period when Jews were prominent in Roman elite circles, particularly due to the Judaean client king Herod Agrippa’s friendship with the Roman Emperor Caligula. From then on, Jews were tolerated, but seen to be different: a people apart.

The Jewish farmers and warriors who characterized the nation in the first centuries of the Common Era would eventually fade from living history, recalled only as legends in scripture and oral tradition. By the time European Jews became more than marginal curiosities in early modernity, pure subsistence agriculture and a martial ethos had become wholly alien to the Jewish mode of existence for the urban and small-town Ashkenazim. The Zionist movement made explicit efforts to synthetically re-install the ethos in the new settlers of Palestine. Zionism emerged from socialism and 19th-century nationalism and imagined a robust patriotic citizenry working the land on collective farms, the kibbutzim, at the ready to rise as a nation and take up arms against enemies near and far. Set against this future ideal was the contemporary bourgeois life that was aspiration and reality for many of the European Ashkenazim, who had already made the comfortable transition to material security in the wake of the piecemeal Jewish emancipation that swept the continent over the course of the 19th century.

But these assimilated Ashkenazim still came from an earlier regime, where Jews were set apart from the nations among whom they dwelt. Whereas their biblical ancestors had been farmers, pastoralists and warriors, the Ashkenazim known from later medieval and early modern history occupy professions avoided by Christians. The more modest members of the community were peddlers and artisans serving rural villages, while the Jewish elite were money-lenders and tax-farmers, intermediaries between the aristocracy that ruled much of Europe and the peasants whom they exploited. The enmity toward the Ashkenazim pervasive across much of Europe in the early modern period derived from this experience, as the dirty work of wringing tax

So there really is almost no Jewish history from roughly Romans to 1800? That was one thing I posted for. Like they rebelled against Roman’s some. Invented Christianity. Then sort of chilled for 1800 years. Made Hitler hate them. Then invented a ton of stuff in the 20th century.

Like that’s kind of a simpleton 30 second elevator speech but if I explained Jews to someone who knows nothing is that largely correct?

Hunting for attested evidence of Ashkenazi Jewish passage from antiquity to the 19th century is like trying to catch a glimpse of a secretive nocturnal creature. Not only did Jews receive unhelpfully scant coverage from gentile chroniclers, but the community itself also appears to have trained its considerable literacy and intellectual power solely on matters Talmudic, to the complete exclusion of any historical records of the various communities.

There is an extensive collection of Responsa from the middle ages which shines a light on the history of the jews in that area. While not a historical narrative (nor intended to be one), the Responsa sheds light on where jews lived at that time, and what they were going through in those areas. Of course, almost none of it has been translated into other languages, so modern historians have close to now knowledge of it.

You can read more about it here, and here's a paper reviewing two books that extrapolate history from sets of responsa.

What do you mean by “Jewish history”? Like, there’s easily 10,000+ religious Jewish works which were written in that period (the most famous/important being the Talmud), many which are still studied and having an influence on people today. I realise your typical gentile doesn’t care about the intricacies of Jewish law and hermeneutics but as a cultural product, surely it counts as “history”?

Aside from that, you even mention that Jewish thinkers throughout history have made important contributions to culture as a whole. Maimonides, Spinoza and many others produced important contributions to philosophy.

I’d also take issue with the term “chilled”. They more “survived as a persecuted minority for 1800+ years”. Yes, many Jews today suffer from a victimhood complex but let’s not pretend that Spanish Inquisition didn’t happen resulting in the mass expulsion of the Jews (1492). That’s just the most famous example. This Wikipedia article which has a long list of expulsions also has this very nice graphic.

Finally, I’m not sure why you think “they made Hitler hate them”. Even if you believe the Jews deserved the holocaust or whatever, antisemitism existed in Germany and Europe long before then. Hitler was a product of his generation, not some revolutionary thinker who had the epiphany that the Jews were the cause of all his woes. And why does the holocaust uniquely make its way into your “30 second” elevator pitch? As I tried to point out above, the holocaust was just the biggest and most prominent in a sequence of persecutions which have been going on for millennia. Seriously, skim that list. Not all persecutions are equally bad and not all persecutions are uniquely Jewish but antisemitism has an undeniably long history. Again, whether or not you think the Jews deserve it, why pretend that antisemitism is a 20th century phenomenon?

Come on chum, he said it was a simpleton's 30 second elevator pitch version of Jewish history, and he said it was a topic he didn't know a lot about. Off the top of your head, what's the simpleton's 30 second elevator pitch version of the history of the Bantu, Irish, Hmong or Russian?

resulting in the mass expulsion of the Jews (1492)

Also 1492, The start of the Golden Age

Yes, because opening new frontiers of settlement with a literally once-in-a-thousand-years bounty of new goods (see "Columbian Exchange") tends to result in Golden Ages.

Something to note when considering Ashkenazi in Europe is history is that they really were their own nation, a kind of mobile and extra-territorial nation who 100% believed they were their own peoplehood. The Rabbis had jurisdiction over their subjects and could excommunicate anyone at will. They had their own laws and traditions and tax codes. This means that when you read about “oppression”, you are actually reading about a conflict between two nations. This needs to be dwelled upon, because if you compare European-Jewish conflict to European-European conflict, you quickly see that Jews were the least attacked and the safest group in Europe by a large margin. (Consider this an historical White on White argument if you must). Of course there would be conflicts against Jews, their own nation was in a geographical area made up of many states and ruled by hereditary rulers. And of course they would lose these conflicts, because they chose to be their own traveling nation. But compare the bloodshed between, say, Catholics and Protestants, or even British versus British in the War of the Roses with 100,000 dead. Jews have little to complain about regarding their treatment in European history before the holocaust, as they were the safest group by a large margin.

If the Jews were behaving like sovereign citizens and (e.g.) refusing to pay taxes or follow laws, then "persecuting the Jews is no worse than a conflict with a foreign state" might be somewhat defensible.

But it sounds like you're saying "Yeah you pay French taxes and follow French laws and have lived in France all your life, but you don't follow French culture, so you shouldn't get the game-theoretic protections of being part of France". If you agree that (e.g.) Mormons deserve to live without persecution, I feel like that should also extend to Jews.

Jews in the middle ages often did live under their own laws and pay taxes separately while being citizens of the same state as gentiles.

I suspect "often" is doing some weaseling here. After reading https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_of_the_Jews_in_Europe I see exactly one example, which was in the town of Altona

From 1584 to 1639, as in the Middle Ages, the Jews of Altona paid taxes specific to the Jews, but no further taxes. Each Jewish family was required to pay 6 Reichstaler per year. Under Danish rule this changed: the Jews continued to pay the specifically Jewish taxes plus the same taxes as all other residents.

Do you think it was common for Jews to pay less in taxes than ordinary citizens? Can you provide an example of a kingdom where this happened? Do you think in kingdoms where this didn't happen (I'm guessing the vast majority) Jews shouldn't have received the same rights as other citizens?

The Middle Ages were radically different. Even disputing a Christian doctrine in a Catholic country could you have killed. Apostasy in a Muslim country would have you killed, and apostasy in a Jewish city as a Jew would have you made anathema with the threat of being killed. Today is much different than the Middle Ages. I’m merely asserting that the Jews as a whole did not face more threat than everyone else, because everyone else was dying in wars and starving to death (outside the “urban” center).

Yeah you pay French taxes and follow French laws and have lived in France all your life, but you don't follow French culture, so you shouldn't get the game-theoretic protections of being part of France"

This is of course perfectly coherent and sensible to essentially anybody before 1789.

The idea of nationhood as citizenship is a liberal innovation. And frankly, jury is still out on whether that was a good idea or not. Let alone if it's compatible with any national culture at all.

Not sure this is right. What about Hobbes? Surely the relevant point here is whether Jews were under the French state in a similar manner to Frenchmen, not whether they were considered part of the nation of Frenchmen, which doesn't seem especially relevant. They submitted to the leviathan, paid its taxes, followed its laws etc. so why should they not also benefit from its protection?

What about Hobbes? He's one of the earliest of Liberals and Leviathan, though it justifies this position very well in a way I personally believe, was an extremely controversial book that earned him the contempt of his royalist friends, anglicans and Catholics. He is by no means "essentially anybody".

Protection in exchange for taxes doesn't require hobbes, it's just feudalism. Earlier, even. The world's oldest profession... for men.

As long as the jews or goths or cumans pay taxes and obey the king, they should not be treated as a foreign army or persecuted by the rest of the king's subjects. One doesn't need liberalism to justify this arrangement.

As long as the jews or goths or cumans pay taxes and obey the king, they should not be treated as a foreign army or persecuted by the rest of the king's subjects.

Why?

I mean it, explain as you would to a catholic ruler why you shouldn't persecute those who have no kinship, cultural ties to your realm and whom you don't even share a religion with.

Why not just kill them and take their stuff or convert them except that it might be impractical at the moment?

The catholic church explicitly extended protection and tolerance to the Jews, something not extended to other religious minorities who were persecuted. The only reason Jews could exist in catholic and orthodox Europe was that they were Jews and not something else.

Mutual benefit. Loyalty without competition (as in, a jew cannot replace you as the new king like a catholic could). Honoring your word. You're asking why anyone would act morally. I doubt they do it because of 'cultural ties'.

Just because a policy is ruthless does not make it beneficial to the realm. The dutch and americans soaked up all the religious freaks nobody wanted and it made them rich. Has that king ever heard of the goose with the golden eggs?

Khmelnitsky’s uprising is a pretty clear counterexample.

Did Jews ever declare war on the standard European nations? If you had two countries like England and France who had numerous wars over their history, but every war was initiated by the French, I would say the English were "oppressed" of a sort.

This needs to be dwelled upon, because if you compare European-Jewish conflict to European-European conflict, you quickly see that Jews were the least attacked and the safest group in Europe by a large margin.

The logic in this claim seems completely wrong. You're comparing the number of times, say, England and France declared war on each other, to the times they declared war on Jews. Only, the jews are living in England and France; when an invading English army sweeps through the French countryside, they don't carefully avoid the Jewish settlements. So the jews get hit with the same attacks as everyone else in their country, and they get hit with specifically targeted attacks against jews also. That's a lot more threat, not a lot less.

Jews did not primarily live in the countryside during European history outside of Russia, iirc. They would live in close proximity to the King with whom they had a unique economic partnership. There were no agricultural Jews in Northern, Southern, or Central Europe, unless I am mistaken.

Jews did not primarily live in the countryside during European history outside of Russia

Could they even own or rent land? Or be serfs?

They had their own quarters of a city with nearly full self-rule and a religious freedom that no one else in Europe had. This was clearly desirable to them which is why they traveled great lengths to live in Europe. Humans don’t really value whether they “own land” (after all, in America it’s not yours if you don’t pay taxes), they care whether they have a place of their own with self-rule. They were given their own unique quarters of European cities where they were free of all the pains of the typical serf or peasant and were protected by the personal interest of the King. In practice, is that ownership? In the cases where they loaned money, they held the value of many properties, but as non-agricultural people, they had no interest in owning and living in farm lands in Western Europe. In fact, the Talmud has passages about how farming is a disreputable profession, which is one of the reasons Ashkenazi didn’t farm much.

Humans don’t really value whether they “own land”

Do you have any evidence for this?

More generally, any sources that whether people historically want to live in the countryside is independent of whether they could earn a living, either on their own land or someone else's, in the jobs that exist in the countryside?

It seems that legal restrictions on what Jews could do is a sufficient explanation of why they lived in cities, sometimes with segregation to Jewish quarters. When they could work in the countryside, as in parts of Eastern Europe, it seems they did, like everyone else in the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

In Central Europe during 30 years war:

https://sci-hub.ru/https://www.jstor.org/stable/4545974

The rewards for their cooperation began to accrue to the Jews directly following the crushing of the Bohemian rebels at the Battle of the White Mountain, in November 1620. With the Protestant forces dis-persed, the city of Prague was ruthlessly sacked, all that is except for the Judenstadt. The emperor's soldiery were under strict instructions, which they obeyed, not to enter the Jewish quarter.

The privileged treatment continued under the new governor of Bohemia, Karl von Liechtenstein, a nobleman with close links with Jacob Bassevi, the Jewish financier who was at the center of the efforts to raise Jewish cash for the emperor and who had been ennobled--the first Jew to receive such an honor from a Holy Roman Emperor--by Rudolph II, in 1614.

In conclusion, it does seem that previous views of the fate of Central European Jewry during the Thirty Years' War stand in need of revision. The influence of certain preconceived notions appears to be widely dis-cernible in the historiography, ideas which have tended to distort our view of the question. On the one hand, there is an entrenched expecta-tion that as a defenseless and supposedly constantly victimized group, the jews of Germany and Austria must have been "easy prey for the marauding soldiery."

On the other, there is the marked tendency in pre-1939 German Jewish historical writing to flatly deny that the Jews were affected by or experienced major historical events differently from other Germans. The truth is that the terrible upheavals of the Thirty Years' War mostly worked in favor of German and all Central Euro-pean Jewry, appreciably enhanced the Jewish role in German life, and prepared the ground for the "Age of the Court Jew"-the late seven-teenth and early eighteenth century-the high-water mark of Jewish influence on Central European commerce and finance.

Note that 30% of HRE population died (though, unsure how many from violence and starvation rather than disease; perhaps 3-6% of that number) during the Thirty Years’ War. I also can’t find a number on the the number of Jews in the HRE at that time, but we can be certain they died less due to starvation, pillaging, and combat.

As for all of European history? I don’t think any Academic has crunched those numbers.

I guess a comparison could be made to other peoples in territories ruled by another power (eg the Welsh).

The best example of this right now are arguably the Kurdish.

And the Celts. The celts were obliterated by the Romans and then the Saxons, and Wales was the last Celtic holdout.

The Jews are by far the ethnicity I have the most respect for, they punch so far above their weight class it's ridiculous.

As someone who finds HBD glaringly obviously true, I have little compunction about praising them, if only it wasn't for their propensity to embrace wokeness, at least in the US.

And Israel is the country closest to being an isekai protagonist, absolutely cut off, besieged on all fronts, yet absolutely wrecks armies a dozen times their size. The only potential threat to their hegemony would be the Arab armies embracing automation, unless they decided to train their military AI on Classic Arab Doctrine, it's far harder for them to be as hilariously incompetent.

What other nation tolerates being bombarded with rockets on a regular basis, only to swat them away like inconvenient flies? Palestine should count itself lucky they pose no real threat, because the Israelis could and should clamp down on that cankering sore, and all concerned would come out better.

They punch so far above their weight we should almost declare procreate with a Jew day a national holiday.

If I want to put a tinfoil conspiracy hat on and an alien civ was guiding our development they would 100% be a Jew. Even AI is Sam Altman and Yud. Who interesting enough both skipped college.

Was hoping someone would throw in some more history so I guess I just have to assume this story they were just sort of chilling in Eastern Europe is true.

I’m curious if Civilization (the video game) create a Jewish civ what would their special abilities be.

Jewish civ bonuses:

Chosen people - ancient era bonus for developing monotheism and great prophets

Money lender - middle ages trade bonus, discount on banks

Lie back and think of Israel - modern era fertility bonus

The Civ devs are cowards who decided that religions as disparate as Buddhism and Islam deserve no special military or cultural modifiers in their games, so expecting benefits from Judaism would be pointless!

That said, an Israel Civ could be represented by high science and military production but lower pop growth IMO.

absolutely cut off, besieged on all fronts

I suppose except their entire shoreline from where they can always freely be supplied by the most powerful country in human history which unconditionally supports them diplomatically economically and militarily often to the detriment of its own geopolitical standing.

absolutely cut off, besieged on all fronts, yet absolutely wrecks armies a dozen times their size.

Besieged on all fronts but the one that matters - the air. If Israel gets in trouble, they need only threaten to use their nukes (that curiously fly under the radar of the US-sponsored anti-proliferation treaty) and the US will airlift them as much weaponry as they need and more. No matter the cost! It doesn't matter if the Arabs then organize a devastating oil embargo that costs the West hundreds of billions in economic damage, the US will not suffer Israel to come to any harm. It doesn't matter if they poison US relations with the Arab world, if they sell weapons to China, if they spy on the US, if they create a rather interesting precedent for annexing other people's land in the sacred post-WW2 rules-based international order... They get immense military aid, generous subsidies for their own military industry and all the US's best toys.

Your isekai protagonist metaphor is spot on. I'll add another trope - the strongest warrior in the world inexplicably falls in love with the MC and will stick with him, no matter what wacky and expensive disasters he embarks upon, she'll bail him out.

I'll add another trope - the strongest warrior in the world inexplicably falls in love with the MC and will stick with him, no matter what wacky and expensive disasters he embarks upon, she'll bail him out.

I can't think of an isekai series that does this.

Israel isn’t large enough for resupply from the US to be an option in any serious conflict

It literally happened: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Nickel_Grass

That the Israelis won a couple of battles by the time the C-5s started landing doesn't make the aid useless, the extra aircraft and supplies made it much easier for them to counterattack. One can be much more aggressive when your losses are sure to be replenished.

And of course, it was America that pressured Israel into ending that conflict on terms that were extraordinarily generous (far more generous than any American government had ever previously been in victory in a major war) to the defeated parties.

The Arab war goal was to retake the Golan Heights and Sinai peninsula which they lost when Israel attacked them in 1967. The US persuaded Israel to give up Sinai and bribed Egypt extensively to accept the deal, to sign a peace treaty with Israel. Partly this was due to Soviet pressure on the other side. Golan remains in Israeli hands. The US foreign aid budget to Egypt increased enormously (as it did when other Arab states recognized Israel and signed peace treaties). All the generosity here is flowing from the US to Israel, by bribing its enemies to stand down and persuading the Israeli govt not to bite off more than they can chew.

It's the worst deal in the world. The US got massive enmity from the Arabs, in exchange for forever paying bribes to Egypt, Lebanon and so on so they wouldn't be quite so angry with Israel. And endless military aid to Israel, so they can bomb and invade their neighbours whenever they like.

If the US simply stopped meddling in the Middle East, stopped reflexively prostrating before Israel (the Iraq War was heavily motivated by the perceived need to destroy Israel's enemies), the US would be a lot better off. On the pure logic of national interests, the US should favoured the Arabs (who are numerous and have oil) over the Israelis who are few and lack oil.

This has me imagining a potential counterfactual world, though, one in which Israel sided with the Soviets (which I think they threatened to do in reality), and today exists as a stubborn and nigh-impossible-to-dislodge pariah state with ties to America's modern enemies (a la North Korea), and internet pundits like us ceaselessly bemoan the state of America's Arab allies, all of whom can't fight a war to literally save their lives (a la the Republic of China and the Republic of Vietnam), who we expect will get blown away first the second WWIII starts, and who keep spitting in our faces despite our supposed alliance because we're an insufficiently-pious nation.

Interesting scenario. Would they do so well though? Where would Israel even get oil for their military? North Korea has China and Cuba actually has a surprising amount of oil.

I think Israel would instantly disintegrate the moment it loses its superpower sponsor. North Korea and Cuba could endure losing Soviet subsidies because they were pretty homogenous. How could Israel survive if its fuel and trade were suddenly cut off? The Palestinians and their friends in the CIA would see about the end of the Tel Aviv Regime. Of course, if they had nukes it would be different. Then again, without US support, they probably wouldn't have nukes.

But just think about the gains to be had from the Arabs! Cheap, secure oil supplies. Saddam and Syria would be on our side, no problems there. Osama Bin Laden wouldn't be angry with us. Negligible Islamic terrorism. Maybe we'd get an Israeli terror group to substitute for Al-Qaeda, which could be alarming, especially if Israel has nukes.

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It's been tried before though, hasn't it? Twice, in fact. And both times Israel was able to repulse massive armies before the U.S. got involved. In fact, the U.S. had to intervene because Israel was TOO successful.

Raw numbers don't mean that much in the face of massive organizational, technological, and motivational superiority.

I suppose you could theoretically zerg rush Israel with like 1 million poorly trained soldiers and win. I don't think that's possible right now absent a major casus belli to motivate the troops.

Didn't that get tried, and fail... in less than a week... while Israeli equipment wasn't any better than their opponent's?

Looks like you are right. I just checked Wikipedia and the invaders did have nearly 1 million troops in 1973 and over 500,000 in 1967.

Need more zerglings then. Maybe 2 million would suffice?

I'm not sure that "more manpower" would solve the issue with Arab militaries. A better cohesive structure might have allowed Egyptian and Jordanian military forces to hold together long enough to bring their numbers to bear, but holding together long enough to use superior numbers is a bar that Israel's main historical rivals show an incapacity to meet.

I believe this sentiment is actually very common with online Hindu nationalist types. My best guess is that they see Israel as a country of hyper-competent Brahmins (without the 1.5 billion riffraff bringing them down) and associate its enemies of "Muslim hordes" with Pakistan.

Lmao, if you think that I'm an "online Hindu nationalist type", you literally couldn't be further off the mark (I do accept that I'm technically online).

I absolutely despise Hindutva, neither am I a Hindu, nor am I a Brahmin for the matter.

I grudgingly concede that Brahmins are likely smarter than the typical Indian, at least on the basis of their over-representation in prestige fields, but that's more of an outcome of being a stickler for intellectual honesty than some weird superiority fetish.

Turns out, people can and do hold idiosyncratic views if they try and let themselves be guided where the evidence leads..

But don't let me keep you from armchair psychoanalysis, it's at least entertaining if nothing else.

I'm about as sincere as it gets. Jews are based.

The enmity toward the Ashkenazim pervasive across much of Europe in the early modern period derived from this experience, as the dirty work of wringing tax

More like the enmity is what created those niches (at least partially) - no self-respecting trade guild would accept somebody as lowly as a Jew into their numbers, and trading with them may make your own reputation to become tainted too. However, money lending, activity prohibited to Christians, but necessary for the economy and especially warfare - well, that can be tolerated to a certain measure. With an added bonus that if it proves too hard to return the money, one could just tell the Jews to take a hike (provided you are powerful enough of course) - they're not even proper Christians, who'd defend them?

With an added bonus that if it proves too hard to return the money, one could just tell the Jews to take a hike

And then those same gentiles would be crying about why the Jews were charging them such high rates of interest, I know that "counterparty risk" was not a term at that time but this is just common sense.

How and when did the Ashkenazim come to be?

Post ww2, America became the unofficial homeland for Jews, after Israel. That is where they thrived and became such dominant force, thanks to meritocracies, where Jews really thrive. It was not going to be anywhere else. Great Britain had its entrenched monarchy and parliament. Other countries were too small or too homogenous. America, by being so meritocratic, powerful, and accommodating of diversity, was perfect.

Great Britain had its entrenched monarchy and parliament.

Slightly puzzled by this. What would the nature of Parliament have to do with the status of Jews in post-war Britain, or indeed the monarchy? Surely the more plentiful economic opportunities in America is the more prosaic explanation?

It's not without precedent. According to Wiki, "A law in place until the 1850s stated that no member of the Jewish religion could be elected to Parliament. Some Christian denominations were similarly prohibited. If elected, a member would be excluded if he refused to swear an oath of abjuration with a strong Christian wording."

Perhaps but Jewish immigration to the U.S. didn't take off until very late into the 19th century.

Yeah but it's more about the meme, which lives in memories. It's like how black people think cops are hunting them - they aren't, but black people think they are so they act accordingly. And then America you get the opposite meme - it's the land of the free where anyone can rise to the top.

And don't forget there was no internet, it used to be much harder to find out various laws and rules and procedures. You had to rely on the word of others a lot more, and who are you going to trust, the young clerk who says Jews aren't banned from parliament or your uncle, who insists he is right?

Kind of want to see where this goes before commenting more. But Marxism and the initial basis for monetary policy fiscal spending (Keynes) was pre ww2. And pre-20th century Jesus and the whole Christianity thing. And I’m probably missing a bunch.

Guess he wrote too many words was trying to copy it all. Here’s the link

https://razib.substack.com/p/ashkenazi-jewish-genetics-a-match

And twitter

https://twitter.com/razibkhan/status/1656952555639848962?s=46&t=aQ6ajj220jubjU7-o3SuWQ

I assume this community has above average members of this tribe. I don’t think Jewish history has been much discussed so other sources would be interesting. I feel like I’ve studied every civ at some point. It seems like an understudied area since all of us have been fighting ideological wars that Jews created with weapons Jews created and now debating AI doom from a Jew quite interesting from such a small subset of humanity with no land (Einstein, Marx, Keynes, Friedman, Yud) and even before this century fighting religious wars over a religion (Jesus).

Keynes wasn't Jewish.

You are right on that. Wander why I thought that. Only thing I guess is so many top economists are.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/05/12/us/jordan-neely-daniel-penny-new-york-subway-death-charge/index.html

Daniel Penny, a 24-year old Marine, turned himself to police after being charged with 2nd degree manslaughter for the killing of Jordan Neely. It looks like I was initially wrong. I said that drugs may have played a role given that the original NYTs story, which I replied to, from a week ago said that Neely had been choked for only 2-3 minutes and released and was unresponsive. The updated story is that he was choked out for much longer, as long as 15 minutes, which would have def. been lethal, and the video is pretty bad.

So retract my original argument in which I posit drugs played a role. This is why you should always wait until you have all the information before forming an opinion. I didn't think the story would blow up like it did. I just assumed it was some random altercation. The video is why it went so viral. I think Penny is not without some guilt here. Keeping someone in a choke for so long is going to end in death. It's likely Neely was not rendered unconscious near-instantly from blood loss to the brain, such as from a sleeper hold as I assumed from the original story (I assumed Penny put Neely in a hold, and then Neely went limp in 20-30 seconds and did not come back), but far worse, had been suffocated to death, like being held underwater because his windpipe was restricted. That's why he was flailing around. It would have been more humane had Penny just shot him although that would have carried a worse charge.

A second degree manslaughter conviction is not that bad. only max 15 years for killing someone, and with parole Penny may only spend 5 years, which is a pretty lenient sentence for killing a guy, and not even in self defense or accident. By comparison, Ross Ulbricht faces multiple life sentences despite not killing anyone. I cannot say Penny is not without some blame in this matter. But In Penny's defense, the police took too long to come, and despite Marine training he and his accomplices didn't know what else to do.

I dont understand your theory of the case at all. It is that 15 years in prison is an appropriate sentence for... being inexperienced at restraining violent crazy people?

If they die? Yes.

He clearly committed manslaughter, so he gets the punishment for manslaughter.

If they die? Yes.

So you get into a car accident, which results in the death.

You're cool with with doing 15 years?

Before you start talking about nuance, please see your comment.

What am I doing at the time?

If I'm drunk, or running a stop sign, or driving in the shoulder, or driving above the speed limit, or lane splitting, or making a disallowed turn: yes, I am fine with that.

If you don't want to do the time, simply do not do the crime.

So, in your theory, self defense and defense of other is only available to like, Jon Jones and Chuck Liddel?

I don't know what to say, dude.

Simply do not hold a choke for 15 minutes.

A potentially great insight from miles away with the benefit of hindsight...which also might be horribly wrong.

I don't have to have been their to know that doing the thing that always kills people would kill someone.

It's a simple application of physics and understanding of biology: when you deprive someone's brain of oxygen for 15 minutes, it stops working. You can tell when this happens because it's when they stop moving and they stop breathing and they shit their pants.

Except he never really stops moving and breathing

Given that the dude was found fully a corpse on the scene, I find that hard to believe.

There are countries that don't even have Good Samaritan laws and where you can be held liable for death or injury caused by your inept first aid.

There's no such law for defense of others. So yes, if your defensive actions result in death or injury, the court will determine if your actions were permissible.

whether this was self defense is what's up for debate. if all he was doing was schizo ranting then does that really justify a chokehold?

I wouldn't call it ranting, I would call it menacing, and I think it does justify being restrained. A chokehold is probably the only restraint the majority of humans know for use against humans that aren't children.

There appears to me, to be a fairly common sentiment among people less familiar with violence (and possibly pejoratively I think this is more common on the American left) that violence is some sort of dial you can perfectly calibrate. There is a reason all combat sports are conducted, essentially, on a mat, with a very restrictive moveset, and almost every kid starts before puberty so they cant really hurt each other. But even then MMA does not, in any real way, reflect streetfighting.

In real fights basically everything is potentially lethal. A slap? Well, by a weak woman, probably not, but a real one by a man, for sure. I could rupture your eardrum, while dealing punch-adjacent force, which will cause you to fall. Have I gotten to falling? Anytime someone is forced to the ground they are at risk of dying. Its called head trauma, and its nothing like Hollywood portrayals. Hit someone over the head with a whiskey bottle and they hit the ground. Big chance you've just committed murder. Even if the guy is just in a full nelson for 15 minutes there's a decent chance they are going to have permanent problems, including death. Am I a big rear naked choke guy? Nope. I suck at it comparatively to my favorite, the hammerlock and armbar series of moves. This makes sense, I wrestled at a high level for over a dozen year. But still if I put a guy like this in a hammerlock for 15 minutes he's going to destroy his arm. And the internal bleeding, on a guy with that health profile, we are talking amputation as a >50% probability, and death is certainly not off the table.

Muscle tissue is far more resistant to ischemia than the brain. You are irreversibly brain damaged in five minutes without oxygen and dead in ten. With muscles...the times are measured in hours.

While true, it seems fairly tangential. Like George Floyd, this person more than not, likely died because they came into the incident in such a depleted physical condition. While a cop obviously has the option of just throwing on some cuffs and then taking a deep drag on a cigarette, that wasn't available to our civvies here.

Eh...like, maybe if he was a fit healthy dude, sure, he'd have survived. Same for George Floyd. This being said, both of these guys weren't exceptionally unhealthy or fragile. This is more like a crapshoot: if it took 9 minutes to kill Floyd maybe his hypothetical football-playing 17yo Boy Scout nephew might've survived for 12. Neither of these people were manhandling Grandpa or medically frail hospital patients.

A chokehold is probably the only restraint the majority of humans know for use against humans that aren't children.

Half Nelson or hammerlock are well known natural wrestling moves that are probably safer (for the receiver) than anything choke adjacent -- strictly inferior to the newer MMA tech from the giver's perspective, but as I said before if you want to wrestle bums on the subway you may need to accept some handicap if you want to minimize your legal liability.

Those are both common wrestling moves, but not a lot of people actually wrestle. I don't even think of the half nelson as a particularly good restraint, its good at turning people from their stomach to their back, which isn't useful in real life fights. Hammerlocks, are good, yes, but they are strictly supervised in actual wrestling because its so easy to destroy an arm. Like I said, if you hammerlock this guy for 15 minutes, he's losing his arm.

There were several 911 calls, including some about Neely. Nobody bothers to call for ordinary schizo ranting.

does that really justify a chokehold?

Yes

By all means, institutionalize mentally ill vagrants.

Also by all means, punish extrajudicial killings. We can do both, NYC police got 10.3 BILLION this year.

Why is it suddenly so important to charge and punish Penny in particular?

Surely the fact that he killed someone should figure in the calculus somewhat, should it not? And in any other context, would you find compelling the argument, "sure, maybe Bob committed a serious crime, but we shouldn't charge him, because his victim was insufficiently punished for completely unrelated crimes"?

What if Joe was a dangerous criminal who escaped from death row, before running into Bob and getting killed in the altercation (Bob knew nothing of Joe’s history)? There’s no real loss here, so punishment would be gratuitous.

And I do think the previously revealed moral character of Joe and Bob should factor in our interpretation of the altercation. If Joe has proven himself unworthy of charity (in the motte sense) , then Bob’s words and actions against Joe should get the benefit of charity in the eyes of the law.

For something like 500 years, Anglo-American criminal law has considered the moral character of the victim, if unknown to the defendant, to be irrelevant to questions of self-defense. So if you are arguing for it to be taken into account in this case, you are arguing for a double standard to be applied.

Can you explain the rationale for the moral character being irrelevant?

Why double standard ? Don't you mean a different standard? Can you refer to, or imagine, a situation where I fall on the other side?

Can you explain the rationale for the moral character being irrelevant?

Note that I said that it is irrelevant if unknown to the defendant

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Along the same lines as "Mary Rice Davies applies" i increasingly feel like we need a "Joker's Dark Knight speach applies".

No one freaks out when a homeless schizophrenic attacks somone because its all part of a plan. But when an ostensible "normie" does so everyone loses thier fucking mind because it exoses the central lie that underpins the entire secular progressive/humanist worldview. Rousseau, Locke, Mill, Rawls, Et Al were wrong.

And that lie is? The equal moral worth and dignity of the two? No, that's not it, you like that one.

And that lie is?

That violence and ultimate agency/control resides with the state (or society) rather than with the individual. That the state of nature is "just".

Aren't you a fan of Hobbes? It's the same conclusion, just without the window dressing. The government keeps you from a state of nature. You owe it everything in return and it owes you nothing else. So if it wants you to refrain from acting against homeless schizophrenics, it is your duty to stoicly accept this and not act against homeless schizophrenics.

Hobbes, while he is the father of modern authoritarianism, would be considered a libertarian of all but anarchocapitalism in the modern era.

I don't see how. His social contract is "You accept this social contract which says that we, the sovereign, own you and can morally command you in any way we see fit. The only thing you get from that is you're no longer in a state of nature. If you reject this contract you're in a state of nature and we can do whatever we want to you, because that's how a state of nature works".

This is the standard leftist caricature of Hobbes yes, but as this case aptly illustrates, it completely fails to adress Hobbes' thesis.

Homeless schitzos menacing people is the state of nature. Upstanding citizens killing homeless schitzos out of hand is the state of nature.

The thing about social contracts that progressives do not seem to grasp is that they are reciprocal, imposing duties and privileges on both sides. A Hobbesian could easily argue that the City and State of New York rejected the contract first (or were at the very least derelict in their duties) because what happened on that subway was the state of nature and thus Sgt Penny was under no obligation to obey their rules.

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I am, and no it is not, because a core component of Hobbes' thesis is that violence and ultimately control resides with the individual not the state. Accordingly, a state that declines to protect the individual is derelict in its duties and is owed nothing.

In the Hobbesian view an individual chooses to obey the law in the hopes that others will do the same. The job of the cops is not to protect the public from criminals but to protect criminals (and those suspected of being criminals) from the public. The cops failed to protect Neely by failing to arrest him and keep him separate from the public.

I'm going to throw out a theory, which is wild speculation but I feel the need to include because it strikes me as obvious.

The fifteen minutes duration increases the odds that this is drug related. Daniel Penny almost certainly did not intend to murder Neely, from the video Neely is still struggling minutes into being choked. Instead it seems likely that Penny attempted to choke Neely unconscious so as to avoid violence, failed to properly execute the maneuver, and instead had Neely in a restricted breathe restraint for several minutes. You can tell because the hold should knock out anyone, if properly applied, within seconds; Neely continued to struggle against three men holding him down for minutes. If Neely had stopped struggling, even if Penny wanted to kill him, it seems unlikely that the other two strangers would have continued to restrain him. Under the stress of the incident, combined with likely drugs or other underlying issues and the restricted breathe, Neely had some kind of heart attack etc.

Penny was not intentionally setting out to kill Neely, instead he was negligent in applying a less-than-lethal restraint and Neely died as a result. So the legal (and moral) question becomes twofold: Was Penny entitled to use less-than-lethal restraints against Neely? And was Penny Negligent or Reckless in how he applied those restraints?

Unfortunately, every detail of this will end up in the public sphere. A few points I am very curious to see:

-- How much did Neely actually know about applying a Rear Naked Choke to a resisting opponent? Was he an active BJJ enthusiast? Was this something he learned briefly ten years ago but never really used? Or perhaps he had never received actual training, but watched MMA videos on youtube sometimes and though it looked easy enough? If he was a purple belt, it increases the probability he intentionally killed Neely because negligence is less likely; but it also makes his choice to try seem more appropriate, because it is something he knew how to do. If he saw it once on Youtube and thought he could pull it off irl, it makes negligence more likely, but also makes the decision to try it seem more reckless.

-- How long, exactly, was Neely struggling for? When did he cease to struggle? How long after he ceased to struggle was the hold released?

-- Unfortunately for Penny, if he is like 90%+ of people his age, his diary that he places in the hands of third party corporations that will hand it over at the first problem is going to come into this. As Hoffmeister noted in his post on the topic, if Penny has posts like many on here indicating that he thinks the homeless are subhuman scum that need to be cleared off the streets, we will know soon. This is quite likely where the story will hinge. Prosecution will aim to portray him as "looking for a fight" and looking for an excuse to hurt or kill someone.

-- The prosecution was smart to charge him with a lower homicide felony rather than Murder 1, that's why Rittenhouse got off. While I think Rittenhouse was more or less entirely justified in what he did, he probably could have been convicted of negligent manslaughter on the theory that he made some procedural mistake in going somewhere he shouldn't have, but he was never going to get convicted of premeditated murder. Penny's case will push the idea that he responded appropriately to what Neely did/said, and that he never intended to kill him, but other causes (drugs) lead to Neely's death.

-- Whether Neely was a capital A Addict I have no idea, but if they don't find signs of drug use in his system, I'll be shocked.

-- The various Death Wish style masturbatory fantasies that are floating around the internet are totally inappropriate to what happened. This has nothing to do with whether homeless people ought to be murdered, because that was not what anyone intended to do. It has to do with whether one has the right to use reasonable less-than-lethal force to protect oneself and others, and remain protected if the egg-shell-victim happens to die.

As Hoffmeister noted in his post on the topic, if Penny has posts like many on here indicating that he thinks the homeless are subhuman scum that need to be cleared off the streets, we will know soon. This is quite likely where the story will hinge. Prosecution will aim to portray him as "looking for a fight" and looking for an excuse to hurt or kill someone.

Stuff like this generally isn't admissable as evidence (it wasn't in the Rittenhouse case, for instance). The fact is that idle words made weeks or months in advance are not the same as intent or premeditation.

While true, these cases are also tried in the media. My parents, with their steady diet of CNN and MSNBC, were sad when Rittenhouse got off because he they thought he was a "white supremacist" who shot people in cold blood.

It's tough to find a jury that is insulated from the news media, and people can also lie to get on a jury.

If the media tars Neely as motivated by hate, he will have a tough time getting a fair trial regardless of what happens in the courtroom.

So the legal (and moral) question becomes twofold: Was Penny entitled to use less-than-lethal restraints against Neely? And was Penny Negligent or Reckless in how he applied those restraints?

I think this actually isn't going to be legally an issue. Instead, the state will argue that a chokehold is deadly force, which I believe is established law in New York. But that's a bit of a double-edged sword; having established that a chokehold is deadly force, it becomes much harder (though not impossible) for the state to argue that Neely was reckless in applying it.

If the state chooses to argue that Penny intended to kill Neely, I predict an acquittal.

Well, that's why they're not arguing that. They're arguing that he caused the death by acting recklessly; by putting Neely in a chokehold he ignored a substantial and unjustifiable risk. The problem for Penny is that to get an acquittal he has to argue that the risk was justified, which is a tall order. New York law already recognizes that chokeholds are a form of deadly force, and claiming deadly force was justified is effectively the same as claiming that he would have been justified in shooting Neely on the spot.

They've already not chosen that argument, by charging with 2nd degree manslaughter rather than some form of murder.

having established that a chokehold is deadly force, it becomes much harder (though not impossible) for the state to argue that Neely was reckless in applying it.

If anything, the opposite is true. In New York, under Penal Law 125.15 "A person is guilty of manslaughter in the second degree when: 1. He recklessly causes the death of another person; or ....".

Under Penal Law 15.05, "A person acts recklessly with respect to a result or to a circumstance described by a statute defining an offense when he is aware of and consciously disregards a substantial and unjustifiable risk that such result will occur or that such circumstance exists. The risk must be of such nature and degree that disregard thereof constitutes a gross deviation from the standard of conduct that a reasonable person would observe in the situation."

So, IF he used deadly force, that strengthens the argument that he disregarded a substantial and unjustified risk. Of course, he might not have knowingly used deadly force -- eg he was using force which he thought did not carry a risk of death. Or, his use of force might have been justified.

Are all methods of "deadly force" really treated as a single risk category legally? Hard to believe a chokehold would be treated the same as shooting someone with a firearm.

I believe that the key issue is the intent to use deadly force. Eg Calif Criminal Jury Inst 505 says that for self-defense, the defendant must actually believe that deadly force was necessary. If he has that belief it doesn’t matter what form the deadly force takes.

No. You've ignored the most important part, which is "unjustified". If a chokehold is deadly force, then to successfully use the self-defense argument Penny must show that deadly force was justified. But once he's done that, the fact that Neely died doesn't show recklessness.

You've ignored the most important part, which is "unjustified

I literally said, "Or, his use of force might have been justified."

The point is that it is EASIER to prove recklessness if deadly force is used, not harder, as you said. Deadly force obviously carries a greater "risk that such result will occur" -- the result referred to is the "result . . . described by a statute defining an offense[,]" which in the case of manslaughter is the risk of death. Obviously, deadly force carries a greater risk of death than does non-deadly force.

Again, none of this means he is guilty. As I said, "Of course, he might not have knowingly used deadly force -- eg he was using force which he thought did not carry a risk of death. Or, his use of force might have been justified." But it does mean that you were incorrect when you said that arguing that a chokehold is deadly force makes it harder for the DA to secure a manslaughter conviction.

But it does mean that you were incorrect when you said that arguing that a chokehold is deadly force makes it harder for the DA to secure a manslaughter conviction.

What I said is that it is a double-edged sword. If a chokehold is not legally deadly force, and Penny was justified in applying non-deadly physical force, and Neely died as a result, the prosecution can argue that he applied the force in a reckless manner and killed Penny. But if a chokehold IS legally deadly force, and Penny was justified in applying deadly physical force (a higher bar, which is one edge of the sword) then the fact that Neely died as a result of such force is only expected (since it's deadly force), not evidence of recklessness (the other edge of the sword).

There is no double edge. If the People argue that the chokehold was deadly force (note that although there is NY authority that the use of a knife is deadly force as a matter of law, People v Kerley, 154 AD3d 1074, 1075 (2017), I don't see any such authority re chokeholds, though I only looked briefly), then the People have two arguments:

  1. If the jury finds that the chokehold was deadly force, it must convict because Penny was not justified use of deadly force; and

  2. If the jury finds that chokehold was not deadly force, it must nevertheless convict because it was so dangerous that its use constituted recklessness.

If they instead concede that it was not deadly force, then they only have argument #2.

There is no way that Penny is helped by a jury finding that the chokehold was deadly force. The more extreme or dangerous Penny's actions were, the easier it will be for the People to win.

Yeah, the updated story isn't looking good for this dude. Sure the person he killed was not that many steps above scum, but he was still human. Good on him for turning himself in at least.

I’m surprised no-one mentioned the way this incident has been covered on the /r/NYC subreddit. Given that it’s a deep blue city and Reddit is a deep blue site, you’d think everyone would be up in arms about Neely’s death. But the dominant mood is dramatically more pro-Penny than here, for heaven’s sake. Multiple posters saying that he did what needed to be done, people have a right not to be hassled by psychopaths on their commute, even some highly upvoted comments calling out progressivism by name as the ideology that created this problem. I’m utterly bemused and perplexed. Am I missing something?

On a related note, if Trump is canny, he’ll make his candidacy about law and order this time. The democrats can’t plausibly reclaim that particular political mantle after the prominence of Defund The Police, and there are enough true cop-haters along the Democrat activist base that you’d never get message discipline on the issue. And while I don’t have good polling on the issue, my sense from reading the city subs on Reddit is that crime is creeping up voters’ list of priorities. Oh, and as an issue it’s less alienating than immigration for many Latino voters, while being able to be plausibly connected to immigration with Trump’s base (“I’ve been gone four years and we have chaos in the streets of our cities, chaos on the border”).

On a related note, if Trump is canny, he’ll make his candidacy about law and order this time. The democrats can’t plausibly reclaim that particular political mantle after the prominence of Defund The Police, and there are enough true cop-haters along the Democrat activist base that you’d never get message discipline on the issue.

I love reading time capsules at times. I remember agreeing with it, but reality still has tricks to suprise

It's not just that it's a place about a deep blue city on a deep blue site, it's that the site routinely censors opinions contrary to the mainstream. I am genuinely surprised that Reddit is allowing opinions in favor of Penny and hasn't banned them under the guise of, say, encouraging violence. If you had asked me to predict /r/NYC's reaction beforehand, I would have 100% failed.

Meanwhile, the left-leaning person who would normally be the dissident in this case, Freddie deBoer, has come out strongly against Penny, saying:

The first thing I want to say about Jordan Neely is that his killing was a terrible crime and I hope his assailant is arrested and indicted. I don’t know what the right charges are, I don’t know what the right punishment is, but you can’t just choke someone to death like that.

It's almost like opposite day.

Whatever the cause, it almost gives me hope that at least the very people living in dense urban areas (whoever's left and hasn't moved out, anyway) are willing to address the problem of not just crime, but also harassment, filth, and general unpleasantness that plagues public transit, where urbanists don't want to or don't even acknowledge the problem.

Almost. The pessimistic side of me says that it's too little, too late, and support on Reddit won't change the outcome of Penny's trial, nor the broader institutional failures that even led to this situation happening in the first place.

I am genuinely surprised that Reddit is allowing opinions in favor of Penny and hasn't banned them under the guise of, say, encouraging violence. If you had asked me to predict /r/NYC's reaction beforehand, I would have 100% failed.

The mods keep locking and deleting the threads (without comment). But I wasn't surprised that /r/NYC came out mostly in favor of Penny, though I wouldn't have expected it to be as lopsided as it is. People ride the subway. Pretty much everyone there has had the experience of a Neely type ranting at them; some of them not just a Neely type but Neely himself. And some there have had such people physically attack them.

Whatever the cause, it almost gives me hope that at least the very people living in dense urban areas (whoever's left and hasn't moved out, anyway) are willing to address the problem of not just crime, but also harassment, filth, and general unpleasantness that plagues public transit, where urbanists don't want to or don't even acknowledge the problem.

Unfortunately they'll do anything about it except vote for policies and politicians who will do something about it. It took much worse than this to get New Yorkers to first vote for a Republican and then for a party-switching authoritarian.

Am I missing something?

As I said over there, a conservative is a radical leftist who rides the subway. Most people in /r/NYC ride the subway. They've run into the Neely types, doing everything from panhandling to menacing.

There seems to be some strong portion of American (presumably-otherwise-liberal) urbanites who express a strong hatred of the homeless, overriding all other possible concerns of liberal propriety.

Similarly I have a brother who is deeply progressive in just about every possible way, yet after he lived in Koreatown in LA for several years (for our foreign friends, Koreatown has had a distinct lack of Koreans since the Rodney King riots in the 90's) he has said things about Hispanics that would make /pol/ blush.

I don’t know. This says that Koreatown was only 10 percent Korean in 1990, while this says that it was 15 pct Korean in 2000 and 17.5 percent Korean in 2010. Of course they might be defining the borders differently, but still it is clearly still the heart of the Korean American community in LA (which of course has the largest Korean American pop in the US.

Koreatown

Mostly unrelated to the point, but this Korean BBQ in Ktown is one of the top five meals I've ever had and I cannot endorse going there strongly enough to anyone that happens to be in the LA area.

Sounds great. But I hope you also stop by Jitlada.

I didn't and haven't been back to LA recently. On the list now though! Thanks :-)

Yw. But only order off the southern Thai menu in the back.

Guess I was wrong then. Though it makes sense why I mostly saw Hispanics whenever I went to visit my brother, didn't realize it was less than 20% Korean.

Not homeless per se, but the honeless who make life miserable for everyone else. That is, no one hates someone that lives in a shelter but is (1) either working or seeking employment and (2) trying to get out of the shelter. But the people who shit on the sidewalks, harass people on the train, etc.? Those people suck.

The democrats can’t plausibly reclaim that particular political mantle after the prominence of Defund The Police, and there are enough true cop-haters along the Democrat activist base that you’d never get message discipline on the issue.

I mean Biden managed to neutralise it well enough last time, and he has distanced himself pretty clearly from that side of the party. If he felt so inclined, with no real primary challenge this time, he could start leaning into the 'I am the Democratic party' sort of thing even more, stress his opposition to radical measures throughout his career. Perhaps the crime bill thing even becomes a plus! In any case it's not as if the President has that much power over matters of law and order, so what is even Trump's positive case here? There's just not much he can credibly propose.

In any case it's not as if the President has that much power over matters of law and order, so what is even Trump's positive case here? There's just not much he can credibly propose.

The President doesn't have direct power over many things presidential campaigns are run on. That hasn't stopped anybody from making absurd promises. (More charitably, the POTUS may not have direct authority over this or that, but he has a lot of leverage and an implicit role as party leader that lets him push policies that are outside the strict limits of his office).

I think the distinction here is that a President can credibly claim to promise to enact federal legislation (still a bit dubious given his party may have a slim or no majority but still) given how prominent they generally are in directing the legislative activity of their own party these days. Law and order though is not even federal level, mostly anyway, so the influence becomes more obscure. He can as you say use the bully pulpit but that is hardly the stuff Presidential campaigns are made of. 'If I am elected, I will ask state prosecutors very nicely to please crack down, or something'.

But it’s relatively easy to point out Biden uses his FBI not to supplement law and order but to harass political opponents which further undermines law and order.

That is, democrats politicize Law and Order at the local and federal level.

It’s really simple- if you live in NYC and use public transit you get hassled or violently threatened by people like Neely fairly regularly (not every day but often enough).

It’s not pleasant and for men it’s emasculating and for women frightening.

Hm. In the 11 years I have lived in NYC, I have taken the subway every day, except during the early days of COVID, but I can't recall every being being harassed or verbally threatened by homeless people. Nor do I recall friends complaining about it. I have certainly had my senses assaulted by smelly homeless guys once in a while, but that's it.

We’ve discussed this before & I will just have to say that you must be lucky since I have been menaced by crazy homeless people a couple times (both times late at night past 2am) since moving to NYC last year.

Well, I am rarely on the subway that late. I am sure it is more likely at that hour. But my point is that this trope that people are constantly being menaced on the subway is just silly. It would be like me thinking that people are constantly in fear of being shot in open carry states.

I have lived in Manhattan for close to ten years now, taken the subway some unknown thousands of times, and I see this quite regularly. Just a couple of weeks ago I was in a 2 train that was packed like sardines, and I was standing near a couple of women who were doing their best to ignore the drunk hissing in their ears right behind them (this guy actually had a bottle of something and was taking swigs from it). I've never been assaulted myself, but that's probably because I'm a man. I know women who have been assaulted or harassed on the subway - one of my paralegals was stalked by a random vagrant, and had to get out before her stop and run from the station.

Aesthetically what bothers me isn't just the smell, it's the fact that an astonishing number of these people often have open, suppurating wounds that they don't even seem perturbed by. I vividly recall this morbidly obese woman sprawling herself out over a whole set of seats on the train to Astoria one day, and her leg was hideously swollen and visibly rotting. She was too stoned to care.

Yeah, I meant to say that I am rarely on the train at times when people are returning from bars drunk, and the last time I was on the train at 3 am some drunk kid threw up on the floor. But OTOH, I have never heard of anyone being run over by a drunk driver on the subway.

I’m surprised no-one mentioned the way this incident has been covered on the /r/NYC subreddit. Given that it’s a deep blue city and Reddit is a deep blue site, you’d think everyone would be up in arms about Neely’s death. But the dominant mood is dramatically more pro-Penny than here, for heaven’s sake. Multiple posters saying that he did what needed to be done, people have a right not to be hassled by psychopaths on their commute, even some highly upvoted comments calling out progressivism by name as the ideology that created this problem. I’m utterly bemused and perplexed. Am I missing something?

I have observed that city-specific subs tend to be more right-leaning compared to the broader subs and reddit overall. Probably some self-selection going on. NYC has woke types, but also Bloomberg-type neoliberals who are still considered 'blue'.

I have observed that city-specific subs tend to be more right-leaning compared to the broader subs and reddit overall.

Really? Maybe this is specific to Canada, but I find the opposite. Almost all city-specific subreddits are very left-wing.

There's an old saying that "Everyone is conservative about what he knows best.". That's good evidence in favor of the saying in regard to people's home subs.

The context you seem to be missing is that Alvin Bragg is effectively a cartoon charactichure of the GOP's bogeyman of the "Soros funded Prosecutor". Dude was all over the news a couple months back for charging a Bodega-owner with assault and unlawful possession of a handgun for wrestling a gun away from a would-be robber.

If any thing Im surprised that Bragg displayed the restraint he did by only charging Sgt Penny with manslaughter and not murder 2 at a bare minimum.

Dude was all over the news a couple months back for charging a Bodega-owner with assault and unlawful possession of a handgun for wrestling a gun away from a would-be robber.

Weren't those charges eventually dropped?

Largely due to the backlash.

But Bragg is fundamentally against self defense as a concept (eg charging and even up charging re self defense) while generally doing everything in his power to take it easy on career criminals. Bragg is truly a despicable person.

I figured there was virtually no chance that Bragg wouldn't prosecute this guy. He's essentially the Sherman McCoy to Bragg's Abe Weiss - the Great White Defendant that every liberal prosecutor salivates over. If Mike Nifong was willing to commit malpractice for the chance to jail three preppy white boys over a she-said/they-weren't-even-there, why would a prosecutor like Alvin Bragg, a black man to boot, miss the chance to get this guy over an encounter that was caught on tape?

Politics aside, part of me thinks there's a sort of pseudo-theological aspect to all of this, in that American society revolves around the worship of men like Jordan Neely. They can never fail, they can only be failed; they are owed all they can reach merely by their existence; and a certain degree of impunity is simply understood to be attached to their actions, a degree that would never be tolerated of any other citizen. The black criminal is essentially America's God, and the blacker and more criminal he is, the greater his divinity. Killing Jordan Neely was worse than lèse-majesté- it was essentially deicide.

On the pseudo-theological note, and apparently to jive with the Neely debate, this twitter thread about George Stinney Jr's execution popped up in my TL. Now whether one believes teenagers should be tried as adults for violent crimes is a moral quandary I won't get into for the moment. But it's very telling how it's become accepted fact that Stinney was an innocent black boy wrongfully arrested and convicted of rape and murder of two young white girls by a racist court, even though the South Carolina Judge who vacated his conviction 7 decades later made it a point that her judgement pertained to the procedure, not his guilt (or lack thereof).

I think you have this precisely backwards, not that it makes life much better for the worshipped. White men are given maximum agency and the progressive stack can be run backwards from there to determine agency. A homeless black man is nearly minimally agentic, they would be less so only if they were also trans or some other identity minority, and thus can attempt to, with full intention, push others in front of trains and have this written off as simple non-agentic manifestations of latent society and be back out on the streets within a day of the incident. While a white man can, against their actual intention, kill a black homeless person while trying to restrain them and be held to the standard that this was intentional homicide. This interpretation seems to accurately reflect how society reacts to these two types of people and has something for everyone to like and hate.

Matthew 25:34 NIV

"Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.’

“Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?’

“The King will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.’

I can see there being a theological implication of a homeless criminal saying he had nothing to eat or drink and being publicly strangled to death by a former soldier. He may have posed such an imminent threat to others that his killing was justified self defense but that wasn't in the viral video that provoked the response.

Like you I'm much more conflicted on this one than many other cases, including Floyd -- I think I'll just see how it goes, but for now an aside:

Holy heck the NIV sucks balls! I am not overly religious and will accept complaints about the technical inaccuracy of the KJV -- but FFS could an accurate translation not also be just a little bit more, IDK, stirring?

Then shall the King say unto them on his right hand, Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me.

Then shall the righteous answer him, saying, Lord, when saw we thee an hungred, and fed thee? or thirsty, and gave thee drink? When saw we thee a stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? Or when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto thee?

And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.

The NIV is a dynamic equivalence translation. It definitely comes across as "soft" in places as a result. A good modern formal equivalence translation like the ESV won't have that problem.

Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’

Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’

And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’

That is much better, thanks!

Why is the NIV so common these days?

It’s been common ever since it came around, because of its reading level being grade levels lower than more accurate or literary versions. Still, some people prefer it over those versions for whatever reason. My head pastor still uses the NIV1984, and I have to copy verses for the projection screens out of a PDF that’s technically illegal due to the copyright holder pulling the license.

I recommend the HCSB, a novel translation not based on a previous translation. (For example, the ESV is a revised RSV, which updated the ASV, which superseded the British AV, which rewrote the KJV, which cribbed a lot from Tyndale.) The HCSB was written to be a literary work as well as a good translation; it catches things like Jewish poetry forms and formats them accordingly.

Then the King will say to those on His right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world.

For I was hungry

and you gave Me something to eat;

I was thirsty

and you gave Me something to drink;

I was a stranger and you took Me in;

I was naked and you clothed Me;

I was sick and you took care of Me;

I was in prison and you visited Me.’

“Then the righteous will answer Him, ‘Lord, when did we see You hungry and feed You, or thirsty and give You something to drink? When did we see You a stranger and take You in, or without clothes and clothe You? When did we see You sick, or in prison, and visit You?’

“And the King will answer them, ‘I assure you: Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of Mine, you did for Me.’

I really haven't taken the opportunity to compare them.

Comparing 1 Peter 1:1-5 on a word-by-word level as a sample, the ASV and NIV both hit my high points, with the ESV and HCSB in the middle, with the LSB and CSB scoring last. Yet I like the flow of the ESV and HCSB better. Ultimately, I feel the LSB is a workmanlike attempt to recapture what the ASV already had and the ESV already did better, whereas the HCSB and CSB take turns being what the NIV was.

And since I spent three hours comparing six translations in Excel, here's my own eclectic translation of 1 Peter 1:1-5:

From: Petros, apostle of Iesou the Anointed

To: the Chosen, migrants of the Diaspora in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia and Bithynia; chosen according to Father God's foreknowledge, chosen through the Breath's cleansing, chosen to be obedient and to be sprinkled with Iesou's blood

A plethora of sweet favor and shalom upon you. May He be spoken well of, the God and Father of Iesou the Anointed our owner and better! In His abundant mercy He has had us born again into living hope (through the rising of Iesou the Anointed out of death), unto an inheritance unrusted, untainted, unfaded, secured for you in Heaven. It is you whom God's power guards through faith toward a deliverance already prepared to be unveiled at the edge of time.

I never see it out of baptist circles.

Eh, I have the opposite aesthetic preference. I wasn't raised on the KJV so when I hear verses I know with the Ye's it feels kind of cringe and ren faire-y.

If you substituted the ye's for "you" would that do it? Jesus is on such a fucking roll in Matthew, the bland language just seems to wreck it:

But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretence make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.

Woe unto you, ye blind guides, which say, Whosoever shall swear by the temple, it is nothing; but whosoever shall swear by the gold of the temple, he is a debtor!

Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gold, or the temple that sanctifieth the gold? And, Whosoever shall swear by the altar, it is nothing; but whosoever sweareth by the gift that is upon it, he is guilty.

Ye fools and blind: for whether is greater, the gift, or the altar that sanctifieth the gift? Whoso therefore shall swear by the altar, sweareth by it, and by all things thereon. And whoso shall swear by the temple, sweareth by it, and by him that dwelleth therein. And he that shall swear by heaven, sweareth by the throne of God, and by him that sitteth thereon.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone.

Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets, and garnish the sepulchres of the righteous, And say, If we had been in the days of our fathers, we would not have been partakers with them in the blood of the prophets.

Wherefore ye be witnesses unto yourselves, that ye are the children of them which killed the prophets. Fill ye up then the measure of your fathers.

Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?

Something I am still struggling with - shouldn't a Marine know how to hold/disable somebody without killing him? I know next to nothing on Marine training, but I imagine there are situations where you want to capture the enemy soldier (e.g. to interrogate him later) and there must be ways to hold somebody relatively safely to oneself without choking them to death. Am I wrong? Also, being a Marine, he should have known what a long chokehold would do to a person. Did he mean to kill the guy? If yes, did he not foresee killing a guy in public in this fashion - after he is clearly subdued already and not presenting clear and present danger - would end up in serious charges, especially in New York? How did he expect this would end up?

Speaking as someone with an extensive combat sports background, this idea that training should have helped him is highly dubious. I'm sure he was given some training, but probably never used it in real life, and hasn't kept up with it. Indeed, it probably makes things worse. He kept trying to do the thing he was trained to do, but kept getting it wrong, which is made very difficult by being in real life (not on a mat) and battling a live opponent (who also probably was giving off odors that made him less able to focus).

Something I am still struggling with - shouldn't a Marine know how to hold/disable somebody without killing him?

I have basically no 1st hand knowledge on the subject, but any time I hear from people who have actual knowledge of combat (e.g. mixed martial artists or law enforcement), it seems to me that humans are very fragile creatures where the line between merely stopping an oppositional person with force and killing them is extremely fine. I'm sure there are techniques that maximize the chances of someone surviving when holding/disabling them, but the chaotic nature of a physical altercation makes it so that there's a lot of variance and unpredictability in the outcome. So my thinking is that it's very possible that he tried his best to disable him without killing him but failed at that endeavor, for whatever reason. Whether that was due to reckless negligence is up to the courts to decide, I suppose.

it seems to me that humans are very fragile creatures where the line between merely stopping an oppositional person with force and killing them is extremely fine.

Put more precisely, the line between incapacitation and killing is very fine. People can stop an action of their own volition whenever they want. It's making them stop against their will that's fraught.

that's what I was thinking too. I assume 'restraining someone safely' would be covered in basic training , especially when the assailant is not armed and does not seem particularly strong

Functionally it ends up through pain compliance and this seems to be a case where that wouldn't work.

Jesus, he used a chokehold, not a glock. How much softer can you get?

We back to "de-escalation training"?

Any chokehold is the barehanded equivalent of a glock.

Theirs a reason I constantly bitch about guys who refuse to tap because they have testosterone poisoning and that refs full body throw themselves onto the ground and get within 8 inches of your face when you are getting choked, and it's because it goes from a fun sporting competition to a negligent murder in about 30 seconds.

I don't expect this dude to do a kimura or some shit, but a 15 minute choke is a bit much.

a 15 minute choke is a bit much.

And why do you think that is even possible, or happened?

You're in a match. You sink a RNC. How long can you hold it before your arms burn out? Fifteen minutes?

Yeah? Unless your rotator cuff is fucked or you are weak as shit, you can hold an rnc forever. It's the easiest hold to hold, its why getting one locked in right should be an instant tap.

You can's struggle against an rnc once it is locked in because your point of leverage is your squishy trachea area, the best you can do is try to pull their hands off their own arms get a finger loose, but if it is locked in you have shitty leverage for that also.

A lot. There are different ways to hold people. Source: 15 years of martial arts training. I don't claim I would have done better in this situation (one reason I moved from California is to reduce the chance to ever find myself in such a situation) but I know there are other ways than chocking the daylights out of a person. That's why I am wondering why he decided to do what he did.

I mean, he probably convened a meeting of ethics professors, focus grouped the results a bit, got a supreme court ruling and a blessing from the pope before confronting the maniac.

You've got fifteen years of martial arts training? What's the better control position to back control? What's the least damaging incapacitation you can do to a person?

Should he have gone for the Kimura and torn Neely's shoulder off? Snapped his elbows off backward? Or just punched him in the head repeatedly?

What's the least damaging incapacitation you can do to a person?

It's hard to answer such generics, there could be a number of ways depending on the situation. But yes, I think it'd be better even if he broke his shoulder or punched him out (though this is a risky one too - people may react wildly different to being punched, including possible fatal injuries) than killing him. If it were somewhere in deep self-defense friendly red state, then the calculation would be different, but in New York, with races being as they are, you're pretty much guaranteed very vigorous and politicized prosecution. This is also a component of safety - what happens after. Again, I am not saying I know the solution for this, it would be stupid for me not being there, not seeing it, to make any suggestions. It's just the choice that actually happened looks strange to me, and I wonder why was it made. No amount of low-effort mockery "yes, he should have filed a petition to Supreme Court!" is going to answer this. I don't expect anybody to know the answers, but maybe at least some higher effort thoughts than that.

It's hard to answer such generics

It's not, you just refuse to because the answer is obvious and inconvenient. The RNC is the lowest risk to both parties. It does not sacrifice control like an armbar, it does not require coming to striking distance like mount. Back control is bar none the best control position and the RNC is the absolute least damaging and risky option to incapacitate someone.

This is the absolute minimum force possible that produces incapacity without injury in the wild majority of cases. 99%, with decimals to ten or so places.

If the RNC is not justified, then no violence is justified. The critique of "well why didn't he try some other nonspecific technique which from the keyboard I think might have had a better result after the fact?" is ridiculous.

I mean, he probably convened a meeting of ethics professors, focus grouped the results a bit, got a supreme court ruling and a blessing from the pope before confronting the maniac.

Pretty unnecessary response imo.

I don’t especially care about this incident anymore than I care about any of the other daily killings in NYC, but even maintaining the same hold without putting the one hand behind the head (which is what causes the downward pressure on the bloodflow) would have been both easier and less lethal. Not even saying he should have done that in the situation if the guy was violent, but if all he wanted to do was restrain him (as opposed to knock him out and dip) then almost any way of holding someone other than the really specific RNC position is less lethal.

almost any way of holding someone other than the really specific RNC position is less lethal.

This is either wildly wrong or extremely pedantic. And less lethal for who exactly?

This is either wildly wrong or extremely pedantic.

…it isn’t though? Fitting your hand behind the back of somebody’s head and pushing down isn’t a natural, easy-to-fall-into movement - you might have to literally force your hand up in between their body and yours while they’re struggling - and that move is specifically what causes the blood flow to cut off. Almost every other form of back control doesn’t have that immediate risk because the RNC isn’t back control, it’s a submission. Even just take the same hand and use it to pin his arm to his body and you have a movement both less dangerous and more natural for beginners, whereas as the RNC isn’t something people know intuitively without being taught.

As for your comment about lethality, in every conversation I’d had about this event, including my comment above, I’ve very explicitly said I’m not condemning the use of lethal force, which may have literally been necessary if the guy was attacking him or somebody else on the train. I’m disagreeing with the people who are for some reason arguing that choking someone out for a long ass time doesn’t have obviously lethal potential. And if it turns out the guy wasn’t attacking anyone, for better or for worse you don’t get to knock people out just for being awful.

This is bogus.

"No, you can't carry a gun for self defense, just use martial arts"

:guy gets punched, hits head, dies:

"He should have known the risk hitting someone, he should totally have used something less damaging"

:guy gets choked, dies:

"Obviously lethal, should have used some other secret squirrel thing that only exists in the keyboard warrior's head"

:guy gets tased, dies:

" Yeah, 'less than lethal' means lethal, should have known that this could happen, deploying a taser is lethal force!"

:Guy gets pepper sprayed, dies:

"Why are people allowed to carry obviously lethal pepper spray"?

Strange how there are exactly zero responsible and reasonable uses of force, at least after the fact if something goes badly and someone dies. All the good uses of force exist.......mostly in the minds of critics.

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Maybe he wanted to just knock him out as opposed to restrain him for an indeterminate amount of time?. Being so close to a Vagrant like Neely mustn't be very fun.

Yeah I was gonna say actually knocking him out and withdrawing quickly could have made sense, if the guy was attacking him at least. If you can’t land it perfectly just applying sustained pressure to the throat for a long time is dicier though. And if the guy doesn’t turn out to have attacked anyone, you can’t just knock someone out for being really awful to be around.

How do you knock someone out?

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Marines are trained to kill though. That's the whole point. They're shock troops, not a police force.

You will be taught how to disable someone without killing them, but in a way that maximizes your safety and doesn't really take into account that you'll be fighting some drug ridden mentally ill lowlife but an actual enemy combattant.

Marines are trained to kill though

Yes, that's one of the things they are trained to do. But I really hope that's not the only thing they are trained to do. Knowing when it is appropriate and not appropriate to kill should have been part of it too.

but in a way that maximizes your safety and doesn't really take into account that you'll be fighting some drug ridden mentally ill lowlife but an actual enemy combattant.

How does it make any difference? I'm sure if you choke an enemy combatant for 15 minutes he'd die just as well as a mentally ill lowlife. Anybody would. That's what I don't understand - he knew what would happen and he must have had other options. Why did he choose this one?

But I really hope that's not the only thing they are trained to do

Why are you exactly hoping for this?

Because an army of mindless psychopathic murderers is a bad way to conduct wars. And releasing them into society when they're done service would be even worse.

releasing them in society when they've done service would be even worse

This is a legitimate unsolved problem.

It was already pretty hard to train people to be ready to kill and not just ready to boast at the enemy with automatic weapons. Training them back into being normal citizens is something I'm not sure to even be possible.

Not about to say the average jarhead can't be integrated back into society, but fucking with him is a deadly business and likely always will be. Doesn't matter what the law says.

Training them back into being normal citizens is something I'm not sure to even be possible.

Why not? They are not killing any person they encounter at random. They are killing who they are ordered, when they are ordered, and in a manner they are ordered. Otherwise they're not an army, they are a horde of psychos. Why would it be impossible to order them not to kill civilians?

but fucking with him is a deadly business and likely always will be

As I understand, the wacko in question did not even pose an imminent danger - certainly not to the Marine, but also not to anybody else. He disturbed the peace, was stirring shit up and was running his mouth, but he was not actively trying to murder anyone, and especially not Penny. So it's hardly "fucking with him".

Why not? They are not killing any person they encounter at random. They are killing who they are ordered, when they are ordered

Because that's not how it works in reality.

In 1947, Brigadier General S. L. A. Marshall published Men Against FIre: The Problem of Battle Command, arguably one of the most influential publications in military psychology. In it, he makes the now infamous "ratio of fire" claim that fewer than 25% of men in combat actually fired their weapons at the enemy. His figures are contested, but the finding itself has been independently reproduced by multiple studies performed by other armies over multiple centuries. And remember we are talking about men that were drilled into operating their weapons and are in mortal danger.

The reason for this remains the object of intense debate, but Marshall most definitely succeeded in convincing people to look into methods of increasing this ratio.

By 1950 and Korea the US Army had started efforts to use B. F. Skinner's newly discovered conditioning techniques to do so.

One of the most famous changes wrought by these programs was the use of human silhouette instead of bullseye targets during basic training as one such conditioning tweak. But it is also one of the least successful.

The increase in the availability of crew served weapons, which provide a sociological pressure to the individual soldier, and the widespread use of artillery which allows for the reduction of the enemy to an item on a map did a lot more to increase the ratio. All these factors and more made Korea an important learning experience for this venture and all the lessons learned would be applied to the extreme in the next war.

VIetnam would see these techniques perfected, and used with great effect.

Desensitization is of course the name of the game here, the level of bloodthirsty rhetoric and celebration of killing in a recruits training was significantly increased compared to Korea and even more significantly so compared to the world wars. Training videos and lectures full of gory details and celebration of the mutilation of the enemy were commonplace.

Conditioning was also greatly employed, to produce reaction without thought. While previously a marksmanship course would have you take a prescribed position while calmly shooting at stationary targets, a similar course for Vietnam would have you standing in a foxhole, wearing full gear, waiting anxiously for a moving target to pop up at random and only allow you a few moments to shoot. That same target producing a satisfying sound when dispatched correctly.

A great emphasis was placed on realism, they went as far as making mock Vietnamese villages complete with livestock and villagers to have the recruits patrol and do mock missions within. All to turn the destruction of the enemy into a reflex.

Of course all this conditioning comes at a cost. The mental restraints we have against killing are there for a reason, and many argue that the atrocities committed against Vietnamese civilians as well as the widespread psychatric issues associated with Vietnam vets are consequences of such conditioning.

This is all to say that the idea that destroying your fellow man as something that can be simply be turned on and off and controlled with individual reason is far from an accurate picture.

The distance between an effective soldier and what you term psychopathy is much smaller than I think you realize.

the wacko in question did not even pose an imminent danger

This is most probably what the law cares about. But you're not hearing me if you think that is what matters. Whether it is true or not.

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They are of course trained for other combat activities, and to operate equipment, and survive in the field, and all sorts of other things. They are not much trained in nonlethal combat, occupation enforcement, or policing. They are not meant to be used for that purpose.

A lot depends on what exactly happened in that subway car and everyone has gotten way over their skis on this. If someone inadvertently chokes off the blood supply of someone who was throwing glass bottles or metal cans that's a very different act than gradually choking out someone who issues nonspecific verbal threats and flung some papers. Is Neely vaguely muttering threats or is he up in a specific person's face telling them he's about the punch them out? Penny's self defense case hinges on a lot of information we just don't have.

This is why you should always wait until you have all the information before forming an opinion.

You will never have all the information. An impossible dream. Yesterday the incident happened, and people saw one set of facts, today charges are brought and more come out still, and tomorrow some new development will create new facts.

good point. the question is, how long should you wait; how much info is ideal?

how much info is ideal?

I've been to enough rodeos where my prejudices were thoroughly vindicated that I'm going for "Zero, my priors are great, judge purely from them".

We're a discussion forum, not a court of law. themotte.org has no standards of evidence, and that's fine.

Sure but it's still embarrassing to go off on a topic that it turns out later you're wrong about.

You weren't wrong about it, reality just failed you.

they made an example of him.

this practice is so clearly injust that I really have trouble with how so many people accept it as required praxis. Is "being made an example out of" really just something people accept in our anarcho tyranny society that it can be said as a matter of course? We're seriously playing duck duck goose with decades of people's lives in the balance?

Ulbricht's sentence was based off of the idea that he ordered killings, which was shown "by a preponderance of evidence." This is not how we are supposed to do criminal law in the US; I have no idea how or why none of the appeals went anywhere. And no matter what you think of selling drugs, no one gets a double life sentence just for that.

which is a moral rather than a purely legal question

It's also a question of fairness--I don't believe that anyone else involved with the original or subsequent silk roads got anywhere near as long a sentence.

Peter Thiel in 2016-2017 had the ear of Trump. Too bad nothing came of it.

Ulbricht got his sentence because he refused a deal that would likely have seen him out in fewer than 20 years, possibly even in 10, so they made an example of him.

I hate how plea deals work. Do British, Canadian, or other European systems have this many plea deals involved?

England doesn't use plea bargaining - it is technically illegal, although pre-sentencing guidelines it was possible to do informal plea bargains of the "We will drop the grievous bodily harm charge if you plead guilty to actual bodily harm" type. These no longer work because the sentencing guidelines (like the US Federal ones) tell judges to sentence based on the offending behaviour, not the specific crime the defendant was convicted of.

The current guideline for guilty pleas is that you get a third off the sentence if you plead guilty at the first opportunity (equivalent to pleading guilty at the arraignment in the US system), and between a quarter and a tenth off if you plead guilty later than that but before the opening of the trial. No negotiation.

Pleas don't generally exist in civil law so plea bargaining is therefore rare/non-existent.

The prosecuted can confess and that might affect sentencing but it doesn't really impact the trial beyond the confession being entered into evidence. The trial will proceed regardless and someone might even be found not guilty despite their confession.

Pleas don't generally exist in civil law so plea bargaining is therefore rare/non-existent.

Isn't that just an out-of-court settlement?

I'm talking about criminal cases, not civil cases. Out of court settlements for civil cases exist in both civil and common law.

I believe plea bargain by definition pertains to criminal law, but I might be wrong.

Thanks for the clarification.

If the guy was still flailing it’s reasonable to assume something bad would happen if he let go as well. I mean I think he was trying to keep the guy from attacking other people and until he’s not struggling I can at least understand why that might make penny think he’s just getting more pissed off.

When being strangled to death, continued flailing is more a sign of not being dead/unconscious yet than of still being a threat.

this is why defund the police is so stupid, even if you believe in social justice. Because vigilantism is possibly worse . the police are trained at dealing with these sorts of rowdy passengers.

the police are trained at dealing with these sorts of rowdy passengers

Are supposed to be trained.

They do get training; and that training, however far it may fall from perfection, does make a difference. I would bet that the 20th percentile policeman is better at restraining people like Neely than the 80th percentile vigilante, even assuming that both have the same equipment and the same amount of backup.

Yeah. This is comparing farmers to professional soldiers. The cop might have restrained 20 Neelys, the vigilante two.

This is part of why I think using force in self defense in response to verbal threats (if that's what happened) is really bad. If you make threats and someone starts trying to restrain you in a chokehold are you expected to de-escelate and hope they stop when you're unconscious because you recognize you're in the wrong for issuing threats?

I mean, if you're strangling someone to death, I think that they would flail about whether they're a 'good guy' or a 'bad guy'.

So retract my original argument in which I posit drugs played a role. This is why you should always wait until you have all the information before forming an opinion.

Why? Because sometimes you'll have to say, "ope, looks like my first impression was incorrect"? Perhaps someone that has any actual power should hang tight before having an opinion and perhaps someone that intends to take to the streets to burn this motherfucker down peacefully protest should wait for the all the facts, but I genuinely don't think I'm hurting anyone by saying to my wife, "ya know, I bet the belligerent vagrant was on meth or something".

I'll continue to reserve judgement on criminal culpability for Daniel Penny, but stick by the sentiment that the primary moral blame for this incident lies with the New York City policies that result in belligerent vagrants screaming at people on subways constantly. When that's the policy, you're going to get the occasional tussle that ends badly.

but I genuinely don't think I'm hurting anyone by saying to my wife, "ya know, I bet the belligerent vagrant was on meth or something".

This seems like a personal virtue that is, in practice, supererogatory - you have no power, so your snap judgment does nothing. But it would be better if you didn't since it would emulate the thinking we praise in those who have power.

A second degree manslaughter conviction is not that bad. only max 15 years for killing someone

Only. Only 15 years and a normal-life-ending felony record, for restraining a violent drug-addled mentally-ill person who the government refused to do anything about. If that's what you call "not that bad", what IS "that bad"? Crucifixion?

Since I was asked to elaborate: Just about every part of this comment is extremely low quality.

restraining

Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?

violent

This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.

drug-addled mentally-ill

Neither of these remotely justifies death.

Excuse me? A 15 minute chokehold resulting in a dead person is "restraining"?

Yes. Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.

This is not in evidence. Unless you mean his prior assault arrests, which were not known to anyone on the train and thus irrelevant.

We have information -- like his prior conviction for assault -- that those on the train did not. On the other hand, they had information we did not, such as his exact behavior at the time. Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.

Neither of these remotely justifies death.

Death requires no justification. The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.

Restraining a person sometimes causes their death, as it did in this case.

If Perry does get convicted of manslaughter, it is false that it would be for restraining someone. Death is an essential component. There is absolutely no reason to describe the events this way except to make it seem like Perry didn't do anything wrong, without addressing any of the relevant facts.

Our prior for Penny acting violently or in a threatening way on the train should indeed be affected by his previous arrests.

"Our" prior does not justify your claim that he was violent. This is at best extremely weak evidence; the only witness statement I saw claimed he was not violent, which while obviously far from perfect is better evidence.

The question is whether Neely's behavior justified Penny's actions, not whether they justified the result.

This is just bizarre. Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified? I suppose this would be consistent with your idea that drivers shouldn't be held responsible for driving recklessly.

Are you of the opinion that the consequences (or at least, expected consequences) of an action, have nothing to do with whether they are justified?

It is Penny's actions which are justified or unjustified, not what followed from them. It is true that he might be facing assault or strangulation charges rather than manslaughter if Neely hadn't die, but it is not Neely's death which requires justification; it is Penny's actions which led to that death. The distinction is important; skipping over it is how you get to arguments like "Neely's behavior didn't justify killing him". The question is whether Penny's actions in putting him in a chokehold and thereby risking Neely's death were justified, not whether Neely's death was justified.

You made a big deal about the severity of the punishment. Whether his actions were justified is not dependent on whether someone died, but the level of punishment, if a crime was committed, very much does depend on whether someone died. Why did you bother to make a big deal about the size of the punishment? Either he was justified and there will be no punishment, or he wasn't and is guilty killing another person, in which case a significant punishment is clearly appropriate.

The question is whether Penny's actions in putting him in a chokehold and thereby risking Neely's death were justified, not whether Neely's death was justified.

I think this is just semantic games. We have legal standards for when civilians can use lethal force (for what I hope are obvious reasons) which amount to "it is justified to kill this person." Using lethal force does not always result in death, but death has to be a justifiable outcome in order for the use of deadly force to be legitimate.

At some point, people need to live reality on reality's terms and realize that the New York City policy, culture, and values are all pretty clear that being screamed at, threatened, and occasionally assaulted by vagrants is normal and that doing anything about it will result in consequences for the person that interfered with the normal state of affairs. The options for New York City residents are to accept the normalcy of cowering before their moral betters or electing to leave. I have plenty of complaints about the local politics in my area, but the local expectation isn't that lunatics get to berate normal people and ruin public spaces. I would strongly suggest moving to a place like that for anyone in New York that is sick of garbage strewn on the streets and vagrants disrupting their work commute.

What sort of indicators would be most salient when evaluating where to move to?

If I were moving right now, I would care about demographics, population change, and economic freedom, but none of that would substitute for just visiting and seeing what I think.

How the state you are moving to treats gun rights is usually a good indicator. Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws are another further indicator. But the really big indicators are social, not legal.

I mean, there is another option - take simple steps to anonymize yourself before intervening, and if things go wrong flee the scene. A motivated modern police force can absolutely catch you if they decide to pursue the case, but they have a lot of similarly sad cases on their plates. A single extra "mentally ill vagrant dies in a scuffle he likely started, suspect disappears" isn't going to attract undue law-enforcement resources, and it's going to be suppressed in the media rather than being shouted on the street corners. "Blue-voting city fails its most vulnerable, again" isn't a narrative that pays the bills like "Outgroup member murders innocent in broad daylight", and the boys in blue have even less motivation to track you down in the absence of public outcry.

The downsides I can think of are that if you do get caught you'll be punished more severely, and that certain anonymizing tactics might make you seem like the aggressor and be on the wrong side of further bystander intervention. For the former, I'm not familiar enough with US/NYC law to know how badly, but since it seems probable that Penny is going to jail for a long time, a few more years doesn't seem like a good tradeoff against something like a 90% chance of a clean getaway. For the latter - well, this seems to come up rarely enough that two separate people in a train car being willing to get their hands dirty seems unlikely, and a brawl between unrelated belligerents is less likely to inspire heroics than one-sided harassment.

Any time someone dies they're going to be looking for you. There's a lot of minor crime in New York but not a lot of killing, relatively speaking.

That can work for something like a fistfight. Maybe even if the vagrant is in the hospital but isn't terribly injured. Bodies always have drawn law enforcement attention.

I mean, there is another option - take simple steps to anonymize yourself before intervening, and if things go wrong flee the scene.

Not possible using a train/subway system due to CCTV. Even if you went into some toilets and did a full change of clothing and masked up, they would back trace your movements when analyzing footage and probably be able to figure out who you were (height/build). This is in a homicide case anyway where cops are diligent about their investigations. Simple assault and maybe they wouldn't bother.

You have to be the change you want to see.

Only 15 years and a normal-life-ending felony record, for restraining a violent drug-addled mentally-ill person who the government refused to do anything about.

There are mentally ill people when I go down the street. some of them yell at pedestrians. I would love if someone could do something about it, but that's not the job of citizens even if he is a major burden on society and net-negative value. I cannot just go up to one of those guys and choke him out, not that I could or would choose to take that risk.

It wasn't on the street though. They were captives in the actual environment this took place.

Changes things.

that is a good point. Subways are a hotbed of culture war, . You got many people of diverse backgrounds confined to this small metal tube, same for airplanes. Most passengers are behaved; it only takes one to fuck things up for everyone.

Man, that's an awful lot of euphemism, nonsense, and irrelevance crammed into such a short post.

  • -25

Make an argument; sneering is not an argument.

I can do that, but when are you going to make the same point to nybbler ?

  • -10

When he posts something that is nothing but low-effort sneering, like your post.

We don't mod people for making bad arguments (or arguments you don't like).

The comment I replied to is low-effort sneer that contains claims but no arguments.

I'm not interested in going round and round with your whining about why I modded Suzy but I didn't mod Johnny. If you disagree with my mod decision, feel free to appeal to Zorba. (Protip: reporting every mod comment that makes you angry multiple times is not an effective way to advance your case.)

I'm not interested in going round and round with your whining about why I modded Suzy but I didn't mod Johnny.

There are some things that moderators should be doing regardless of whether they are interested in them or not.

It's like having a restaurant owner who's "not interested" in making sure his food is stored at the right temperature.

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The term whining here is uncalled for. That's a reflection on your irritation, not the complaint. One might also argue that for a mod to use such terms discourages active participation, to say nothing of direct feedback. Just a thought.

edit for typos

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Presumably, the mods will make that point when he doesn't make an argument. Reading his comment, I see:

  • A felony conviction is very bad,

  • there were mitigating circumstances in this case, and

  • the top level comment used a nonstandard definition of "bad".

You can believe whatever you want about the quality of the comment, but the arguments about the situation are there.

I think he might be guilty of going too far. I expect a hung jury because these cases haven’t been working in NYC.

I think the bigger question is what should we be doing with people like Neely? He’s obviously a net negative utilitarian value on society harassing people all day with a potential to have a bad moment and throw someone in front of a train.

Just locking him in a cell seems a little mean and drastically increases his suffering. My solution sounds a little like slavery where we put people on a farm with supervision. He gets to do a little work like taking off vegetables etc. But is removed from society.

This is kind of what asylums used to be, or were supposed to be - fairly nice open-air warehouses where people were encouraged to do a little bit of gardening or knitting to keep them minimally occupied, and otherwise drugged or sedated into docility.

with a potential to have a bad moment and throw someone in front of a train.

If memory serves, he already tried exactly that. But I can't seem to find the source and there have been a lot of rumours flying about, so take it with a grain of salt.

I've seen this claimed on twitter, but no proof. There is however a short video of a black man who pushes a woman into (not in front of) a train at a station, but I don't think it's Neely. I have a feeling that people saw this and just ran with it.

Might even be acquittal rather than a hung jury. Bernhard Goetz -- who was pretty messed up himself and did his own case a lot of harm, including fleeing the scene, destroying evidence, bragging about how he wanted to make the people he shot suffer and claiming he said "You seem to be alright, here's another" before firing his last shot -- was acquitted of all but weapons violations. And Penny didn't use a weapon and seems to at least be sensible enough to do his talking through his lawyers.

He might, but most of the damage to Penny's reputation has already been done, and a felony conviction isn't going to mean much given that. If I'm his attorney I'm taking any deal that allows him to avoid prison time. This incident is going to follow him around regardless of what happens, so an acquittal doesn't really give him that much of an advantage over a plea to a lesser charge. The DA has already charged so low that they're not particularly worried about public reaction and it's well within the ballpark of being able to avoid jail time. No need to tempt fate for the sake of principle.

He might, but most of the damage to Penny's reputation has already been done

What damage? Outside of New York most people will forget about him pretty quickly. Within New York, his reputation will likely remain decidedly mixed. A felony conviction is more than damage to reputation; it legally disqualifies you from many jobs and positions. And even those it doesn't, it's a bad thing to have and many people will not hire felons.

The DA has already charged so low

Second degree manslaughter is a class C felony carrying a up to 15 year prison term; the classes range from A down to E.

Yeah, I know a felony conviction is bad. And sure, most people will forget about this, but from here on out absent unusual circumstances this incident will come up as soon as you type his name into Google. It's enough of an issue that even people like Monica Lewinsky who technically did nothing wrong still have problems finding employment because no one wants the attention that comes with hiring them. By charging low, I meant that in most cases like these the activists are braying for blood and couldn't care less that Man 2 is technically a serious crime; they want a murder charge but would accept a plea of Man 1. Man 2 has a 15 year max but a guy like Penny is probably getting more like 1 to 3 years given his lack of a record and the sympathetic circumstances. It would be an outrage. If what they'e charging could result in his being out of jail in a year after a jury conviction, then they have no pressure not to just use the specter of jail time as a cudgel to get him to quietly take a plea of criminally negligent homicide and a few years probation. By that point no one will care.

So while he certainly may be able to get off, it's a pretty hefty gamble to take a year in The Tombs over some easy peasy probation or suspended sentence or conditional release or whatever other deal the DA throws at him. If you're not a hardened criminal, the decision is pretty easy to make unless you have an ironclad case, which he doesn't. Goetz got off, but he was in a situation where he was actually approached by a group of people carrying potentially dangerous objects. With Penny, it's not clear if he was even in the same car while Neely went on his tirade, and he held the guy in a dangerous position much longer than can reasonably be described as necessary, especially given the publicity surrounding George Floyd. So I wouldn't say it's exactly a slam-dunk acquittal, and juries are unpredictable. You're basically trying to get the jury to sympathize with the general public's sense of order and decency, which seems fine enough until you realize that there's going to be a grieving family on the stand and in the gallery, and a prosecutor who's going to ask why he went for the guy's neck when several people were holding him down and restraining his arms and legs could have been equally effective. It's a pure crapshoot, and you don't risk prison on a crapshoot.

What damage? Outside of New York most people will forget about him pretty quickly. Within New York, his reputation will likely remain decidedly mixed.

Apparently he's working his way through college as a bartender -- the incident could be a benefit for a bartender job, but probably not for whatever he's up to at college.

He could maybe reenlist, depending what he pleads to?

I think the bigger question is what should we be doing with people like Neely?

I have settled on what I think would be referred to as "nicer prison" if using honest verbiage. The important part for me is that people like him are separated from decent society. Once that decision is made, it seems obvious to me that this should be made no more unpleasant for him than absolutely necessary. If it's feasible for him to do a little work as you suggest, sure, that seems like a more meaningful life than some other options. If he wants to basically just play video games all day, that's pretty much fine by me. If he'd like to walk around the grounds, that's fine as long as he's not getting into fights with others too frequently. Ultimately, I would leave the administration of this to people with much more expertise and interest than I with the basic mission of, "don't let this guy out, but don't make his life any worse than it has to be". I'm fine with funding this at fairly high levels because I think the current policy imposes massive externalities. How much would I pay for a subway that didn't have angry vagrants, begging pests, and meth-addled lunatics? A lot.

The issue with your proposal is that you have to provide the guy with some form of due process, and you'd need to establish what is practically an entirely separate division of the court system to do this. One of the reasons institutionalization started to wane in the 1960s was that the existence of psychiatric drugs meant that a lot of the people who were previously hopeless were now capable of leading normal lives. These people obviously didn't want to continue to be committed to a nuthouse, and the state has no interest in supporting people who are capable of supporting themselves, but there was an impasse because many of these people had lifetime insanity commitments. So the laws changed to require periodic reviews to determine if there was still reason for commitment. These reviews, of course are expensive, as you need to have a judge available, a representative of the state available, get an advocate for the inmate appointed, get testimony from doctors, etc. For every inmate, like once a year. So the goal became getting people with mental health problems either on their own or into group-home type settings where they could potentially have jobs outside and lead somewhat normal lives. This is obviously only one factor in the demise of institutionalization, but it's the relevant one for my case.

By and large, the system has worked. Historically, the main institutions for the Pittsburgh area were Mayview State Hospital and Woodville State Hospital. Mayview had over 3700 patients at its peak in and Woodville had 3200. By the time Mayview closed in 2008 it had a mere 225. By contrast, the winter 2022 homeless population of Allegheny County (the most recent year for which data is available) was 880, and only about 250 of them had severe mental illness. You could house all of the county's homeless population at just one of the old hospitals, though I'd personally want to limit it to people with mental illness, drug addiction, chronic health problems, and physical disabilities. In one fell swoop you eliminate all the people who are wither causing problems or are charity cases in need of treatment (I'd try to keep domestic violence victims separate because they are neither causing problems nor in need of treatment).

I'd propose a system where if someone gets arrested for something minor and meets certain criteria, like having a history of being homeless and committing the kinds of crimes the homeless commit, the prosecutor gives them the option of living in a voluntary residential community similar to a state hospital. The person could also be referred by a social worker if they aren't causing problems but are chronically homeless and have health problems or disabilities. If they opt in they are evaluated and either put into a treatment program or labeled long-term if it's unlikely treatment is going to help. Once in, they'll be given treatment they need and plenty of recreational activities, etc., including the opportunity to work if they so desire. They're free to leave at any time. That's the carrot. The stick is that there is a crackdown on public disorder caused by homelessness. If you don't opt in you will be prosecuted, and your social worker ain't gonna save you, because she wants you in the program. If you opt-in the program but leave before your treatment program is over or before 2 years in the case of chronics, you'll forfeit your right to go back into the program and will be dealt with by the legal system. The place would be nice but just crappy enough that no one who can live independently would live there voluntarily. I'm thinking mid-level assisted living facility.

That probably takes care of about half the homeless population. With them out of the way, we can focus on housing and employment and all the other things without them getting fucked up by the problematic people. Housing a bunch of strangers in a large dormitory is a lot easier when you know that none of them have any particular inclination to use drugs or steal from other residents or harass the women. The goal here should be to make sure that they have a place to sleep and keep their stuff and take a shower and do laundry so they can stay presentable for the the job market and either keep their jobs if they have them or go back to work if they don't. These places wouldn't have all the amenities as the institutions but there would be no restrictions on coming or going and would be more like a college dorm. The only real difference is that you're still in "the system" and any arrests or violations of drug policy (I'm thinking obvious signs of use, not mandatory searches) would have you shipped of to the institution or to jail.

It would be expensive but, honestly, if the state was willing to pay for round the clock care for over 7,000 people in Allegheny County (plus a few surrounding counties) in 1967, then doing less for fewer than a thousand should be a no-brainer. Hell, with commercial real estate in the shitter you could easily take a few floors from a downtown office complex and use that to house the normal homeless. The problematic ones would have to be on an estate with grounds somewhere out in the countryside since you can't just bottle them up like it's a prison, and that could get expensive since the sites of the old ones are now all luxury homes, but hey, they shouldn't have gotten rid of them in the first place.

the push for de-institutionalization is partly to blame. In the past maybe he would have been committed. It's easy to find solutions to deal with overtly violent or mentally ill people, but those who are a nuisance and only occasionally act or threaten violence, but without breaking laws or physically harassing people, are harder to deal with.

Would he have been institutionalized in a non-prison? Based on his choices of victims: children and old ladies, he seems fairly sane. Just bog standard sociopathy and desire to harm humans explains this behavior pretty well.

Couldn’t it be that there are just far less mentally ill people in Japan, per capita? At least when it comes to the mental illnesses, like schizophrenia, which are likely to produce homelessness and street harassment? I’ve seen persuasive evidence that rates of schizophrenia differ by race/ethnicity, and it seems plausible that Japan would have significantly less homelessness than the U.S. no matter what economic/political arrangement were in place in either country.

I’ve seen persuasive evidence that rates of schizophrenia differ by race/ethnicity, and it seems plausible that Japan would have significantly less homelessness than the U.S. no matter what economic/political arrangement were in place in either country.

Do you have a link? I agree it seems plausible Japan would have less homelessness regardless.

Here’s an analysis of race differences in psychotic personality. Huadpe also linked to a similar one up above. I’ll see if I can find one about schizophrenia.

That's a study of race and psychopathic personalities. That's a pretty big mistake. But otherwise a very interesting study, cheers.

You’re right, and I should have been far more careful in my phrasing and distinguished those two things. Good call-out.

I'm under the impression that mental health is very poorly-understood in Japanese society compared to the US, so it may just be that they seem mentally-healthier simply because they're broadly more ignorant of the potential reality of things. You arguably see this reflected in the culture; besides the culture around suicide mentioned below, I have seen a fair number of "these people need therapy" takes in discussions about mecha anime (especially as many characters in these works tend to be teenagers who go through traumatic things), and ever since the explosion of VTubing, the term "menhera" (from the English term "mental health") has become a fixture of the lexicon of certain communities around it (and often used in context of talents making particularly odd or poor decisions stemming from, well, mental health issues that haven't been diagnosed or treated). Japanese culture seems to favor the grin-and-bear-it approach to emotional suffering, whereas modern Western/first-world culture favors directly interrogating emotional suffering.

"Mental illness" is, I think in most cases, something of a euphemism. At best most of these people are dual diagnosis (mental illness and drug addiction).

Right, I’m specifically talking about the mental illnesses that cause the types of symptoms we associate with homeless street harassers; I don’t doubt that Japan has high rates of depression, anxiety, etc., but those don’t make you homeless and don’t make you harass strangers.

Japan as a culture has a long, long history of valorizing and romanticizing suicide as a totally acceptable and even deeply admirable response to a variety of negative situations. If culture has any effect at all on behavior, I'd expect a lot more suicide in a country that pumps out a deluge of memes about how suicide is heckin' rad.

There are tons of people who, with a cheap studio apartment could likely get by working part time hours at a McDonald's and being at least at the margin a productive-to-neutral member of society.

I think tons overstates it. A substantial portion of the unhoused cohort have already been evicted from free housing. They were unable to follow the rules for housing and many are non-compliant with their medication. They'll need more supervision than a flop house provides.

Neely ran away from a residential care facility he was placed in as part of a plea deal and there was a warrant for his arrest at the time of his killing. He's a shining example of someone who should be institutionalized, but lowering barriers to instituionalization involves complex trade offs and reasoning about them from viral news clips seems like a bad idea.

It comes up a lot in discussions of homelessness that there are lots of low visibility functional temporarily homeless people, and then a smaller number of high visibility dysfunctional long term homeless people. I briefly worked with an otherwise functional middle aged adult who had been homeless for a couple months. Cheap flophouses would be a huge benefit to people who are temporarily in between relatives with couches to crash on, but it wouldn't do much for the guys screaming on the subway.

Forensic mental health facilities are effectively prison tier secure. They are designed with multiple layered barriers between the inmate and the outside.

I have experience with the design of these facilities. In one fun example some open air courtyards are designed without 90 degree angles (think octogon rather than square) and with rotating anti-climb barriers . The reason for this is that some mental health patients are capable of ridiculous feats of strength and will attempt things that no sane person would attempt. Things like wedging themselves into a 90 degree corner of an outdoor courtyard and shimmying up 6 metres to get onto the roof.

Yes, that I can see. The people together enough to couch surf could use a flop / boarding house. Housing the Jordan Neely's with this cohort would drive them out, or pull down the marginal ones.

The cohort in tents are often in tents because of addiction or other mental health issues. They may not be as aggressive as Neely, but they're unlikely to be suitable for flop houses either.


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