Forty-four year old Black man Christopher Neely of N.Y. was arrested on May 22 for violating the terms of his parole after having served 6 months in prison in 2019 for the crime of grand larceny. Strange thing is, this was the twentieth time he has been arrested since last June!
Neely is the uncle of Jordan Neely whose death on a N.Y.C. subway several weeks ago is a matter of much controversy. Jordan, a homeless man with serious mental issues, was known to N.Y. police who in fact had included him on a list of the city’s 50 most dangerous individuals. Having been arrested approximately 40 times in the past, there was a warrant out for his arrest the day he died. On that day, depending on one’s sources, he was either seriously threatening his fellow passengers or merely asking them for food. Put in a choke hold by ex-Marine Daniel Penny, he died in circumstances not dissimilar to those of George Floyd. Penny’s defenders suggest he was merely doing what needed to be done, indeed that Jordan’s 2021 assault on an elderly woman at a N.Y.C. subway station proved him perfectly capable of violence. This narrative is disputed by those convinced that the ex-marine is a racist who over-reacted to a relatively minor situation. Democrat Ayanna Pressley referred to Jordan’s death as a “lynching” while Penny said it had nothing to do with race. Yet clearly he went beyond the bounds of reason in subduing Neely and needs to pay the price. I of course have no knowledge of the specifics of the event, but hopefully Penny’s fate will be determined by Facts rather than the Identity Politics that have come to dominate our culture. Yet behold how the irrationality of Identity Politics has influenced the American Justice system’s treatment of uncle Christopher!
In his hearing, which I believe took place on May 24, Neely’s lawyer, Gurmeet Singh of The Neighborhood Defender Service of Harlem, argued passionately that his client’s detention would seriously jeopardize the well-being of his entire family which was still traumatized by Jordan’s death. Christopher, he stated, “has been a rock for the family and is taking care of them.” Taking care of them, apparently, has entailed acts such as the theft of a woman’s wallet and the addition of over $8,000 to her credit card account. While two similar robberies are specifically known to police, he had in his possession several other stolen credit cards upon his arrest as well as, disturbingly, a knife! His prosecutors thought it only logical to demand at least $10,000 in bail for his release, yet apparently moved by Singh’s eloquence, his judge saw fit to set him free with no bail whatsoever.
Scheduled to appear in court on Wed., May 31, Neely was unable to do so because he had been arrested once again on 3 charges of grand larceny added to the 12 other violations already under consideration. A survey of his past reveals that amongst the multiple accusations leveled at him was one for rape! Is this not the sort of man from whom our legal systems were designed to protect us? Has he been released over and over again because he is Black? Is it not absurd for our courts to trust an individual who has repeatedly shown himself to be utterly untrustworthy? And while one can certainly empathize with the Neely family’s distress at the loss of Jordan, ought not a sane society to be just as concerned with the well-being of those law abiding citizens threatened, robbed and assaulted by the likes of both Jordan and Christopher?
The ludicrous generalizations used to incite compassion for the likes of the Neely family are all too familiar to those of a “conservative” bent. The folks on the subway being terrorized by Jordan were no doubt mostly White, as were those who had their credit cards stolen by Christopher. As such, of course, they were smug, entitled, racist, etc., all indictments based on an inane Ideological Bias rather than any knowledge of the people in question. For “conservatives” such issues need to be approached from a moral perspective sensitive to the specifics of each and every situation. In a truly sane society, Jordan ought to have been in a mental health institution. Race has nothing to do with this assertion which simply assumes that defenseless women and children ought to be able to go about their daily business without being terrorized by a ranting maniac. This would seem to be the least one might expect of a Civilized Society! But the “woke” narrative of the Left, as exemplified by the academic cited in my last blog, assumes the rational, Western preoccupation with issues of Law and Order to be just another flawed, subjective approach to the Human Condition. Hence a world in which those who are literally insane are allowed to walk freely amongst us. Hence the repeated release of individuals such as Christopher Neely who has no respect for either the Rule of Law or his fellow Americans!
Most Western governments today are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on programs “conservatives” consider unwarranted intrusions into the private sector, intrusions motivated by the ignorant Leftist conviction that the very real Diversity of the species ought to be coerced into yielding the sort of Statistical Parity which “progressives” define as “social justice.” This leaves them ill equipped to provide services which common sense would suggest are absolutely mandatory. Public health officials in N.Y.C. were fully aware of Jordan’s psychological dysfunction and the threat he posed to the general public. He most assuredly ought to have been in an institution designed to help those so afflicted. Had he been so, he would still be alive. At the same time I have heard it argued that institutionalizing those such as Jordan in essence “criminalizes” their behavior and entails a heartless violation of their rights. But while they obviously cannot be held criminally responsible for their actions, those actions often are in fact criminal! And what of the rights of the general public?
Jonathan Rosen recently published a book entitled “The Best of Minds: A Story of Friendship, Madness, and the Tragedy of Good Intentions.” In it he tells of a beloved friend known to be schizophrenic who would ultimately kill his young pregnant wife. Clearly the moral of his story is that compassion for the mentally ill must not preclude compassion for those around them. The Left’s compulsion to always empathize with those it deems to be Victims, be it of their own natural shortcomings or external circumstance, represents a woefully superficial and indeed irrational response to the complexities of the Human Condition. As such it has enshrined a Culture in which people who are in fact failures as human beings are treated with far more empathy than decent, law abiding citizens!
The freedoms engendered in Capitalism naturally give rein to the unethical behavior of those governed by greed. But they also open the door to the life-enhancing achievements of which our amazing species is capable. From a rational/moral [i.e.”conservative”] perspective, the former obviously need to be held in check by the Rule of Law. Bizarrely, however, the Left’s loathing for Capitalism entails not just antipathy for the machinations of the greedy, but an implicit loathing for Achievement itself. This irrational impulse has come to pervade most every aspect of our “progressive” culture, yielding a ludicrous double standard in which those identified as Oppressed are allowed to get away with more or less anything, no matter the degeneracy of their behavior, while those decent people classified as “privileged” are always somehow at fault. The mainstream media’s refusal to indict B.L.M., which did over two billion dollars in damage in the U.S. in 2020, was disgusting. Even more so was its knee-jerk condemnation of White Lives Matter which, without any discussion of its rationale, was characterized as just another example of White Arrogance. This same dementia, of course, is responsible for the sentimental idealization of deeply flawed human beings such as Christopher and Jordan Neely.