I've been thinking about all the times that an obviously mentally-disturbed homeless man directly threatened me. There was the Black guy in Chicago who told me that he was tired, just out of prison, and ready to kill any white people who didn't listen to him. There was the tall white guy in Hoboken who yelled in my face that he was going to rape me and followed me along a crowded street for a while repeating the rape threat. I've also been thinking about all the generally upset mentally-disturbed homeless men I've been around. There was the man in an emergency room waiting room who starting yelling that he had mob friends, threw his coat on the ground, and shoved and broke the plastic partition that had been put up in front of the receptionist (this was in deepest Covid times), breaking it. The guard walked up to him and told him to calm down, asking him if he wanted something to eat. He seemed to relax and walked away with the guard. And on the subway in New York City? Man, I've lost count of the freaked out, freaking out, and desperate people who have screamed at, near, or just down from me on a train or on a platform. It never once even occurred to me to get violent with any of them. I don't think I even felt vaguely threatened, even when the dude was following me, although that one was a little weird. Mostly, I just hoped they got the help they needed.
Just a day or two ago, someone rang my doorbell. I opened the door, and it was a man looking for someone at my address who I had never heard of. The man said he had an appointment to discuss some woodwork or something. I told him he had the wrong place. He apologized and left. Twice I have had people get in my car and realize they were completely wrong, including someone who thought I was their Uber ("Not an Uber, man" was my response and we laughed before he got out). I don't know how many cars have pulled into my driveway and turned around. It never occurred to me that any of those people might be threats. You can argue that my guard was down and that's how bad shit happens. But maybe because I don't own a gun, my response isn't to think about using it. Maybe I'm just not a goddamn coward.
As we get the news of the latest horrific gun massacre in this country, as we fail to understand how anyone can think the murder of Jordan Neely on the subway was anything but a murder, as we pathetically move on from the murders of Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis, one thing has become perfectly clear in this idiot country during this sad, stupid age we're damned to live through is that human life has become cheap here. It has lost its value to too many of us. Sure, something like the strangling to death of Neely for daring to have a meltdown in public, as that's the only place an unhoused person can meltdown, that can inspire protests. But the numbers of people who truly believe that Neely's murderer, Daniel Penny, had a legitimate reason to murder him is depressing as hell. That comes form a longstanding hatred of the unhoused, with more than a little racism involved. Neely, who I'd seen dance in Washington Square Park, attracting a crowd with his Michael Jackson imitation, was dehumanized by our reaction to his circumstance, to his very existence, and once that happens, it's easier to allow for his murder to appear justified.
We absorb horror after horror. I saw a photo from the Allen, Texas, massacre of victims of the shooter's AR-15, including a little girl with her brain splattered out. I cannot begin to fathom the depth of sociopathic depravity you have to possess in order to look at a picture like that and think, "Yeah, everything's fine with how things are going. More guns, please." I mean, if one particular gun is responsible for massacre after massacre, it's pretty clear that you need to get rid of that gun, at the very least. I mean, isn't that the most obvious, logical extension of any discussion of "what can we do"?
But we see all around us the devaluing of human life, of any sense that we should give a damn about anyone other than ourselves and those closest to us. This is what it means to live in a nation where one in three people owns a gun, where at least 20 million of those guns are the same kind that is used in massacre after massacre. This is what it means to live in that armed country where a large percentage of us believe that we are under constant assault from people known and unknown, from migrant gangs, from marauding non-whites, from woke teenagers, from the very elected government, from forces and conspiracies that only exist in the fevered minds of those who want to believe them. And then you think a good many of those threats are armed, so you have to kill them before they kill you. Human life in general doesn't matter to you anymore. Humanity doesn't matter. You and yours, that's all that does. And your guns.
When other countries look at the United States, they see this as madness. And it is. We have been driven mad by right-wing media and politicians who make coin and careers on exploiting the fears that right-wing media presents. I have friends in New Jersey who refuse to go into New York City because they fully believe that one of the safest places in the country is a deadly hellhole of murder. When I convince them to hang out, they are hyperalert, not thinking that everyone around them is just living their lives. No, they believe that one of them is going to rob them or take them out. And anything out of the ordinary, say, a homeless man ranting about needing food, confirms their belief that we're in a cesspool of people they should hate for existing. And then you don't have to care and think they deserve it when someone, say, chokes them to death because they think they might have a gun or might be a threat.
If you see hurting people and you don't want to help them, if you don't want to increase funding for services or ban weapons of war, if you don't want to deal with housing the unhoused or showing compassion for migrants, if you don't want to do anything to stop the hurting, if you, in fact, want them to hurt, if you think everyday things people do, like ringing a doorbell, are threats that need deadly force, then they aren't the ones who have lost their humanity. You are. And if we keep allowing our leaders to make the country deadlier, then we aren't that far behind.
