The longer I’ve had my blog, the less eager I’ve become to comment immediately on every breaking story — especially stories where someone dies. I don’t like to jump to conclusions, and it’s hard to do anything but that when you’re trying to respond in real time to what’s happening. But the response to the Jordan Neely video has been so absurd that it’s inspired me to make unapologetic assumptions.
The American left has been verifiably and unabashedly insane for some time now, but the way people are talking about this incident is so psychotic I feel like they’re all doing a bit just to see how far they can take it.
No serious person that’s ever lived in a city can believe this. College (and sociology professors in particular) have ruined a generation beyond repair.
I live in a neighborhood full of drugged out and/or mentally ill vagrants.
My rationale was that all of St Pete used to be much dicier, and as I was touring the apartment I lived in downtown before buying my house, my landlord mentioned that there used to be a crack house across the street, referencing the city’s exponential growth in such a short amount of time. I figured if the apartment I loved in a neighborhood I felt safe in shared a street with a crack den just 2 short years ago, it was only a matter of time before a neighborhood 5 minutes south of the heart of the city was gentrified. After all, land is finite, and downtown had already gone north and west. The only direction left to go was south (for those unfamiliar with St Pete’s geography, east of downtown is water).
I’ve never lived in a neighborhood like the one I live in now. I don’t know if I’ve ever gone a full day without seeing a junkie if I leave my house.
The brutal truth is that the more exposure you have to a certain kind of homeless person, the less sympathy you have for them.
Bleeding hearts love to make excuses for it, because they love to make excuses for everything and everyone. They don’t believe in accountability. To them, everything is the system’s fault, and everyone that’s “marginalized” in any way is just a downtrodden victim of circumstance.
Anyone can fall on hard times. But if I were to lose my house and my job tomorrow, do you really think my parents, or my aunt, or my grandmother, or one of my friends wouldn’t let me sleep on a couch until I could get myself together? There are exceptions to every rule, but do you have any idea how many bridges someone has to burn to end up on the literal street?
The cities with the most severe homeless problems have vacant rooms in most of their shelters, because shelters require sobriety.
Once you go too far to the left politically, you completely lose your grip on reason and reality. The kind of people that say “housing is a human right” and put sickle and hammer icons in their profiles think it’s unfair and cruel to deny someone a place to live based on their addiction…but of course they’ve never had to share a home with a junkie.
A part of me really does mourn for these people. I wonder what kind of lives led them to where they are today, and how much undeserved pain they must’ve endured in their formative years. I imagine they’ve experienced the kind of tragedy written into soap operas, lifetime movies and Tyler Perry productions.
But assuming that every person shouting incoherently in public has some kind of Oliver Twist background and a heart of gold does nothing for them. More often than not, it’s used as an excuse to let them continue rotting on the street, lowering the quality of life and risking the safety of everyone around them.
The Bible tells us that God can use anyone, and that He can redeem anyone. And it’s true. We saw what He did for Mary Magdalene. As far as I know I’ve never encountered someone possessed my seven demons, but I can’t imagine their behavior being far off from what you see in some of these drifters.
Addicts can and do recover, and we should do what we can to help them achieve that.
But law abiding citizens shouldn’t be forced to navigate public life playing junkie Russian roulette.
We can’t afford to walk around hoping that the erratic hobo before us is *just* disturbed and not violent.
There are countless videos available of people just like Jordan Neely attacking random strangers. And while I recognize that he’s a human being created in the image of God, a functioning society will prioritize protecting others from him over protecting him.
When the marine put him in a chokehold, and the two other men restrained him, that’s exactly what they did.
God can save anyone, and life is sacred.
But the train passengers’ lives are just as sacred as Neely’s, and innocent bystanders minding their business deserve to live more than the vagrant threatening them.
what do you think?