Tag: mental health

When I sat down to write this week’s Lexicon, I was originally going to write about the debt ceiling because, let’s face it, it’s sexy as hell. However, another news story has taken over the cycle within the past few days that really shows a level of insanity I haven’t seen since, well, last week.

Jordan Neely was your typical homeless guy in New York City. Threatening subway patrons. History of mental illness. Fleeing an outstanding warrant for assault. You know, the usual. Then, after allegedly threatening to hurt or kill other subway patrons, Neely met his end at the hands of a Marine who may have seen Neely attack someone earlier in the week.

And like a racially-charged phoenix, Neely came back as a martyr. Leftists came out of the woodwork to proclaim Neely as a victim of racism, a failure of the mental health system, and proof of how racist America was. Some even compared him to Jesus. Calls for the Marine to be arrested for murder became commonplace. Even members of the Squid…I mean the Squad weighed in, stating Neely was “lynched.”

And it only gets stupider from here, kids. Hang on.

Jordan Neely

What the Left thinks it means – a black homeless man who was murdered for doing nothing at all

What it really means – the victim of Leftist enabling

As of this writing, we are still discovering details that fill in some of the blanks. Here’s what we know so far.

– Neely had been arrested 44 times before his death

– He lost his mother, which lead to depression

– Friends said he was spiraling out of control within the past 2 years

– He was alleged to have said he was going to kill everyone on the train and that he didn’t care if he went to jail.

– The Marine in question may have encountered Neely earlier that week and acted to protect people.

– The coroner ruled the death to be a homicide due to the choke hold the Marine put on him

Outside of these details, we’re dealing with a lot of uncertainty. And when there are blanks to be filled, people will fill them with whatever bullshit makes them feel good. And for the Left, making Neely into the next Trayvon Martin, George Floyd, etc., is top priority.

This raises the question of why. The obvious one is to continue the narrative the Left built over the past few years. I mean, when you put so much time and energy on perpetuating the image that blacks are being attacked and/or killed by evil racist MAGA-loving white people, you kinda want to keep the money flowing in…I mean “raising awareness to change the status quo.” What’s the worst that could happen?

Jussie Smollett could not be reached for comment.

But this stems from a foundational Leftist concept: victimhood. When they’re not busy creating victims (real and imagined), the Left knows how to make bank off victimhood. And just like Oprah handing out new cars, everybody gets to be a victim! Just look at what you think is wrong with your life and, bingo, you’re a victim!

And, surprise surprise, once you’re a victim, you get to be special! Just like everyone else who is a victim!

This isn’t to say Neely wasn’t a victim, though. Clearly, he didn’t have issues so much as he had subscriptions. Homelessness (which Leftists are calling “houselessness” in a complete ripoff of George Carlin), mental health, food insecurity, just to name a few. The Left’s solution? Talk a big game about the need for reform, and throw money at the problem. You know, the usual.

As unsuccessful as this approach has been pretty much every time it’s been tried, it will surely work now!

But there’s another element at play here. The Left hates to be proven wrong or incompetent, mainly because, well, they’re experts at being both wrong and incompetent. When the facts don’t work, the Left tries to muddy the waters to avoid making them look bad.

Hence, the focus on the unnamed Marine’s actions rather than Neely’s background. Leftists even say his criminal past doesn’t justify a “death sentence” especially when all the Left said he was doing was asking for food.

Maybe it’s me, but saying “I’m going to kill people” is a little bit different from asking for a sammich. But what do I know? I only speak and comprehend the English language…

By focusing on the Marine, it takes the focus off Neely, but more importantly it takes the focus off the multiple levels of fucked-uppery the Leftists caused by being wrong and incompetent. Instead of attempting to dissuade panhandling, New York City has published guidelines about the practice, including what constitutes aggressive panhandling. (Gonna go out on a limb here and say someone threatening to kill people would constitute the aggressive variety.) And, the best part? These guidelines promise the NYPD will respond “when they are not handling emergency situations.”

Like, you know…the city becoming a hellhole with skinny jeans and manbuns.

The saddest part of this situation (aside from the numerous tepid takes from Leftists wanting to throw the Marine in jail for murder because shut up) is how many touch points prior to the choking that Leftists had if they truly cared about Neely as anything but the next cause to support. Jail time, institutionalization, therapy, rehab, job training, and many other options could have turned him from a statistic to a functioning human being.

But the Left doesn’t want that. They need a constant stream of victims to perpetuate their self-imposed image of compassionate saviors who really care about the situation, dammit! While they’re giving their Oscar acceptance speeches and patting themselves on the back for being so caring, people like Neely continue to fall through the cracks, failed by the very people who claim to want to help them.

And when they’re not letting these poor souls continue to wallow in Leftist-imposed squalor, they’re being enabled, even emboldened, by Leftist lawmakers who justify what they do to others because of their misfortune. If we don’t subscribe to that way of thinking, we’re just not as compassionate as the Left is. And they’re right.

We’re more compassionate because we want actual solutions.

Leftists will scream we don’t because Republicans are evil meanie-heads who cut funding for alternatives (that the Left themselves don’t really fund when they have a chance). Let them scream because it’s better than what they’re actually doing, which is nothing. Plus, it’s impotent rage. The Left knows they have fewer legs to stand on than a clumsy lumberjack with a chainsaw, so they have to play the compassion card and try to make us feel bad, in an attempt to make themselves feel/look good in comparison.

Spoiler Alert: it doesn’t work like that.

Furthermore, situations like what happened to Jordan Neely are going to continue as long as the Left continues to enable the criminals at the expense of the law-abiding. At some point, the law-abiding are going to push back, and it won’t be pretty on multiple levels. Look at San Francisco right now. That is going to be the Big Apple’s future sooner rather than later, and knowing how New Yorkers take less shit than a defunct septic company, it’s going to get bloody.

Regardless of what further details are going to come out about Jordan Neely, rest assured the Left will be up in arms for quite a while because someone didn’t just let him act like a potential threat. Neely’s death will be attributed to a lot of things, but it can be summarized in one sentence that you can read in Morgan Freeman’s voice.

He fucked around, and he found out.