When a Former Marine Kills a Homeless Man Who Cried about Being Hungry
It’s time to make that Bobby Kennedy speech on behalf of the Homeless and “Mentally Ill.”
By
David Gottfried
On May 1, 2023, a former marine decided to kill a homeless man on the NYC subways. The marine executed the homeless man by means of the notorious chokehold which, in effect, strangles the victim and kills respiration and life itself. The marine had the assistance of other passengers who, presumably, got the cheap thrill of working with the military. (Footnote 1)
The former marine is not in police custody. He is a free man, and every minute of his freedom is a rebuke to every poor soul who has suffered homelessness, the third rail of life in New York City.
The homeless man was a street performer who did rather keen imitations of Michael Jackson. He was colorful, flamboyant, and dazzled his audiences with suave and scintillating dance moves. Unfortunately, he was also more than a little bit unhinged.
When he met his killer on the subway train, he was quite distraught. Apparently, he was screaming that he was hungry and thirsty. Such behavior is unruly and explosive, but it does not threaten anyone’s well-being. It merits consoling words and support, not chokeholds.
First, let’s address the bogus notion that the homeless man constituted a dangerous and imminent threat. Some people said that he was assaultive, but under New York Law that doesn’t mean much. An individual is guilty of an assault not when he actually strikes another person but when he puts another person in fear that he will be struck. Therefore, some people on the train might have feared that the homeless man was poised to attack, but on a train carrying 50 passengers, at least 5 passengers are bound to be afraid of everything. If A actually strikes B, A is guilty of a battery, but no one said that the homeless street performer committed a battery. Some people have said that he was throwing garbage “around,” but that’s a rather vague charge, and it could encompass throwing dental floss out of one’s pocket and onto the ground. It has been my experience that when charges are vague, the actions that were actually committed are usually of minimal significance Let’s face it: If he had thrown feces at people, we would have heard about it by now.
Our exceptionally false and persecutory understanding of “mental illness.”
People have concluded that he is mentally ill. Tolerance for the mentally ill has nose-dived. Some studies suggest that we are becoming less tolerant of mentally disturbed people as we become more convinced that emotional aberrations are inborn.
Of course, many people think that the newest and most improved science has demonstrated that most mental aberrations are a product of bad biology and not a deleterious environment. However, the idea that mental aberrations are caused by biology is not a new idea. Actually, it was proffered, in the 19th century, by one of the men who founded psychiatry, Emil Kraepelin.
Kraepelin told us that really crazy people had dementia praecox (progressive insanity). This was the predecessor diagnostic term for schizophrenia.
His findings were simplistic and easy to understand: He said that crazy people generally got crazier as they aged. He inferred from this that dementia praecox was ordained by one’s innate biological constitution.
However, his inference never made sense to me: Why is severe mental illness necessarily a function of biology simply because it tends to worsen with age. I can think of many reasons why mental illness gets worse with age that have nothing to do with biology.
When people are mentally ill, a very destructive, vicious cycle takes place which makes mental illness get worse. This is the vicious cycle which explains why mental illness often worsens over time:
1) The patient exhibits minimally or moderately significant 0aberrant behavior.
2) His minimally aberrant behavior makes people reject him and he fails to make or keep friends.
3) The ensuing loneliness, from the loss of friends, makes him more disturbed.
4) His increasingly disturbed behavior makes him lose his job.
5) Because he has lost his job, he is even more disturbed and he fails to take the garbage out of his apartment. He is evicted.
6) Because he is homeless, he is even more disturbed.
7) Because he is even more disturbed, he descends to the subways and lets his madness hang out for all to see – and then a cop or soldier puts him to death.
And so the mentally ill person, in the vast majority of cases, is someone who has been repeatedly rejected and is very much alone. Since his extreme ostracism so easily explains his aberrant behavior there is no reason to assume that biological deviations are responsible for his mental illness (Footnote 2). The desire to ascribe his disordered behavior to flawed biology is simply part and parcel of an effort to further demean, demoralize and debase the mentally ill. When we are able to claim that all of his aberrations are caused by bad genes, we may dismiss him as an accident of nature and biological reject. And we smugly exculpate ourselves of responsibility for his downfall.
And when I think of this, the first thing that comes to mind is a speech Robert Kennedy made in April 1968.
I was 10 years old and listening to the evening News. It was a few days before the Indiana primary. Robert Kennedy was talking to black people:
“The next time a white person tells you that you are impatient for change, ask them:
“How would you like to be forced to pay extra for housing that is inferior and substandard.
‘How would you feel if your child could not get an adequate education.
“How would you feel if your job applications were rejected because you were black.”
That Bobby Kennedy speech seems so apt to mental illness and with a few alterations it could become a thunderous manifesto championing the mentally ill:
And so, thinking of Bobby Kennedy, this is the seeds of a Bobby Kennedy speech for the mentally ill:
How would you feel if you lost your home.
How would you feel if you lost your job.
How would you feel if your Thanksgiving was spent over a can of baked beans, in a filthy alley, all alone except for the scavenging rats running by.
How would you feel if you were like my friend John. It was June 1994. He had full blown AIDS, and he was not yet 30. His T 4 count was not merely low; it was zero and had been zero for 2 years. He had to look for an apartment. The NYC temperature hovered around 100 degrees. He had an infection with CMV. When CMV infects the eye, Intra-ocular injections are required. Did you hear that: Shots right in your fucking eyeball.
He went to the Department of Social Services. The office on 34th Street sent him to office on 14 th Street which sent him to the office on East 17th Street, which sent him to the office on 44th street. And all those phony liberal bastards down at Welfare patted themselves on the back for doing such a good fucking job helping their niggers and faggots. Now, this Jimi Hendrix classic came on the radio and I have to play it.
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Footnote 1: Nowadays, most people have no familiarity with the military, are not enlisted, have no relatives or close friends who are enlisted, and they learn about military matters from action films and Fox News.
Because they know nothing about the military, they tend to exalt and deify soldiers, war and fighting. Years ago, when military service was much more common, people knew how the military often operated and detestation of the military was commonplace. People knew that the military leadership was often slow in the brain (The top brass envisioned that the next war would be fought like prior wars, e.g., since World War One was characterized by static defenses, the French prepared for World War Two by building the Maginot line which was useless as the Germans simply went around the line), often killed innocent civilians (Robert Kennedy, on Face the Nation in November 1967, said that the US military was killing 1000 innocent civilians per week in South Vietnam alone; this doesn’t count civilians killed by American bombs in North Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos); and often killed its own soldiers via “friendly fire.”
Footnote 2: I am well aware that various “researchers” have come forth with reports showing that some schizophrenics have certain aberrant genetic sequences and all manor of peculiar idiosyncrasies. However, a correlation between two variables does not mean that one variable caused the other.
For example, in Gulf War One oil wells were set on fire by the retreating Iraqi army. In the same war, computers were used. Ergo, computers were positively correlated with oil well fires. That does not mean that computers have an inherent propensity to ignite oil wells.
Similarly, how does one know which variable came first. Why are they so certain that no other variables entered into the equation. Why are people so certain that only physical phenomena can cause psychological phenomena. We know, for example, that stress can raise blood pressure. Therefore, it might be possible for schizophrenic behavior to alter the composition of cells. For example, when a man has big pectoral muscles, do we often venture to guess that he has “the gene” for big pecs. No, we assume he went to the gym.
As you know, my son was homeless for many years. I was out visiting him weekly and got to know many other homeless individuals. Some there due to addiction and many due to mental illness. At his darkest moments, you would be hard-pressed to make any distinction between my son and someone with schizophrenia.
I saw the response by most people - disdain - almost no compassion. Thankfully, I saw a lot of compassion too. However, functionally, as a society, we are doing a horrible job of addressing the issue.
I'm not offering answers here. There are many issues and no simple solutions. But a starting point would be a more diligent, human-focused, understanding of the plight of those on the street. I always say, "Pretend they are people. Because they are."