Not sure if this is GD or IMHO (mods can decide), but there were two excellent op-eds that came out recently:
A man getting choked to death just for shouting loudly on a New York subway, a woman shot because she was in a car that pulled into the wrong driveway, a black teen shot for going to the wrong address in Kansas City, a family that was gunned down because they asked their neighbor to stop shooting his gun and making noise - the threshold for what “justifies” killing someone is getting incredibly low.
On a personal note, I’m realizing now that I was lucky that I wasn’t shot seven years ago when I accidentally walked into the wrong house (had been given a confusing address by a friend.)
Dennis Miller had it right in one of his rants over 20 years ago: the US national motto used to be “E Pluribis Unum”, but eventually became “Go Fuck Yourself!”
Reflexive opposition to anyone, for any reason, has become the default setting for a huge segment of your society. Pretty much everything you can point to that’s gone badly in the last 30-40 years can be attributed to this. These days, it’s not just a default setting, but something that is actually praised by a whole hell of a lot of people.
It seems like it really got going sometime around 2015, especially that last part. As for why it’s happening (the part about it being accepted, even praised, by other people), I have no idea.
Here is an entire section of a legal humor blogger’s take on people killing one another for reasons stupid, ignorant, or both. He’s got plenty of entries stretching back 15 years. Good Reasons to Kill – Lowering the Bar
I will say that @Horatius is on to something very valid. Reflexive oppositional / defiant behavior has become rampant. There is actually a DSM disorder for that. I doubt most of these people were born that way, but they’ve certainly been groomed into exhibiting the symptoms even if they lack the disease.
I doubt there’s really a trend here. Just more coverage. Road rage incidences have been happening for decades, people kill each other in bar fights for very little reason, etc.
This. I’m unaware of any hard evidence saying that overall, we’re killing others more often than in other eras, per capita. There are just so many more people and so much more coverage of what goes on around the world than there used to be. Not that it’s not horrifying, not that it’s not a symptom of personal and societal dysfunction, etc.
I’ve checked a batch of stories, and the only report I’ve seen of his throwing anything said that he threw his jacket down on the floor – not at anybody.
(And even if he was throwing things: do you think it’s proper to choke somebody to death for throwing things, after he’s already been clearly prevented from throwing any more?)
Agreed about your general point, @Velocity . But I’d take issue with including Jordan Neely (the man on the subway) on that list.
It’s easy to say, as Roxane Gay of the New York Times does, that he was merely yelling and “causing discomfort.” A fuller story will emerge with time, but the people on that subway car, it seems to me, had reason to believe their lives were in danger. Read the comments on that opinion piece.
I’ll start here, I guess: “Disturbed man with 40 priors threatening and throwing trash at strangers on Manhattan subway dies — after chokehold restraint by former Marine” — but if you want a better cite, I’ll try to find one for you; and if you want an even better one, I’ll keep on keeping on.
I think it can be proper to put him in that hold, at which point you figure he’s prevented from throwing any more; and you can then release him from that hold, at which point he’s — no longer prevented from throwing any more? Plus maybe it’s harder to put him in a hold a second time, now that he knows how someone intends to interrupt him if he intends to keep throwing stuff at people? So I’m not sure it’s as cut-and-dried as you’re making it out to be.
“Rights” has always been an attractive and popular guy, but he used to have a sister named “Responsibility” who would keep his ego in check. Somewhere along the line, his sister disappeared and, consequently, he has gotten out of control. All he sees is his needs/desires/viewpoints, and no else’s is important. In fact, they have become offensive and anger him to no end.
I think there has been a slow but steady breakdown of social order for quite some time now and, if this doesn’t change, I don’t see our society as being sustainable. There is no respect for authority. In fact, criticizing the police seems to be more popular on social media than stopping the criminals themselves and controlling crime.
I think a lot of people feel this way, and I think the fear that has produced is feeding the Republican Right. Chaos often results in a reactionary response that produces the extreme opposite. Because of the treaty of Versailles among other things, Germany was a chaotic mess after WWI. We witnessed the result.
Yeah, the guy is dead because he was having a crisis and was crying out for help. The justifications for this are really depressing. It really feels like compassion for other humans is becoming incredibly rare in our society.
He was having a crisis and he was black. That is a legitimate reason to kill him for a very large segment of America. Full blown white nationalism is on the March in America.