Can’t Anyone Think Straight Here?

Perhaps the greatest single threat facing the United States is a glaring deficit in people able to think straight. For without that ability, reasoned debate is impossible, and such discussion is the precondition for public policy making to address increasingly complex problems.

Nor is that deficit an accident. One source is identity politics, which turns on the identity of the “victim” group in any dispute rather than on the development of consistent principles to apply to like situations. Kat Rosenfield exposed one example of such shifts in argument in a piece in Unherd last week on the sad death of Jordan Neely, a mentally ill homeless man, who died on a subway train on which he was menacing passengers, after being put in a chokehold by an ex-Marine Daniel Penny, in order to restrain him.

Neely was on New York City’s list of top 50 homeless people in need of help, and had been arrested 36 times, at least four of which were for assaults, including punching and severely injuring a 67-year-old woman as she exited a subway car. Though he had been ordered to remain drug free and confined to a treatment house for 18 months, he walked away after 13 days and was never returned, despite a number of subsequent run-ins with the police. Shortly prior to his death, a number of passengers on the subway had contacted emergency services to report feeling threatened by Neely, who was shouting that he was ready to die or go to prison for life.

Rosenfield points out that at the height of the MeToo movement, ardent supporters rejected any suggestion that there was any level of untoward male behavior that a woman should ever tolerate, and that any male accused of such should be immediately read out of polite society, or rather the impolite society of the Internet, forever, and without chance of reprieve. The younger feminists angrily rejected any suggestion from older women that perhaps they should develop a little resilience.