Mayhem So Blasé

[Vung Tau, 5/13/24]

Those who insist there’s a moral crisis or societal breakdown are just delusional reactionaries, if not anti-American and anti-Semitic conspiracy theorists, Holocaust deniers and anti-vaxxers who hate gender-affirming surgeries, progress, fine dining and themselves.

Raking the internet night and day, they dig up freakish incidents to gloatingly condemn the greatest society ever, with an economy that’s “the envy of the world,” to quote the Wall Street Journal.

Teenagers have always attacked strangers to exact revenge, with robbery a secondary aim. Commuters have always been pushed onto subway tracks. Of course, there are slight variations to these blasé occurrences.

ABC New York on 5/13/24:

Millions of people visit Manhattan every single year—now, one tourist is leaving Midtown with a horror story after being stabbed at random while walking out of a gift shop […] The seemingly random attack on a tourist was caught on video on Saturday around 6PM. It shows the victim doing nothing at all to provoke it.

This happened outside Anwar Yahia’s store, “After he stabbed the lady, he sit down to the chair, nothing happened—everybody walked close to him, he didn’t do nothing.” The culprit is 61-year-old Cyril Destin, a biological black man.

For at least two months, there have been stories of white women attacked by black men in NYC, but let’s not conclude these were random or unprovoked. They were white women, no? Just being white is already a crime, according to our leading academics. Plus, Destin may identify as white, Vietnamese or a woman.

Unless it’s a white on black crime, it’s kosher to see it as a class issue. On 5/10/24, the New York Post reported on 21-year-old Jace Christian Hanson:

That’s no dry rub.

A disturbed worker at a pricey Kansas steakhouse admitted to cops that he tainted food served to customers more than 20 times, including vile acts like placing his genitals on salmon, urinating in pickles and au jus sauce and putting lettuce down his pants—and posted videos of the sick displays online, court documents reveal.

As an oppressed worker, Hanson had every right to exact revenge on slobbering fat cats gorging nightly on 30-ounce steaks, but there’s a glitch. As a pasty white youth with “Christian” in his name, Hanson isn’t your ideal Marxist hero. We must wait for rebels of color to outclass Hanson. Maybe they’re tainting away steaks, apple pies and ice cream sundaes right now. There’s hope.

It’s an intractable problem. In 1958, a 26-year-old UPenn student, In-Ho Oh, was murdered by at least seven blacks aged 15 to 20. In 2017, his cousin, David Oh, was stabbed by a black man in the same city. A city councilman at the time, David Oh ran for mayor in 2023.

In The Ecology of Homicide, Eric C. Schneider recounts In-Ho Oh’s murder:

“‘I stuck out my foot to trip him but he stumbled,’ Clark testified. ‘I did it only for a gag.’” Leonard Johnson, who had said earlier “he was tired doing all this walking for nothing, that he was going to get somebody with his blackjack,” now had his chance.

Another boy recounted, “I seen Franklin Marshall with one arm around the man hitting him. He hollered, ‘Flip, I need help.’ So Alfonso Borum, Lenny Johnson, Harry McCloud, Sonny [Edward] McCloud, and Percy Johnson and James Wright and Douglas Clark—they all ran back to where the scene was happening at. So Alfonso Borum, he hit the man and the man went down. I saw Lenny Johnson hit the man three times with the blackjack.” Lenny Johnson later explained his actions by saying, “Well . . . they were all yelling ‘hit him, hit him,’ so I did.” Edward McCloud, who later became a prosecution witness, said, “I heard Flip say, ‘Damn, I got blood all over me.’ And then he started kicking him like crazy.” Another witness claimed, “Then somebody hollered ‘get his wallet.’ Frank and the boy I don’t know looked in his pockets, and then Frank said ‘it’s not here.’ Then the man made a gruntin noise, like a moan, and then Frank said ‘shut the fuck up,’ and Frank kicked him two times in the face and then everybody just fled.” A trail of blood in the street indicated that Oh’s body had been dragged for about twelve feet, and a homicide detective later testified that Oh’s face was battered beyond recognition with “indentations and depression in the face caused by the kicking and the blows of the blackjack and lead pipe.” Blood, bone, and brains oozed out onto the street.

Yo, that’s just Philly! Sixty-six-years ago, Americans weren’t so jaded, however. At Oh’s funeral, mayor Richardson Dilworth said through tears, “It is a horrible thing that this could happen in our city.” Many sobbed with the ex-Marine.

Consider, also, Lafcadio Hearn’s account of Japan in 1893. Just caught, a murderer is faced with his victim’s son:

A slight small woman standing near me, with a child on her back, answered, “Hai!” and advanced through the press. This was the widow of the murdered man; the child she carried was his son. At a wave of the officer’s hand the crowd fell back, so as to leave a clear space about the prisoner and his escort. In that space the woman with the child stood facing the murderer. The hush was of death.

Not to the woman at all, but to the child only, did the officer then speak. He spoke low, but so clearly that I could catch every syllable: —

“Little one, this is the man who killed your father four years ago. You had not yet been born; you were in your mother’s womb. That you have no father to love you now is the doing of this man. Look at him—[here the officer, putting a hand to the prisoner’s chin, sternly forced him to lift his eyes]—look well at him, little boy! Do not be afraid. It is painful; but it is your duty. Look at him!”

Over the mother’s shoulder the boy gazed with eyes widely open, as in fear; then he began to sob; then tears came; but steadily and obediently he still looked—looked—looked—straight into the cringing face.

The crowd seemed to have stopped breathing.

I saw the prisoner’s features distort; I saw him suddenly dash himself down upon his knees despite his fetters, and beat his face into the dust, crying out the while in a passion of hoarse remorse that made one’s heart shake:—

“Pardon! pardon! pardon me, little one! That I did—not for hate was it done, but in mad fear only, in my desire to escape. Very, very wicked have I been; great unspeakable wrong have I done you! But now for my sin I go to die. I wish to die; I am glad to die! Therefore, O little one, be pitiful!—forgive me!”

The child still cried silently. The officer raised the shaking criminal; the dumb crowd parted left and right to let them by. Then, quite suddenly, the whole multitude began to sob. And as the bronzed guardian passed, I saw what I had never seen before,—what few men ever see,—what I shall probably never see again,—the tears of a Japanese policeman.

Feeling the pain of a single child, everyone sobs, including the cop and a contrite criminal. Sure sounds like a fairly tale, especially in 2024 America.

[Vung Tau, 4/30/24]

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[Vung Tau, 4/29/24]

[Vung Tau, 5/8/24]