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December 24, 2024 - 3:00pm
This year will go down as the deadliest in the New York City subways in decades, if not ever. The indescribably savage immolation of a woman passenger on the morning of December 22 brings the number of murders in the subway in 2024 to 11. Since 2020, 40 people have been murdered in the system, more than the total number dating back to 1990.
Images of the scene from Sunday morning are ghastly. A human figure is engulfed in flames while a man, eventually identified as the killer, sits calmly watching a few yards away. The murderer, an illegal migrant from Guatemala, evidently used a lighter to set his victim’s clothes aflame. He was caught later that day, snoozing on another train.
New York City has dined out for years on the claim that it is the “safest big city in the country.” And while it is true that Gotham’s overall homicide rate remains low among American cities, the lived reality of New Yorkers gainsays those cheery numbers. Violent crime is on the rise, and has increasingly become purposeless and unprovoked — a function of hostile psychosis as much as any rational motivation.
The rise in subway murders speaks to the growing sense that violence in New York City is not confined to dangerous, outlying precincts that are easily avoided. The subway system, with its hundreds of stations, offers violent offenders the same 24-hour access to the metropolis as it does for tourists or commuters.
No other global city sees this kind of mayhem in its mass transit systems. China, which has half of the world’s 20 largest subway networks, reports virtually no violence or even crime on its subways; travel guides confirm the general safety of mass transit in China. The large subway systems of Seoul, Tokyo, Moscow, and even Delhi are considered safe for passengers. The Paris metro and London tube are plagued by pickpockets and occasional robberies, but actual violence is rare, and the same is true for Mexico City.
These cities and others take it for granted that their mass transit systems are meant for people to travel from one point to another, and this primary purpose is enforced as a matter of the common good. Vagrants or mentally ill people are no more permitted to sleep or linger in the subway than they would in a school. Moreover, paying the fare is not considered a voluntary act, and fare evasion is monitored and punished with on-the-spot fines.
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SubscribeThe casual acceptance of such a horrific act says something about the rot that has infected society and the institutions that govern it. Add to this the histrionic outrage at Daniel Penny. It’s hard not to be nihilistic.
Democrat politicians who run these large cities, democrat donors and democrat-funded District Attorneys have consistently excused the Leftist violence inflicted upon Americans during the recent years of ‘mostly peaceful protests’ and the ‘Summer of Love,’ with phrases akin to:
“Violence is never the answer, but ….”
Anyone with half a brain knows that every word preceding the “but” in such a sentence is a lie.
They excused, and excused – and then excused some more – the very acts of deviancy perpetuated by their cities’ criminal elements and angry haters. They push radical DEI-socializing initiatives that pit living American against living American in overtly racist, classist and ancestral-nationalist ways.
They allowed this crime and lawlessness to take root, simply because they believe the perpetrators – those who hold the molotov cocktails – are Leftists, just like them.
They were in lock-step as the perpetrators attacked the police, beat and murdered people in the streets, and burned mom-and-pop businesses to the ground.
Now these cities are rotting from the inside-out … the voters continue to be murdered. And Democrats have no one to blame, but themselves.
An illegal migrant sets a woman on fire on a subway train. Watch some unhinged commentator link the event to Trump’s victory and the xenophobia of the MAGA movement without one shred of evidence. Personally, I think it would be interesting if this criminal turns out to be one of the many such people bussed directly to NYC by the state of Texas. I have little doubt that if this turned out to be the case, the liberal government of NY would take the opportunity to blame Texas, not federal immigration policy or the lack of border control for the tragedy. Somehow I doubt the working class folks riding the subway will see this as anything other than what it plainly is, a good argument against open borders policy and a failure of local law enforcement.
The dead woman’s last thought, I wish Daniel Penny was here to save me
Same in London and it’s reaching the suburbs too. Same stupidity of ignoring weed smoking means you know it’s everywhere the stench alerts you, and we’ve had the same mental excuses for attempted murder on the tube. All part of the moronic liberal progressive agenda…..until comes for them
This is of course an accurate analysis – and while the Democratic Party may talk a good talk about the need for mass transit – how it’s good for the environment or just more efficient than personal automobiles – as long as they (1) don’t enforce vagrancy laws and (2) don’t reform the permitting laws that make building new rail lines needlessly slow and expensive (just witness the fact that California has spent about a billion dollars on its high speed rail line over the last 15 or so years and has no operational track to show for it).
And you also touch on a bigger point that I’ve dealt with before in my own writings like this article called “Identity Politics Blows Up in the Democrats’ Face.”
https://twilightpatriot.substack.com/p/identity-politics-blows-up-in-the
Basically, even though Democrats love to focus their rhetoric and moral vision on the needs of various “diverse” victim groups, they’re losing votes among these very people (blacks and especially Hispanics) since they know full well that the soft-on-crime and DEI policies that the Dems are promoting mostly harm poorer people like themselves – i.e. those who have to use the subway, where despite the leftist belief that policies is somehow elitist and white-supremecist, blacks and whites in real life have an equal interest in not being set on fire.
Hopefully the people in New York will wake up to what is going on and give city-level Democrats and soft-on-crime people the same thrashing that the Dems got nationally last month.
The progress created by progressives is frequently regressive.
Each time I see I see a vehicle run over a pothole, I think to myself, “He voted for this.”
Train stations filled with trash, creaking cars, conductors who don’t care about their passengers, black splotches of gum everywhere, and graffiti, of course. Every passenger voted for their own suffering.
You can’t fix dumb. Sigh ….
“Conductors”?! What luxury.
One thing not often discussed is the prevalence of the very worst sort of criminals among the millions of migrants. After all, why not? A State is hardly likely to prevent its criminal and psychiatric population from leaving, and an Open Borders State by definition doesn’t control it. This applies to both the UK and the US.
There is also the issue that illegal immigrants feel completely unrestrained by laws and law enforcement that the average citizen is constrained by. They are mostly unidentifiable and without papers, and hence feel free to do what the hell they feel like without personal consequence. A huge temptation for those that may not have strong moral qualms..
Also they don’t share the cultural expectations of the new country.
There have been 2 murders on the london underground that I know of. In one a customer killed a railway worker. Another where a homeless person pushed someone on to the tracks.
What is needed is for the cops to become cops again. They have been “human-right”ed into complete emasculation. Cops need to do stop-n-frisk, they need to beat the shit out of low-lifes, and they need to be able to shoot people.
Not just in New York. Violent crime is rising here too as are the number of traffic accidents where motorists don’t stop. The latter are almost inevitably caught or hand themselves in so their failure to stop is a combination of panic and indifference, both of which are a reflection of our progressive policies and Irish society generally today.
I’m a lifelong new Yorker, and believe me people are horrified by this depraved killing. It’s a huge news story and everyone is terribly upset. There is no “casual acceptance.” I am just hoping that the clips and photos of a policeman (two policemen?) ignoring the burning woman are fake. I can’t find any real reporting about that aspect of the story.
Retching, Mr Barron.