Telling The Truth

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

I often quote Leonard Cohen “You don’t want to lie, not to the young.”

And in this one thing I’m going to point out we particularly shouldn’t lie to girls. For two reasons. Because they are more vulnerable than boys, more attuned to the social zeitgeist and more likely to go along with it, no matter how crazy the zeitgeist is, or how manufactured. And girls who are killed or emotionally destroyed are future denied, since their ability and interest in the future determine whether there are humans in that future.

Don’t get me wrong. We need boys too — duh — and as the mother of (exclusively) boys, I am very aware of their vulnerabilities and the deep cracks that hide under the “strong and silent” exterior. And also of how hard it is to pull boys out of a depressive spin.

And we need boys to grow into men to be husbands and fathers and protectors, now more than ever.

(As it turns out the situation in mind right now reveals a deep crack in both boys and girls or in this case men and women.)

This article has a beautiful title The Girl on the Train.

And you expect it to be something that Agatha Christie wrote. In fact she has a story about a girl on a train called What Mrs. McGillicuddy Saw! or, in England 4.50 from Paddington. In the book, a young woman is lured out to the countryside and killed on the train.

I won’t spoiler it for you. It’s not one of my favorites, but it is worthy of being read on its own.

However the article is not about an intricate crime which we need Poirot’s Little Brain Cells to solve. It’s about a sordid, desolate and senseless crime that snuffed out a young and promising life in the name of nothing but the delusions of a schizophrenic.

And it exposes layers and layers of lying to the young. Which blossoms in this kind of thing in the full grown.

It is about the murder of Iryna Zarutska, and if you’re my husband, or have been living under a rock for the last few days, here’s a link.

Basically this girl, a Ukranian refugee was in the rapid transit train in Charlotte, NC, when the homeless man sitting right behind her stood up and stabbed her in the neck killing her. He then walked around in the tone of someone who was vindicated “I stabbed that white girl.”

First let me tell you that this thing puts the peep in me. When I was 23 years old, I also lived in Charlotte and worked at a mall (in a store, not a pizza place) and because I didn’t drive, I took the bus home if my husband couldn’t pick me up.

The parallels are weird and make me feel like I’m probably dead in some other universe.

Second let me tell you I’m very happy I grew up in a fairly mono-racial society (yes, that has changed now, but not then.) and went to school in a large and dangerous city starting at 12. And then lived most of my life in Colorado, which has a lot of Latins but practically no black people. (Or did. I think that too has changed.)

I’m happy not because I think that black people are uniquely scary/evil/dangerous but on the contrary, because I can identify the pathologies around/beyond race.

I will point out the man being black is relevant, because of where he is black and what I know about the black population in that city: I was friends with a lot of them when I lived there. And I found out that however much people might have been racist against them in the 80s, they were just as racist back. In fact, the black community in Charlotte, NC at the time could give a friend grief because we dropped her off in the heart of her neighborhood. What was she doing consorting with honkies?

I’ve lived in many places since then, and that was the worst I’ve experienced. Now, it’s been 40 years, so I don’t know if it’s gotten better, worse or more tubular. And I’m not going to speculate, except to say there are a lot of people very invested in making the races hate each other and some of them were mildly good at it, like Barrack Obama.

Also that I eventually broke most of those friendships, not because I didn’t like the people but because they were stuck in a vicious cycle of everything bad that happened to them was because of racism.

Now, for real, at that time there was racism and sometimes vicious racism. Usually from people whose IQ wouldn’t keep a mouse warm. Not just my black friends, but myself as well.

But I realized that if you attribute everything bad that happens to you to racism and forces you can’t control, you’ll never do anything. You’ll become a crying puddle on the floor. Or hate everyone. But you’ll never DO anything. So I decided to behave as though racism and prejudice didn’t exist, even though it did.

And to do that, I had to get away from the echoing reinforcing chorus of “They hate me and done me wrong.”

Again, this was my personal experience and 40 years ago, but I can easily see race mattering in this. Not because black people are uniquely dangerous but because — let’s face it, through our schools and institutions — we’ve taught them that they’re uniquely done wrong by and that white people are always to blame. And if there’s a big enough black community, they’ll pass the tales of woe around and reinforce the resentment, so when one of them goes off the rails, it will take a racial tone. Let’s however remember that the murder, earlier on, attacked his own sister, whom I doubt was white.

While on that, black people in America aren’t uniquely violent, or uniquely anything. You can think whatever you want about black people in Africa (I know Africa well enough that my opinions go by regions, which tells you it’s mostly culture) but black people in America are ultimately Caucasians. Most of them have more Northern European blood than I do. And a lot of them are lighter, even though the thyroid deficiency has bleached me.

BUT they are uniquely farmed into resentment, envy and a belief of being done wrong by by the government/media/democrat-industrial complex. I’ll grant you that.

The way back from that is not lying to the young. Including not lying about slavery and telling them no other slavery was as bad and that white people enslaved them because they’re black. That’s bullshit. Their ancestors (and my one singular ancestress) won the lottery because the Dahomey who trafficked most African slaves to slavers killed some portion of them over the tombs of their ancestors on arrival to their villages. On top of that compared to my one ancestress, they came here, not to Portugal, which, honestly!

We need to have the courage to teach the truth to the young.

You know other truths we need to teach to the young? The “homeless” or “unhoused” aren’t in fact normal human beings in need of a house. The names are a lie.

Naming them that, pretending that, just points at the wrong problem and calls for the wrong action.

Yes there are a lot of people in the US who can’t afford a place to live, or are in trouble house wise, because times are hard right now, particularly for the young.

BUT–

But that doesn’t mean that people who have any skills/ability to navigate the normal world are living on the streets. Oh, there will be some: orphans without friends exist. But they’re rarer than hen’s teeth.

Most people on the street are mental health tragedies, and/or criminal and/or willfull mooches, or some combinations of all three.

And I’m torn on this, because mental health is a slippery thing, but on the other hand there’s such a thing as an obvious danger to himself and others.

The poor girl being the focus of his anger was maybe because of incipient racism, or because the numbers in his head added up just the wrong way, but those numbers in his head were scrambled. His mother threw him out of the house because he was a danger to his family, but he remained a danger. Unexploded ordinance about to go off.

We shouldn’t lie about that. Not all humans are safe. And some humans are not human.

Part of that being grateful Colorado Springs was so white I was dark was that until people accused me of racism for talking about homelessness, I had no idea that race had ANYTHING to do with homelessness. I still don’t think it does, though in certain places there are probably a lot more black homeless people. And with the influx over the border, it’s probably a multicolored sh*tfest.

BUT when I describe encounters like the guy that didn’t even feel human, these were white homeless. And just as disturbing and potentially dangerous as that guy on the light rail.

And speaking of that, reading that article about The Girl On The Train, I realized she went in and sat in front of the homeless guy in the hoodie, and put her earbuds on and….

Guys!

That’s something I wouldn’t have done even in my early twenties. The person in the article thinks it was because she didn’t want to appear racist. This is possible, since the first years in the US as an European you, OF COURSE, buy the media narrative.

But I suspect it was just cluelessness. Just a general belief that homeless people are just poor things, and not dangeours.

I didn’t have that. Not by the time I was in my 20s. I knew humans were dangerous, and I was wary of them, knowing I weighed 120 lbs soaking wet with my pockets full of lead.

I always had a knife on me. Alright, usually more than one.

And I’d not sit with my back to anyone, particularly not anyone looking menacing. And if possible, I sat between other people, particularly women.

Why did Iryna do that? Who knows?

My guess though is that she’d been sold on one of the many lies we tell young people. Like, women can fight men with no problem at all. The media sells it, the movies sell it, very, very stupid feminists sell it. Why shouldn’t she buy it?

She was probably sold on the idea that people don’t attack you unless you’ve done something to deserve it and that minorities are sort of cute, adorable little fluffy pets, incapable of hurting anyone. Why shouldn’t she? The media sells it, government sells it, everyone sells it.

So, of course, that’s what she bought.

And the price was her life.

Right now, right here, while the idiots on twitter are escalating that everyone who tans is dangerous or some insanity, (it’s curious many of them assume anyone with dark hair is Mexican. The only people who think that are, weirdly, Chinese. Like, from China. That’s their idea of the US,) it’s time to look at the real truths.

The truth is that it’s not that easy and not that difficult.

The truth is that telling the truth to the young is difficult. They’ve been lied to so much.

It is also essential.

If you want them to live.

91 thoughts on “Telling The Truth”

  1. “BUT they are uniquely farmed into resentment, envy and a belief of being done wrong “

    Yep. Maybe not totally unique, but it’s there. Being black is not that special though. Nor is being white. Or (not a race) LGBBQTF or whatever they call themselves these days. Phenotype is just that. Looks, body type, and so on. As a physical anthropologist, one of the most annoying questions an officer can ask you of a de-fleshed skeleton is “what race was he?”

    Skin color and the other outward markers of race leave next to no signs upon the bones, if any at all. It’s debatable about nasal structure, but even that is very edge case. I don’t believe in race existing because its an article of faith, not properly testable and repeatable like good science should be. When dealing with the deceased in advanced stages of decomposition, unless you want to dive in and check DNA samples (another rabbit hole) it’s pointless.

    Back to constructs of resentment, envy, and violence.

    Black people are taught they are special. Just like all the other cultures teach their little babies that they, too, are special little ones. And they’re correct, in a sense. We are special to some people- our families, and those we choose and what choose us. But, while cultures may not have very many absolutely unique factors, we can apply value judgements. And we damned well should, if we’re going to be men about it and not whiny little brats.

    Work ethic, honesty, and timeliness are good things. Full stop. These are good qualities everyone should have. Good work ethic gets things done. Everybody likes that, when they have a job to be done. Honesty might be fraught at times, but you know what you’re dealing with. It cuts through the bullcrap quite effectively. Timeliness is exactly what it says on the tin. Show up on time, don’t waste time.

    And yet some cultures put a negative emphasis on these unalloyed good qualities. There is a reason for it. There’s always a reason. Some people might be effing idiots, but not everybody, all the time. That’s a poor bet to make.

    They do it because there are other benefits. If you can get away with not working and still get paid, why would you? Take all your time and spend it on things you enjoy instead. That’s the logic. If honesty would get you punished, then just lie if you can get away with it scot free, no consequences. If there’s no good to come from telling the truth, why not? And so on.

    There’s more to it. As a black person, you get privileges a white person does not. SAT scores, college admissions, scholarships, and even more. Depending on where you live, even the law might be a little more lax on you in the court, if not always on the street. You get a ready made excuse for all sorts of things.

    And that is the shttiest end of a stick wholly made from human faeces. The real condescension. Those oh-so-caring whyt peepo think a black man is *less intelligent, less able, and less moral than anyone. That’s why they think black people need their “help.” It is beyond insulting. They get rich, the few at the top, off their exploitation. That’s rich, coming from the ones that always decry “racism” and wave the bloody slave shirt around.

    Stop letting them get away with it. American culture is not locked to any phenotype. It welcomes ALL. Every red blooded human there is. Want to be an American? All you have to do is act like it, and do it legally (ibid). Race does not exist. Culture does. And American culture is the best culture.

    Liked by 3 people

  2. There once were institutions for the criminally insane. Now we allow, even encourage them to wander around unsupervised. We need to find a way to provide the needed supervision. We need to do so without trampling the freedom of those of us who are not insane.

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  3. I think she thought minding her own business, avoiding eye contact, would keep anything from starting. Tragically the dude was clearly already started by the mess in his mind, and I’m betting she didn’t have anything internalized to give her any healthy paranoia.

    Back in the late 1960s and 1970s California passed several mental health care reform laws. The earlier ones (signed into law by Ronald Reagan when he was governor) ended involuntary commitment, and The Lanterman Act passed in 1977 ended up closing the big state mental hospitals completely, with some absolutely hand wavy “here you go, local communities, your problem now, good luck and all that” verbiage:

    The Legislature finds that the services provided to individuals and their families by regional centers is of such a special and unique nature that it cannot be satisfactorily provided by state agencies. Therefore, private nonprofit community agencies shall be utilized by the state for the purpose of operating regional centers.

    By 1980 when I started college the area around the University I went to had a bunch of halfway houses, because the old run down victorian homes in the crummy downtown neighborhoods around the campus were still cheap (not anymore). Those “private nonprofit community agencies” could rent or buy them and stack those recently institutionalized guys in for the state room-and-board money. This meant those guys were regularly on campus (I never saw any women). Everyone knew to be cautious when going to and from night classes in the winter. The University Police did what they could, but they could not be everywhere. There was an extensive system of students, often athletes as part of their scholarships, employed by the University and radio dispatched by the UPD to ride around the campus on bikes at night and walk female students and staff to their cars after dark. There were blue-light phones that connected directly to the University Police dispatchers everywhere on campus, and I recall sessions in orientation talking about the issue, though they forgot to mention the hookers propositioning students in the McD parking lot just off campus every day.

    But to the mentally ill and self-medicating – it was not unusual to see some dude in the quad shouting at nothing, or at students walking to classes, or sleeping in the landscaping. The UPD officers would eventually show up and hustle them off campus, and back then there was none of the current “camping” nonsense, but the whole thing was definitely a shock after my suburban high school.

    My experience is no where near that of the older friends of mine who experienced the SE Asian fun and as a result never, not ever, sit with their back to a door, or with people behind them they cannot see, but there’s a degree of that healthy paranoia that I still have walking through any area away from home, I’m guessing in part from the joys of those idyllic campus days.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. I have residual paranoia from the campus days too. Both of them. The community college one, not so much. Much smaller community. But the two universities? Definitely. First time around cushioned by innocence; and I was not only lucky but surrounded by friends who kept me safe (including one I married). Second time? Older, wiser, not invincible, not an idiot, not take chances automatically.

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    2. “…never, not ever, sit with their back to a door, or with people behind them they cannot see…”

      You don’t have to experience combat to have that. Just high school. Get slapped in the head a few times, you learn.

      Back to the wall, away from the windows, and a view of all the exits. Corners are better if you can get one. Tables, no booths.

      Liked by 4 people

      1. This, tbh. Not sure if that’s really where I got it, but the school “experience” definitely reinforced it. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t at least prefer being able to see people coming and going and avoid sitting with my back to people. Anybody that knows me well already knows which seat I’m going to want.

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  4. Not all humans are safe. And some humans are not human.

    They were never taught to be human. They were excused for being feral beasts and spared from facing any consequences. And now, with the results of those insane policies obvious to everyone, the Democrats still pretend it’s all the fault of White Supremacy, rather than their own stupidity. They can neither step on the brakes nor steer away from the cliff because they are utterly incapable of ever admitting they were wrong.

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    1. They are starting to get themselves killed.

      Just yesterday, in Eugene, specifically W. 11th Walmart Parking Lot, someone was shot, and killed, by a good samaritan after the someone grabbed someone and was threatening with a knife. That the shooter wasn’t immediately arrested is a minor miracle. Oh the individual (don’t know male or female shooter) is being raked over the metaphorical coals by some in NextDoor, but almost just as many pounding back at them. Not the least which is “why did they shoot to kill?” Responses universally to that is “how to know you’ve never handled a gun without saying you’ve never handled a gun”, “shooting at center mass, which is the only place to aim, tends to kill” (it is what law enforcement is taught, they don’t shoot to wound), and other comments. Along with “registered gun owner” (doesn’t exist in Oregon).

      Another. Do not know where this happened, but “ding-dong-ditch kick hard on the door, like breaking in, then run away” got a young teen killed. This one is iffy, in most jurisdictions, even if the teen was still on the property (make sure they are inside, is the rule in general). It was bound to happen.

      People are fed up. Gun purchases are up. Ranges are busy (at least locally). CCL applications are up (issuing? No clue. Just know locally Sheriff office was booked weeks out for appointments.) We’re going to see a lot more like the one at Walmart.

      Liked by 2 people

      1. About 15 years ago, some media group was trying to get the names of the CCW holders in Flyover County. The then-sheriff admitted that between 1/4th and 1/3rd of the residents in county had CCWs, and that pigs would fly before he released their names.

        Subsequent sheriffs had said less about the issue, but it’s medium easy to get a permit, it’s legal (though highly unusual in the city) to open carry, and Heinlein’s description holds: “An armed society is a polite society.” Far more so than Medford/Ashland.

        Unfortunately, formal ranges are few and far between. The general-purpose one is over 60 miles away, and for obvious reasons, I refuse to use the unofficial one in Rattlesnake Meadow. OTOH, our new neighbor is ex-mil, ex-LEO, and has a viable range on the property. If the NFA goes away, I have a pistol with threaded barrel ready for a suppressor (which makes our property more viable for a small range), and I’d get the .22 rifle set up for one, too.

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        1. Air Rifles do not fall under the NFA, and several very high-velocity ones are sold with integral muffler. (.177 and .22 caliber, 1000+ FPS.)

          An acquaintance chose one such for rodent pest control.

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    2. sounds like Perp’s Mama is coming from the right place. Had him committed once and when he was released and stayed with her a bit, she had to send him packing for her own safety. Seems to be blaming the system that refused to keep him away from the public. So, as the old C&W song goes “Mamma Tried”

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  5. “The truth is that telling the truth to the young is difficult.”

    Kids know EVERYTHING. Just ask them, they’ll tell you.

    I certainly knew everything when I was a kid. Hilariously, one of the things I knew (that all the adults in my life insisted wasn’t so, 1960s right?) was that people are @$$h0les and they will GET you if they can.

    Being an Odd can have major survival benefits. When your Bully Radar pings, you know not to ignore it. When people look funny, are dressed funny, are moving funny, your Odd has already left the room, and possibly the building.

    Because when Odds are in school, they are the class punching bag. They know all the signs. They’ve been punched a LOT in life, and they have countermeasures. Some of us make it our life’s work to be ready for the next bully. By the time school is over, we’re pretty tired of getting punched.

    Try telling that to a Normie, particularly a Normie punk kid of about 20. They’ll laugh. I’ve seen them laugh. “That could -never- happen, you old boomer!”

    But you know, it’s funny. After they get mugged, they come right back and want to know all that stuff you told them that they laughed at. I’ve seen it quite a few times now. I try not to be an a-hole about it.

    I’m still waiting for #BonnieMcDaniel to explain how teaching men not to r@pe is going to work when brain-fried freaks are murdering cute girls on the LRT, and everybody else on the train is letting them. I bet you #Bonnie has a Ukrainian flag on her Farcebook page.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My personal favorite is the X comment that the trans bathroom issues should be settled by teaching boys not to rape and then having unisex bathrooms.

      What makes it my favorite is the way transactivists badmouth refusing the advances of a trans in every way except explicitly saying that you have a duty to put out. Instead you need to overcome your sexual preferences because only your orientation to a gender is sacred.

      Liked by 1 person

  6. Pingback: Instapundit » Blog Archive » LIES ARE DEATH:  Telling The Truth.

  7. Back when we locked crazy people up, this sort of thing tended not to happen. Thanks to the “mental patient liberation movement” combined with some other factors, we don’t do that any more until someone’s chasing people down the street with an axe. And by that time it’s too late.

    Having had my life ruined by mentally-ill, alcoholic relatives, I would prefer to take the crazies out to the Dune Sea, to be thrown into the Pit of Carkoon, home of the all-powerful Sarlacc.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Lock up the mentally ill/demon-possessed/brain-drug-fried. Throw the people who release them to the Sarlacc. Especially those who oversee the law, and have the moral sense of a mosquito and the practical sense of a stoned lemming.

      Liked by 2 people

  8. BUT they are uniquely farmed into resentment, envy and a belief of being done wrong by by the government/media/democrat-industrial complex. I’ll grant you that.

    On that note, I found this substack to be quite insightful – https://ladydrummond.substack.com/p/growing-up-anti-white

    Now she’s talking more about the Puerto Rican community than the black one, but as she also notes, there’s plenty of overlap between the two

    Liked by 2 people

  9. I realized she went in and sat in front of the homeless guy in the hoodie, and put her earbuds on and….

    But I suspect it was just cluelessness. …

    Why did Iryna do that? Who knows?

    I suspect it is coming from a safer culture. I can imagine any number of Asian women – Japanese, Korean etc. doing the same. Prior to the last decade or so, I’d expect the same in most of Northern Europe too, though these days not so much. Eastern Europe, which has fewer migrants, is probably quite safe even today. She came from a place where random strangers didn’t do bad things to you on public transport. She had, probably, been harassed verbally when she didn’t tuck her hair in etc. so she figured that looking plain and not interacting was all she needed to do.

    I will say that security of this sort it is a major quality of life issue that is often overlooked and I’m very grateful that I live in a place where I don’t have to worry about the nutter next to me on the bus or train

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The problem of the white picket fences. They’re not meant to keep anything out, or anything in. Not really. They are symbolic. Suburban life is full of those little unrecognized symbolic things. What do they symbolize?

      Order. Rule of law. Self discipline. Parental discipline. Structure. And, yes, conformity. All of these things drive predictability and safety. A strong sense of community and some spine does not flinch at disruptions to their routine. They deal with it, and move on.

      When the above breaks down, it is always to the detriment of normal, law abiding people. And to the criminals themselves. Criminals too scared to do crime live better lives. The ones too high or insane are a threat to the law abiding public and are removed (jail, etc).

      The fact that the legal system failed to hold on to the knife wielding goblin many, many times over is a large factor. Crazies exist. They always will. As will bandity types and so on. A proper country/culture/legal system or whathaveyou deals with these problems effectively. Currently, we do not have one such in many places.

      Liked by 2 people

    2. I’ve seen the speculation on the hair being tucked in as having some intent to make her self less appealing. Here I think Occam’s Razor provides a better explanation. She had just gotten off work at a pizza joint. In almost all states in the US, if you are doing food prep (i.e. making ore handling pizza) the standard is all your hair contained either in a hair net or with a hat. The baseball cap (usually with your company logo( has been the nearly universal choice for this task at small restaurants. So, it’s likely her hair was up because she had just gotten off work and hadn’t bothered to take it down, which was likely a process given the mane of hair shown in her other pictures.

      As for why she sat in that particular seat. I think Our Hostess has the right of it. 1) She’s from a culture that is (heaven help us) higher trust than our cities have been for somewhere between 70 and 100 years and 2) She was a 20 something that arrived during the height of BLM and similar so believed that propaganda fully 3) coming from an ex SSR of the USSR her teachers and educational materials still had that stamp of the traditional Marxist oppressor/oppressed which made her believe BLM and similar propaganda. I know that as an 18 year-old from a semi-rural suburb, I was not the best at navigating city environments (e.g., Times Square in 1980). Although intellectually I knew people could be dangerous, my learned gut experience was that folks generally were reasonable. I don’t think that it was a conscious choice to say “I know this is iffy but I’m going to earn liberal points by sitting here” rather, I suspect she just didn’t look for trouble because in her (Ukrainian) experience, public transit was not an unsafe place.

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        1. And sadly the violence seems almost as random as a missile strike, but far more personal . Probably the likelyhood of being killed by a missile strike in Ukraine is far lower than that of violence on Charlotte’s public transportation.

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    3. Well, all the cities I’ve ever live in let the homeless ride free, then wonder why no one uses it. Note that I used the bus in Charlotte only when either Dan couldn’t pick me up, or I couldn’t hoof it. (It was three miles home.) Most of the time I hoofed it, because it was safe and I could run if someone got funky. I was young and a marathoner.

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      1. Lane County does now allow the homeless to use LTD buses for free. Yes most the buses are all but empty. Do see people waiting at bus stops. People do get on and off at the bus stops. But full buses? Not normally. This is true even in the early AM, and 4J uses LTD for HS buses. (Bethel tried but got shot down. Too many routes require at least one if not multiple transfers and would take an hour if buses were on time.) Students for both districts, the community college, and Oregon, have free access too, pay for it (one way or another) whether used or not. Most downtown employers offer bus passes for employees.

        Don’t know if the homeless got free rides in ’88 and ’89 when I was using it for park and ride for the University. OTOH student/staff might crowd out the homeless and downtown workers, during those hours where certain buses travel between park and ride locations direct to downtown. Then there are multiple buses looping from downtown to the university or community college on 12 to 30 minute schedules. Back then both the routes I was on would be standing room only. Most people would not give a seat to a pregnant woman.

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      2. That is true for the Boston T (subway) as fare jumping is not prosecuted (and hasn’t been for a while). The “homeless” loved to hang out at North Station in the 7 years (2013-2020) I rode Commuter Rail. The conductors were pretty rude if you couldn’t show a ticket (or pay on the spot) they’d toss folks out. Happened a couple times when new college students thought their T passes would take them beyond the first stop, though usually they’d cough up the fare ($2-10 or so depending on distance) after grumbling. The homless tended to ride Red or Blue lines of the T and get off before the last stop and transfer to the other side of the tracks as these were longer trips. No homeless really wanted to ride the Commuter rail when I did as at home commute the trains verged on SRO. That and the aggressive conductors kept homeless to a minimum during commute, although If I worked later things could get sketchy. And Heaven help you if there was a parade for the Patriots, Bruins, Red Sox or Celtics winning a title Those days would be full of drunk highschool and college kids going into or out of the city. Train cars smelled like a fraternity house after a big party and were SRO even at 7AM.

        Liked by 1 person

  13. Cure a problem while obscuring the details.

    “Homeless”

    versus

    “Bums, Crazies, and Addicts” (three circle Venn diagram, much overlap) The overlap cases have a certain chicken/egg problem in that they may have arrived in either direction, and the gravity is to the center.

    That “gravity” is the big problem. One all three are in play, there is almost nothing that will work.

    Attend Alcoholics Anonymous. You will find it works for -maybe- 10% of walk-ins, if that. And the number of folks at the meeting with ten or more legit -continuous- sober years will be miniscule.

    Narcotics? Less success, more damage, faster descent to hellish.

    Mental issues? They get to self-medicate rather quick. Alcohol, weed, harder stuff. “Taste me and you’ll see. More is all you need.” (Metallica – Maser of Puppets) An Army medico at the base hospital introduced me to a near lethal dose of Demerol. (As a “muscle relaxant” solution to “food poisoning – cant keep anything down, even water”. yes, indeed) I cannot handle -alcohol- and have always over-reacted to narcotic prescriptions, and I -warned- her.

    Was in orbit for about 12 hours. When I crashed down, I wanted to break my thumb with a hammer so they would give me more. I can -still- remember that taste of crystalline bliss, 38 years later. No wonder folks get addicted to that crap.

    So yeah, but for the grace of the Almighty goes Maliclerk. Not making this post our of malice or ignorance. I have been homeless.

    If they don’t -want- fixed, you ain’t gonna change them. Not at all. You ain’t that powerful. No, nor you either. And most certainly not you.

    -Making- them want to change requires a stern brutality we Americans generally lack. And the reality? Most of the folks in the center of that Venn diagram above wont reliably change for Centurion Maximus Grumpius Flagellium and a platoon equipped for crucifixions.

    So now what? What is left? Push them off to the wilderness, or lock them up somewhere, either way essentially just keeping them from bothering Joe and Jane Average Yokel, until they die quietly. Not pretty, eh? Not sure we have the resources to “cure” more than a handful, end even then that still requires -they- choose. When they dont? Now what? That certain belief that Humans are infinitely moldable and fixable runs headlong into reality brick wall.

    Helping them be comfortable? Literally a shitmagnet.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Sure, as long as it’s clear that leaving Coventry on your own is an instant death sentence as an “enemy=general of humankind”. Otherwise, you’ll never be effective.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Coventry is conceptually interesting, but what you’d end up with is a bunch of folks slowly (or quickly) starving to death and having to be forced to stay there by violent force until they died. I can be pretty nasty and even I really don’t have the stomach for that.

        Our perp in this case is alleged to have Schizophrenia. Aunt of mine had it and she was pretty tough to handle. Managed to stab my dad in the back with scissors during a psychotic break mid ’50s. Until the ’90s she was a mess. Living in mental hospitals while they existed, the drugs of the 60s-late 80’s were bad, she was essentially a vegetable when she came out for brief visits. Paternal Grandmother died in 1992 and the aunt bounced around for a bit, but by late ’90s the drugs had improved and at least for some were 1000% better than the heavy meds of the earlier period. Ultimately she ended up in a home being cared for until her death in the late 2010’s. Sounds like our Perp’s Mom tried to get him committed, but no luck. Maybe if they’d gotten him on the drugs (and not all Schizophrenia responds to the modern drugs, so not a cure all) we might not be here.

        I don’t think all the old days need to come back. Stories I heard from my dad and his other sister visiting my aunt in the Connecticut hospitals were pretty unpleasant. The stories of the Danvers State Hospital in neighboring Danvers were universally pretty ugly. But we sure as shooting need something, and the mentally ill (particularly schizophrenic types) are generally not going to turn themselves in. The current drug/alcohol rehab day clinics and the few remaining (overworked) mental hospitals really were never intended to cope with dangerous/violent inmates. This is not an easy problem, but the answer isn’t to let clearly mentally ill and potentially violent folks back on the street.

        And I am leery of the other side of the aisle running these things. They are dangerously over sympathetic and prone to use mental hospitals like the USSR did so would tend to incarcerate people (like US) who aren’t actually the problem.

        Liked by 2 people

      1. I have met a “Centurian Maximus Grumpius Flagellium” of a sort. I do not laugh at him to his face. I do not laugh at him behind his back. Even though he is now some years dead, he would know.

        Liked by 2 people

        1. I am thinking of several -good- NCOs from my Army days. Surprisingly, our CSM was a rather cheerful sort, as NCOs go, provided no one pissed him off.

          Liked by 1 person

    3. “Making- them want to change requires a stern brutality we Americans generally lack.”

      Marine boot camp comes to mind. That usually works, even today, on 90% of the recruits who make it all the way through. Unfortunately, some people aren’t trainable no matter what you do.

      Like

      1. From my (much earlier) Army time, we used to say “People are like old motocycles: Some are self-starters, some are kick-starters, and some won’t work no matter what you do to them”.

        Like

      2. A good bit of why the MCRDs (P.I. and Diego) work is that the recruits (except for about 10,000 or so draftees in the early-mid ’60s) want to be there, at least initially. If it’s a forced trip it won’t work for most.

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  14. I tend to rant a bit about university trained lunatics, and some of the people in some of the official positions.

    This is because I am working around people literally at universities, who metaphorically can count to twenty with their shoes off, but seem incapable of any step that would build on such a sort of work. Now, the graduate students and faculty do have excuses to be extremely narrow specialists, and to be complete fuck ups outside of their fields. Where their in field work is concerned, it is not really fair to judge them by standards outside of that field.

    Anyway, many of these professionals and officials out ‘in the real world’ have trouble counting to eight with their shoes off. Metaphorically and maybe also literally.

    They were extremely badly served by tertiary, secondary and maybe even or especially primary schools. But they got pencil whipped as having good grades, due to some combination of crooked teachers wanting a fraudulent paycheck and crooked bureaucrats wanting to pass more underserved demographics. Like, feminist teachers who pass black girls because ‘we need more qualified black women’, might fail their just as badly trained black male students. Critical theorists in tertiary as well as secondary and primary school are very bad, because they do not think that blacks, women, etc., can really learn traditional curriculums like mathematics, and because they think that passing more of those is automatically and in of itself a win.

    So in this specific case, journalists, public officials, and almost certainly some of the professionals were ignorant and incapable of reasoning. They have been cargo culting human decency and cargo culting a functioning human society for decades, and effectively are crazy in how badly they perform, and in how poorly they grasp cause and effect.

    Anyway, the ‘young man’ who was badly served by those individuals, actually is younger than me. Things were already starting to go quite awry by my time in the system, and other parts of the US were probably worse.

    Yuuup, yuuup, yuuup, I can understand being a man, and quite badly and dangerously ill served by mental health situations.

    But, he still seems to have chosen evil.

    If he never chose evil, then he was too ill to be outside of confined psychiatric care.

    If he did choose evil, he should have been jailed for any previous crimes, and he could justly be hanged now.

    Hanging or life imprisonment him alone would not solve the wider problem. There are many people who need to be removed from their current positions.

    Liked by 1 person

  15. When a culture defines itself by race, there isn’t much point in trying to force a distinction.
    Obviously “not all blacks” are bound by that culture, but those that aren’t, present themselves differently. (Among other things, their pants fit. They also utilize Grammar and enunciation.)

    And that culture is uniquely violent. When 3% of our population is committing 45% of our violent crime, there’s an issue.
    When the jury puts racial solidarity above Justice, crime is going to plague that community.
    When authority figures excuse the crimes and don’t even send them to the jury, it’s worse.
    There’s a vicious cycle at play, and it’s directly relevant. Yes, this filth was mentally ill. (And that’s a huge problem with no easy answers.) But if it weren’t for the race card, I very much doubt he would have been out of prison.

    Liked by 1 person

  16. Most folks are OK. They live their lives and let other people live theirs.

    Some are not OK. Some take advantage of other people through larceny or fraud, and a few — generally between 3% and 5% — pose a constant danger to others, and to society itself. For everyone’s safety, those few must be removed from society until they no longer pose any danger. In most cases, that means permanently.

    There are 3 ways to accomplish that removal: deportation, imprisonment or execution.

    Seeing to that is one of the government’s primary functions. It’s one of the main reasons we have government; so that ordinary people don’t have to be constantly on guard against random deranged psycho murderers in our midst.

    When the government is more concerned with the welfare of deranged psycho murderers than ordinary people, it has failed in its purpose. Those in charge of running such a government should be removed from society until they no longer pose any danger to the rest of us. In most cases, that means permanently. 😡

    Liked by 3 people

    1. Peace consensus, and both external and internal conflict.

      Tax collection for a standing or reserve army is based on the premise that said army is better at holding the territory than whatever bottom up organization does or does not happen among the ordinary randos in conflicts with those who are outside of the groups by any measure.

      The bottom up phenomena that taxation funded police replace tend to be vigilantes and lynch mobs. Police and also the formal legal system both need to succeed in competing with vigilantes, and in marketing themselves as more preferable.

      There is basically no legitimate purpose to taxation for a government that fails at these essential features.

      Communists think that crime is society’s fault, not the fault of individual evil men, and fundamentally seek to protect, enable, and support evil men. It is right at the heart of the ‘conspiracy’ that communists think that they can overturn, must overturn, and are overturning.

      Fraud is maybe the least contentious basis for pursuing disputes with communist officials. Their complicity in murders, rapes, and other crimes is a bit more contentious. Civil liability for same is maybe less of an escalation or confrontation than pursuing criminal conspiracy charges. Treason would be a pretty stiff row to hoe.

      Anyway, lots more options than I have mentioned.

      Calmer deliberate choices are less likely to be regretted, and the best outcomes will need a fair amount of consistent follow up.

      Like

  17. I don’t know what happened to my earlier comment. WPDE.

    The thing about the video that jumped out at me: after being stabbed bleeding all over herself and the seat, not one person moved to help.

    I hope someone did after the point of the video cutting off.

    Liked by 1 person

    2. Two people did try to help. Others at least screamed.

      Part of me is appalled, but OTOH, nobody knows how they’ll react in a crisis until it happens. So I’m willing to cut a little slack.

      (During my one brush with potential death, I was quite calm until it was over. Then I had a brief crying jag).

      Liked by 1 person

        1. Surprise – “what just happened? Is this happening?”
        2. Freeze/flee/fight (or in this case, help the victim). If you don’t know that the dude is departing, then I suspect self-preservation was also involved.
        3. If Fight (or “do something”), there’s still a lag unless you are one of the Odds or are trained to game out situations in your head. Which is why I game things out in my head, because I know what my ingrained reaction is, and it’s not ideal for most emergency situations.

        I can sympathize with the folks who froze or fled. Those are normal responses, especially if you are tired and not thinking at all about danger of that kind.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. The last time I took a class in first aid (standard, not wilderness), the teacher made a comment about planning to have a moment to freak out. As in, you’ve done the things, the victim is in an ambulance and out of your hands, *sit down* and have a Moment, you will need it.

        Like

  18. “But I suspect it was just cluelessness. Just a general belief that homeless people are just poor things, and not dangeours.”

    In general, lots of young people don’t have situational awareness – and that goes to people in their thirties or forties, not just young teen saplings or 20 somethings. Nothing bad has ever happened to them before, so why should it happen now? Furthermore, Iryna was in AMERICA. No war, here, it should all be safe. She may not have even noticed him sitting behind her. Why should she? It’s not a warzone. It’s AMERICA.

    Which is a different kind of lie, and no, she wasn’t the only one to be sold it or to buy it. “Nothing bad can happen to me here” is a lie people can and do sell themselves. A lot. Call it Main Character Syndrome or Hero of My Own Story, but people expect every day to be like the last one, because we’re all in control of our own lives.

    Except we aren’t. Buying that lie in particular is dangerous. We are never in control of anything save ourselves. Part of that control is keeping one’s head on a swivel, maintaining situational awareness, and being ready as we’ll ever be to protect ourselves. That is something 2A people sell but not enough people are willing to buy even if they do not keep a firearm on their person for one reason or another. A firearm is a tool.

    You are the weapon. Be ready to become one at the drop of a hat – and hope to heaven you get to die in bed, surrounded by your loved ones, never having needed to fight for your life. Because if you’re not ready to fight for your life, you’re going to lose it – likely when you could have saved it, if you had paid more attention.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. A former coworker was mugged a couple of times while riding the DC area metro. Each time, while engrossed reading his iPad.

      He was much annoyed when I pointed out his culpability in his “bad luck”.

      Liked by 2 people

  19. This is just conjecture, but Iryna Zarutska probably sat there because the seat was empty, she was tired from work, and just wanted to zone out on the way home. (Public transportation IS boring. So is most transportation for that matter.) Killer was sitting next to the wall, she sat next to the aisle, probably thought that was sufficient ‘social’ distance and outside any personal space, especially since they weren’t in the same row. Killer didn’t look all that menacing. And the seating wasn’t arranged to allow passengers to look at each other as is common on subways and light rail in other places. I don’t know what kind of expectations she may have carried over from public transport in Ukraine, but I don’t think Europeans have the expectation of violence that we have here in the states.

    You can see the other passengers peering at their own phones and paying zero attention to anyone else in the minute up to the attack. As Ozark mentions, the video stops before she’s actually struck, so we have no idea how the other passengers react.

    If you rewatch the video, there is literally only 3 seconds between when he opens his knife and makes his first stab. Even had they been facing each other, it’s unlikely she would have been able to do more than raise her hands, even if she hadn’t been looking at her phone. Certainly not enough time for anyone else to defend her. It would have been a perfect time for a ccw holder to have shot him dead after the attack while he was still holding the knife, but evidently nobody else there was armed.

    Liked by 2 people

  20. A couple of items –

    The “only whites can be racist” claim pushed by many progressives (particularly in the DIE industry) is actively making things worse by blocking even the attempt to have a conversation on racism by non-white cultures in the US.

    There’s been evidence lately that the vast majority of crimes in a given area are committed by a fairly small number of people. One of the focuses, for obvious reasons, should be on identifying these specific individuals and getting them off the streets. 14 prior arrests should be a big clue, but the progs refuse to acknowledge that. Of course, there’s also the suspicion that his most recent magistrate was routing some of her defendants to the rehabilitation outfit she owns.

    Liked by 2 people

    1. The progs get EVERYTHING that matters backwards. It’s astonishing, and I don’t know how they do it, but I do mean ALL of it. Even if it looks like they’ve got a good point, you can be assured that they arrived at it through a mental framework that guarantees they will never be aware of the true cause of its rightness, and thus will be unable to extrapolate from it to form correct principles or inform better actions in the future.

      (Where was I going with this…? There was some kind of insight, but I had to get up from my chair and lost the thread, dang it. Anyway…)

      Like

  22. I’ve mentioned I’ve started reading Sowell’s BRAWL after recent events.

    The core thing he points out is that modern black ghetto culture comes directly from Celtic fringe culture. And its done the same thing to the Scotts and Irish that still live in it, as well as to the parts of the deep South that brought it over, where they haven’t shed it.

    It is a culture that doesn’t expect order or think of tomorrow. And so they learn to always have a chip on their shoulder and always be ready for violence. And it does none of them any good.

    I suspect that the girl with the axe may have also been in that culture, and that’s part of why the British completely disregarded her. Which is the wrong way to handle it. They need order and to develop a communal agreement that crime and random violence are bad and should be punished before they can have enough predictability to have a future.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. My best boss ever was Black, the wife of a Black Baptist minister. She took over a demoralized library where we were told to enforce policy, then cut off at the knees whenever anyone got unhappy about it. Sylvia J-‘s first words on the subject were: “This is not about race. It is about behavior. Everyone is welcome in this library, but not all behaviors are welcome here. If you behave appropriately, you will always be welcome. If you can’t behave appropriately, you will be asked to leave.”

        Once we knew she had our backs, we were able to end the social-hall atmosphere that was taking over the library, and it once again became a place of quiet study. That was almost thirty years ago, and I’m sure she’s long since retired, but I still remember her.

        Liked by 2 people

          1. This is, quite unfortunately, almost the logical (or even statistically inevitable) convergent end point of so much anti-free-speech “censorship” effort — “shut up or we’ll shout you down, beat you up, [now] shoot you dead.” And I’m also figuring you’re right about some sort of counter action by people who are (generally) much more competent at the “action” component of “counter.”

            Careful thought and strategic forethought are of course indicated, right where and when they’re most difficult and unnatural to apply. Already on places like eX-Twitter I was seeing resposnes along the lines of “I’ve been radicalized” to the cold-blooded murder (it simply and clearly was) of Iryna Zarutska, from typically level-headed and careful people; now, with this..?

            (Note this incident — cold-blooded murder, again — has provided a perfect, tailor-made excuse for campus or civic “authorities” to shut down conservative events cold: we don’t want to see another unfortunate homicide, now do we? So just go home quietly, now.)

            My suggestion, plea, exhortation, to all and sundry is simply this.

            Whatever you do, however you do it, make it serve the right not the wrong. In the longer run when and where the things you do really matters…

            “From these honored dead, we take increased devotion to the cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion…” It might not be word for word, it might be a little historically weak (do remember the conscription then-ongoing on both sides, etc.), but still: word.

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            1. Regarding radicalization in response to the murder of Iryna Zartuska:

              AlextheChick had an amusing, and apt, response to much of it. She pointed out that much of the “radical” thought is things such as the idea that someone who has been in front of judges 14 times probably ought to be in prison, or that women should be able to walk wherever they want without being attacked, or that mentally ill people who are a danger to others ought to be locked up.

              These aren’t radical ideas. They’re *normal* ideas. The “radical” ideas are the ones in opposition to the above ideas.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. This.

                I have a family member who’s in full-time residential care because he’s non-speaking high-needs autistic, and once he hit puberty and had a man’s strength, his meltdowns became actively dangerous. He does seem to be doing better in a situation where therapy is 24/7/365, but unless there are major breakthroughs in neurology, it’ll probably have to be a lifetime situation.

                Before he was able to be placed, I was really scared for him because he had a tendency to elope, and I could see how an encounter with the police could easily spiral into heartbreak for our whole family.

                Liked by 1 person

                1. Uncle who had severe brain damage due to grand mal seizures. He stayed with grandma way past when it was safe for either of them. The damage and frustration would trigger rages, which would trigger seizures. Witnessed one. One was enough. You’ve never seen a pair of ten year olds bolt that fast (cousin was with me). Believe it or not mom got in front of us to stop us, who knows where we would have mindlessly bolted to. Deep down we knew he’d never hurt any of us deliberately. Unintentionally too possible. It took 4 adult males (older BIL and brother, two younger brothers) to pin him to prevent him from accidentally hurting anyone else, or himself. Last time he went to a family gathering. Was moved into a group home not long after that. Ultimately ended up in a wheelchair in assisted living, blind and mostly deaf and unresponsive from the damage. People questioned if he was even aware of anything. Grandma insisted he did. Grandma was correct.

                  I too in light of what the world is like now, could see interactions with police with him during one of his episodes, or interactions with police triggering an episode. Outcome would be bad.

                  Like

              2. These aren’t radical ideas. They’re *normal* ideas.

                Yes. And interestingly enough, this is much of the underlying meta-message of everything Charlie Kirk said and did; good old American common sense just makes sense, practically and logically.

                Having spent some time now going through shock-and-grief comments some of those places I mentioned, I think “radicalized” boils down, mostly, to “business as usual is over” rather than some half-maddened knee-jerk reaction in the way “radicalized” is often understood.

                If “their” motivation was to make Internet / IRL voices afraid to speak, I think “they” missed that target by a considerable margin, despite one clear success at political murder.

                Like

      1. It has been confirmed that he has passed by multiple sources including some affiliated with Turning Point USA. Sadly, it was only a matter of time given that the Democrats/left and their media arm have been actively stoking violence for years with their message that anyone who disagrees with leftist orthodoxy is a Nazi who is beyond the pale and should not exist.

        The fact that leftist media like MSNBC tried to spin the murder as “maybe one of his supporters accidentally shot him” is evident of the utter contempt they have for those who disagree with them and their fervent wish that they could outright eliminate, Stalin and Mao style, all who do not adhere to the leftist party line.

        Have no doubt that just like after the first assassination attempt against Trump, that the Democrats and their media arm won’t even wait a day after decrying political violence to go on stoking it again by demonizing those who disagree with them as “a fundamental threat” that requires “action” to stop.

        Liked by 1 person

        3. Fox News is eulogizing Charlie Kirk.

          Haven’t seen the MSNBC’s rhetoric (until typing this which Hanity is noting). Surprised nothing on “see this is a red state where there is no gun control”, “gun control is needed”. Oh usual suspects are blaming President Trump’s rhetoric and Jan 6. Idiots, one and all.

          Liked by 1 person

    3. Prediction: the shooter is an upper-class white liberal taking a useless grievance studies degree. Hates Jooos, supports Ham-Ass and illegal aliens, wants ‘trans’ men in women’s locker rooms.

      Liked by 1 person

  24. And speaking of that, reading that article about The Girl On The Train, I realized she went in and sat in front of the homeless guy in the hoodie, and put her earbuds on and….

    Guys!

    That’s something I wouldn’t have done even in my early twenties. The person in the article thinks it was because she didn’t want to appear racist. This is possible, since the first years in the US as an European you, OF COURSE, buy the media narrative.

    What I “saw” was someone trying to be invisible.

    Once you’re in the area, you cannot adjust your path, it catches attention.

    And it’s not someplace you can leave.

    ….basically it’s like the attempt to reformat not getting on an elevator alone with a dude you don’t know, even if he’s wearing a dress, as an “attack.”

    Liked by 2 people

    1. And wearing the ear buds is how you don’t call attention to yourself with whatever you’re listening to.

      Unfortunately, listening to something instead of keeping your head on a swivel isn’t safe now.

      Like

      1. I’ve found that when walking, having earbuds in (mine let me hear around, they’re designed for that) when I walked in downtown areas kept me from being accosted. including by the slightly unhinged homeless. they saw the earbuds and didn’t start their performative insults or whatever. i suspect it was the same for her.

        Liked by 3 people

      2. Usually, they’re not turned on.

        It prevents the “start talking to the woman who is sitting there” route of establishing mandatory interaction chains– same as staring at your phone.

        Like

      3. In my 6 years as a Boston commuter riding commuter rail from Woburn or Reading and then walking ~1/3 mile to the office I had tried using earbud type earphones. It was kind of nice on the train on the way in (the commuter rail trains are old and loud). I didn’t dare wear it on the way out for fear of becoming distracted and missing my stop. Walking was right out. North Station is hobo/homeless heaven in the morning. Particularly in cold and/or wet weather. The bums flow in when it opens about 4:30 AM and settle on any of the benches with their wads of junk. They are VERY aggressive, I suspect a lot of druggies/mentally ill. The transit cops try to chivvy them along but they are massively outnumbered and in general not permitted to take action other than a gentle poke and politely asking the folks to leave which usually yields a screaming angry homeless person in their face. Walking out of North Station earbuds are downright dangerous. Local traffic patterns here are really stupid due to many closely spaced one way streets. It doesn’t help that those streets are filled with Boston drivers. Even crossing with a light can be dangerous as sometimes lost non locals transgress the cross walks as they look for their turns or the entries to the many parking garages in the area. I saw way to many times where someone was head down in their phone and just missed being clipped by someone running a red or sneaking through the tail end of a yellow. The good news is that this area is SO busy (and full of cameras) that crime (petty or otherwise) is unusual at commuting hours. Pickpockets and such like increase when the Garden (which is literally right above North Station) has a concert or similar but again that usually has minimal overlap with the commuter times.

        Like

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