A Nation of Tragedies: The Subway Killing, Our Worsening Crisis, and a Note of Hope

When I try and explain the horrors of Neoliberalism, sometimes I fall short. It’s incredibly easy to get lost in the economics of it all. These explanations tend to wander into conversations about deregulation, attacks on organized labor, redistribution schemes, the kind of corruption that manifests in stories about Clarence Thomas and his billionaire benefactor. What goes missing, what falls by the wayside, as is so often the case with political discussions, are the people.

In pursuit of profits and power, the wealthy have relied on terror. This is what I detail in THE MIDNIGHT KINGDOM: A HISTORY OF POWER, PARANOIA, AND THE COMING CRISIS. Beneath stories about “white replacement theory,” QAnon absurdities, and a whole host of religious and capitalist lies, is a drive for the privileged to protect what they have while, according to the principles of hypercapitalism and neoliberalism, continually increasing their margins of profit. There comes a moment where the only thing to do is pay people less, expect them to do more, to accept worsening conditions and decreasing programs and benefits. And, to do so, they have to be so terrified of everything that that terrible deal seems somehow worth it.

By cutting social programs, by gutting out investment in efforts to make people feel safe in a largely uncaring world, the result is useful terror. Precarity is a hell of a motivator. If you believe you could end up on the street, if you believe that your fate is only as safe and sound as the next paycheck, if your health insurance and very life are tied to the job you have, if someone is coming to take what is yours and your only option is to kill or be killed, the world gets smaller and your ability to negotiate and possibly push back against the people using those very narrative and conspiracy theories becomes almost nonexistent.

After awhile, it suddenly looks a lot easier and in your interest to join with the powerful in exercising those authoritarian ideas and taking what you can get, all the while telling yourself that you are strong and capable and part of the elect.

When 30 year old Jordan Neely was killed on the New York City subway by a veteran named Daniel Penny who locked him in a chokehold, it’s certain neither him nor the man who killed him were considering any of these things. Neely, it seems from reporting, was in the middle of a moment of desperation. He didn’t have food, he didn’t have water, and he lacked the resources to find any. His state was so desperate, he told passengers, that he was willing to be incarcerated if it meant getting help. Penny was both trained to kill and lived in a country where one of the main things that is piped through the culture is an unending fear that the only thing we can know, with any certainty, is that it is a kill or be killed world.

These things don’t just happen.

The Republican Party and their partners in the evangelical world will assure you it’s supernatural evil. As if a dearth of belief in God or scripture or a libertine culture, fueled by entertainment and selfishness and feminism and acceptance of gay and trans people, somehow opens a gate or allows the literal Devil into the world, or allows him more power over it, or, honestly, however this twisted logic manages to make “sense” of it all.

Meanwhile, the fearmongering that keeps the GOP in power despite having absolutely no solutions about how to make lives better or how to move forward other than cutting taxes for the wealthy and furthering the redistribution that caused things in the first place. Instead, this fearmongering convinces an increasingly alienated and isolated country of people to believe their only solution is to buy guns or be prepared to kill. That means if someone pulls into your driveway, knocks on your door, looks at you funny, or generally even exists within your vicinity.

The Democratic Party usually stays away from these things, instead focusing at times on things like the influence of hip hop or a need to invest strategically in law enforcement or defense, especially if that means scoring points with mythical voters who might believe Democrats are stronger than their GOP counterparts give them credit for. It never works to do much of anything besides increasing the influence of an army-like police force that continues to believe it is an occupying body, worsen the fear that is manufactured anyway, and steal funds and resources from programs that would actually help.

In this current system, both Neely and Penny have played their respective roles. Individuals like Penny, who live on the razor’s edge of society where safety and resources are constantly in a state of flux, are there to remind us to keep our heads down and continue along our paths. There cannot be a remedy for his suffering, there cannot be programs that would alleviate that suffering in totality because to do so would be to fortify the ranks of people who are expected to accept the worsening deals with as little pushback as possible. Life in this world is dotted with brief, unpleasant interactions with people like Penny to remind us that their fate could be ours. And, their existence on the margins, serves as a hell of a reminder to those who have abundant resources that those unpleasant interactions, or even the fantasy of them, should be enough to push them toward more and more authoritarian measures and, eventually, violence as a remedy.

Veterans like Penny are most often recruited from the population of the working classes and trained to be defenders of the very people who exploit their families and loved ones. This is most often a quiet strategy, but was given a healthy dose of exposure last year when the topic of student loan forgiveness led to a whole host of Republicans saying the silent part outloud.

In these scenarios, the working class is cultivated for individuals looking to escape into the middle class with hopes, like all, of climbing even further. The price is simple. Be prepared at any moment to use lethal force on enemies domestic and abroad, including anyone who challenges America’s imperialistic system or anyone here, on our streets, or in our subways, who might trouble the peace. These individuals join the military and the police, which have the same goals but on different scales and with parallel mythologies.

When times are “good” the enemies seem to be distant and located in far off locations, including the caves and caverns of our nightmares. We can begin operations that confront those fears while, conveniently, carrying out the agendas of the corporations and financial systems that under-gird the entire structure. When times are bad, and when globalism and hypercapitalism require tightening of budgets and continually worsening strategies, the enemies are among us. Hiding behind every corner. Coming for our children. Participating in QAnon-style child abuse or, in a throwback to the 1980’s, a Satanic Panic where everyone and anyone is carrying out evil as a matter of their own twisted religion. The police are looking into every traffic stop as a potentially lethal situation. Protests in the streets start to look like war zones. Every social interaction carries with it the weight of do or die.

The enemy is everywhere. And they must be subdued at any cost.

America is now a nation of tragedies, a battleground that is both undefined and omnipresent. To prepare us for a brutal grind and wind down of our liberties and expectations and standard of living, we have been plunged into an irregular war that is punctuated with disturbing bloodshed and moments of odd quiet. We are told that everything is fine, that these fears and worries are irrational, all while the consequences of this transformation mount and worsen.

America is now a nation of tragedies, a battleground that is both undefined and omnipresent. To prepare us for a brutal grind and wind down of our liberties and expectations and standard of living, we have been plunged into an irregular war that is punctuated with disturbing bloodshed and moments of odd quiet. We are told that everything is fine, that these fears and worries are irrational, all while the consequences of this transformation mount and worsen.

There are no given legislative fixes. No route by which our elected leaders can even begin addressing any of this. It doesn’t matter if a gunman storms into a mall in Texas and massacres scores of people. It doesn’t matter if every corner of every street is yet another site of a tragedy. The only escape is to make more money, to work harder, to accept these conditions and pay more to get away from them. Pay for your child to escape the schools where the education is getting worse and another gunman might make an appearance. Pay for a home away from the squalor of the city and lock a gate to keep the madness at bay.

Because, as always, the incentive here is to stay above the rising waters. To not be either of the individuals on the subway that day. The man being choked or the man choking him. To never be on the subway in the first place. To be far away from any of this and have the privilege to never think about it, save for it to be a worrying fear that keeps you going and consuming and hoarding resources. And meanwhile, we are all being sorted into our categories.

The man being choked.

The man choking him.

But it is important to remember that this is not all there is. We can move beyond these terrible paradigms once we understand them and their consequences. This is not a problem of Good and Evil or supernatural forces. There are not esoteric reasonings or machinations. This is about seizing the power that is supposed to be ours and taking back control over this system and no longer gifting it to the same unelected and unaccountable people and corporations. We do not have to operate like belligerents on a battlefield motivated by fear and terror and white supremacy and the most base-level, dangerous instincts and beliefs.

And what’s more, we cannot afford to keep doing so.

---

DISPATCHES FROM A COLLAPSING STATE is an independent media venture that relies on your support. If you haven’t already, please become a paying subscriber. This affords you access to additional materials, as well as ensures that I can keep doing this work. Soon DISPATCHES will be moving toward featuring more articles behind a paywall out of necessity, so please subscribe as soon as possible.