Who Is Your Neighbor

entitled the Republican embrace of vigilanteism is no accident. In his piece, Jammel Bowe goes on to air out several high profile incidents that we have learned about since twenty twenty, when there were mass protests because of the killing of George Floyd in broad daylight on video as Derek Chauvin placed in ne on his neck and the other three officers held him down until he took his last breath,

screaming for his mother. We all remember this because it was probably one of the most depraved acts that we collectively witnessed at the same time, in the same place, because the majority of the world was on lockdown at

that time, and our attention was focused on our screens. Well, following that inhumane, depraved act by Derek Chauvin, there have been several incidents, some in twenty twenty and some more recently, of acts of vigilanteism, oftentimes at the hands of white men, white cis heteroman against those that they believe to be less than to be undeserving of life. And you think to yourself, how did we get to this place where political violence, politically charge violence has become more and more

commonplace in this failing, backsliding democracy. Well, it began with language that the far right in mainstream media, namely Fox and Newsmax and others. Fox is considered mainstream, even though Newsmax and Oaan are considered more far right. When they started referring to their political opposition not as their quote unquote friends from across the aisle, but instead they started

to refer to those people as the enemy. You can go back to Sarah Palin, right back to those days where Sarah Palin had placed her political foes on her website in crosshairs. Crosshairs of what one can only assume would be an AR fifteen or some type of sniper weapon that uses a scope. After the shooting I believe of a Congresswoman Gabby Giffords in Arizona. She took that down. But folks, the reality is is that the right has consistently used the language steeped in and around war when

it comes to their political opponents. They have become, under Donald Trump, the enemy of the state. They have been called thugs and terrorists, all types of names, including most recently groomers and pediphile, robbing people with progressive values, democrats, and those that believe in equity and justice of their humanity so that acts of violence and depravity against them

seem justified. Let me say that again, the right has been using war like language to rob Democrats, progressives, liberals, people who have a different ideological theory of change than they do, and are using this language to rob these people. Myself included you, included of our humanity as a way to justify violence and depraved acts against us. This is common in warfare right because it makes peaceeople easier to kill,

easier to harm. If I don't think about you as having a family that loves you, or having parents, or having children, or colleagues or friends, if I don't think about you in the way that I think about myself and I put distance between my humanity and yours. Then I create the conditions where if I harm you, it's justified and it doesn't really matter because you're not a human being. You're this thing, this idea, this enemy that I need to put down, and I am justified in

doing so. And we have watched this political rhetoric that has been used by Donald Trump, Marjorie Taylor Green, Matt Gates, Paul Goser, Lauren bow Robert, a whole host of active members of Congress in the House and in the Senate, in the Republican Party that have called for violent acts

against their colleagues. I want folks to understand that this is not normal, and it has been couched as being just par for the political course these days, right because Donald Trump upended all of our political norms, including civility, so much so that Paul Goser, right, shared a clip an anime clip back in twenty twenty one. He's a Republican from Aera Zona in an anime video killing a giant monster with the face of Representative Alexandrio Cassio Cortez.

So many people back in twenty twenty one, reacted to this ninety two second video as saying it was despicable, it was disgusting, it was violent, It should be condemned. And ghosts are and his team and the Republicans told everyone, we made an anime video. Everyone needs to relax. The left doesn't get meme culture. They have no joy. They are not the future. It's a cartoon. This is what was responded to the outrage by a spokesman for Ghoser's

campaign an office. You create a video that depicts the murder of your colleague and everyone is supposed to laugh that off. What planet are you living on? But we can look at how Republicans have been treating real acts of vigilanteism over the last few years, and it isn't just a video that everyone should shrug off. It isn't

just a meme. It's Kyle Rittenhouse in twenty twenty in Kenosha, Wisconsin, where he decided to drive across state lines, leave his home at seventeen years old, and go and kill two protesters and injure a third case. It was looked upon

as what self defense. A seventeen year old white boy was seen walking down the street armed with an ar fifteen, walking past police officers who handed him fucking water and asked him if he was okay, because he went to go live out Paul Goser's real life fantasy and take the lives of people who had the right by our fucking constitution to assemble and protest their government, their law enforcement, the killing of unarmed black people, and the neglect that

our law enforcement agencies and our government agencies had that stopping this. What did the far right do with Kyle Rittenhouse, Well, they turned him into a hero. He was hailed everywhere. And I will tell you this is what Jamel Bowie writes in his piece about Writtenhouse Quote. It's been nearly three years since the riots and subsequent shooting and Kenosha, Wisconsin, where a gunman, Kyle Rittenhouse, a seventeen year old from nearby Anatok, Illinois, killed two protesters in what a court

eventually determined with self defense. Among the most troubling aspects of the shooting was the almost jubilant reaction of conservative media to the news that someone had taken the law into his own hands and meted out lethal force. Tucker Carlson praised written House as someone who decided to quote maintain order when no one else would and call sir, said she wanted Rittenhouse quote as my president, Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Then a candidate called him end quote innocent child, and Representative Thomas Macy of Conduck, Kentucky praised Rittenhouse for his incredible restraint. Incredible restraint. You left your home state, you armed yourself with a weapon of war to cross state lines to kill two people, and a member of Congress says, what incredible restraint? Oh and four bit Kyle Rittenhouse became a celebrity of sorts right, getting a plumb speaking engagement with the RNC s being seen at sea pack because

that's what the right does with murderers. They turned them into heroes. Then there was the case of Mark and Patricia McCluskey. You may remember them. They brandish weapons on their front lawn as again peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters were marching in their neighborhood on the way to the governor's mansion. Mark McCluskey would end up running for office and the two of them would get again plumb speaking

spots at the RNC in twenty twenty. This brings me to Daniel Penny, the twenty four year old assailant thug who was bothered by the presence of a black, unhousedman who was also twenty four years old named Jordan Neely, who he decided to choke to death for fifteen minutes while two other men on the train held him down. It took over a week of protests by New Yorkers shutting down the subway system, calling on the mayor and the governor who issued statements that were so thoughtless that

lacked empathy. Instead of pointing to the fact that we don't believe in vigilante is here in New York City, they turned Jordan Nearly into the problem. Talked about mental illness and the unhoused. Yeah, those are issues that we should discuss. But being unhoused or mentally ill does not make you worthless, does not make you unworthy of life.

If you can't take some people acting out on the train, or you know, asking for a little kindness, for some change, for a little bit of food, if that's too much of a nuisance for you, get the fuck out of any urban center. Jordan Nearly wasn't posing a threat. He didn't get on the train wielding a weapon, talking about taking anybody out. He was asking for food. He was mad, angry at the fact that he's asked for help and he's received none. You don't like that. You get off

that car and you move to another one. You don't take it upon yourself to take somebody's life. But that's what Daniel Penny did, and without the collective outrage that would finally get a statement from the White House, this man turned himself in because you know, on that day that he killed a man on the subway, he was just allowed to go to the fuck home. Because that's

what white murderers get to do. Would somebody go home, make a sandwich, watch a show, strangle somebody to death, kneel on somebody, encircle them with your cars because they're dragging down the street. You get to kill them and then go about your day. He's now being charged with manslaughter, and you would think, right, you would think that we would then allow the law, the justice system to run

its course. But no, no, no, no, not on the far right or just the right as I call it, because since since spokes since he has been charged with manslaughter, far right politicians like Ron DeSantis have come out applauding Daniel Penny, as Jamel Bowie writes, valorizing him in the same way the valorized writtenhouse. He had Marjorie Taylor Green say, quote the marine who stepped in to protect others as a hero. Fox News Greg Guttfeld said that the decision

to charge Penny was pro criminal and anti hero. What made Jordan Neely a criminal being unhoused and asking for food? But since then, folks, an online fundraiser, has raised more than two million dollars for his legal defense. Ron DeSantis has said, quote, we must defeat the sorrow's funded das, stop the left's pro criminal agenda, and take back the streets for law abiding citizens. We stand with the good samaritans like Daniel Penny. Let's show this marine in America's

God is back. So he's now Ron DeSantis ron death to democracy. DeSantis is now stumping for a murderer. So when I say to folks that the Republican Party is not a party, when I say that it is a death cult, when I say that it is a white supremacist institution holding up white Christo fascist values, this is what the fuck I am talking about. This, This is

who the right wants. White sis hetero men to be walking around on streets with the ability to shoot, choke, snuff out any black or brown person, any queer person, and do so in the name of patriotism, and say that they are protecting the community. We're the ones that need protecting from them, because funny enough, we're not the

ones that are creating violence. Yet we're called thugs because they think that there is more of a threat in the justins in Tennessee using a bullhorn to begging for their colleagues to take action so that we don't have to bury more children from school shootings. They referred to that as an insurrection. But the actual fucking twenty twenty one insurrection that was a tourist group that just got lost in the capitol. Are you fucking crazy? And the

answer is yes, yes they are. Texas Governor Gregory Abbott, at the behest of the now fired Tuckocarlson, swore on Twitter that he would pardon another Daniel. Daniel Perry, a thirty five year old Army sergeant who, according to Jamel Bowie's Peace, was convicted of murder in the shooting of Garrett Foster twenty eight at a Black Lives matter protests in July of twenty twenty. Listen to what Perry did. He'd been driving through downtown Austin when he encountered a

group of demonstrators in the street. Foster, who was in legal possession of a semi automatic rifle, was in the group. When the demonstrators approached Perry's vehicle, he opened fire, killing Foster. Perry claimed self defense, telling police that Foster pointed his rifle at him, but prosecutors said that Perry could have driven away from the situation, and witnesses testified that Foster

never raised his rifle at Perry. I want you to get a better picture of who Gregory Abbott wanted to pardon wants to pardon in unsealed court records that show Perry's extreme anger and fantasies of violence towards protesters. This is a quote from Perry. I might have to kill a few people on my way to work they are rioting outside my apartment complex. Might go to Dallas to

shoot looters. None of this, however, mattered, much like none of Donald Trump's transgressions, sexual abuse, defamation, lies, tax evasion, fraud, inciting an insurrection, stealing documents, None of that shit matters either, because what they want. What Jamel Bowie says is that there is an insatiable bloodlust that is growing inside of the Republican Party, this desire to beat, to harm, to kill, and then to celebrate the ones that live out the

fantasies that the Paul Gosers of the world have. It is a really terrifying place that we are in. What is killing me, two folks is that ron DeSantis and others have referred to Daniel Penny, who has now received twenty five years in prison for the killing of Foster in Texas. Rondescantis called him a good Samaritan. And this is what Jamel Bowie reminds us. A good samaritan is supposed to be. In his piece, the Republican embrace of

vigilanteism is no accident, he writes this. In American English, the term good samaritan has come to mean any person who helps someone else in distress, but the actual parable of the good samaritan is a little more complicated. In the story, a traveler is assaulted by thieves who rob beat him and leave him for dead. Three people pass him.

The first, a priest, ignores him, the second, a levite, also ignores him, but the third a Samaritan, binds his wounds and helps him recover, asking for nothing in return. This parable, he writes, found in the Gospel of Luke, begins with a question who is my neighbor? Jesus answers with the story and asks which these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers, to which the questioner says, the one who showed him mercy, giving full meaning to the story.

Jamel Bowie writes, do we think a modern day good Samaritan would use lethal force or act as a vigilante in defense of order? Probably not, But the idea that he would, and that this is what it means to act either ethically or responsibly, is evidence enough of a sickness that festers into many American hearts. That is it for me today, dear friends, on woke a f as always power to the people and to all the people. Power, Get woke and stay woke as fop