The Business of Finding Enemies

Accused subway vigilante Daniel Penny
being escorted by police after his
arraignment last week in New York

Nearly three weeks after Marine Corps veteran Daniel Penny fatally choked homeless man Jordan Neely, nobody doubts who did the killing, or when. Bystanders captured the killing on cellphone video, and Penny admitted delivering the fatal chokehold to police. The only meaningful question is how to interpret what happened. Penny’s arraignment, and expected trial, turn on questions of when it’s acceptable for civilians to use terminal force.

Nobody disagrees that Jordan Neely behaved in a belligerent, intrusive way on that Manhattan subway platform on May 1st. After all, we have bystander video. Analysts disagree heartily, however, whether Daniel Penny responded proportionately. These same questions emerged last month after the wounding of Ralph Yarl, shot for ringing the wrong doorbell: does one civilian’s subjective feeling of threat justify fatal, or near-fatal, responses? Is fear a sufficient justification?

These questions matter. Following routine disasters, first responders face questions of exactly how to interpret ordinary civilians. As Rebecca Solnit writes, following Hurricane Katrina, police and National Guard reinforcement had to hastily interpret people’s intentions. Did fleeing New Orleanians constitute peaceful refugees, or an incipiently violent mob? Were individuals recovering survival supplies, or looting? Answers to these questions often determined who got shot.

Much American political rhetoric today involves how we interpret enemies, real or potential. Are transgender citizens simply ordinary people striving to live their truth, as their advocates claim, or incipient sexual predators, as opponents like Ron DeSantis claim? What about undocumented immigrants seeking asylum status: are they criminals needing punishment, 6or refugees needing help? Chances are, your answers to these questions coincides with your political party affiliation.

My personal response flashes back to elementary school. I remember hearing from authority figures early that my mere perception that somebody else intended to hit me, wasn’t sufficient justification for me to hit them first. Even after experiences with repeat bullies, I couldn’t claim self-defense until something violent actually happened. No, the principal admonished, not even if this bully hit me previously. Past outcomes weren’t predictors of future behavior.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in his
favorite pose: angrily lecturing the crowd

Admittedly, this resulted in awkward encounters, where literal bullies with demonstrated track records received essentially free rein to shout, threaten, and harass me. I remember the feeling of powerlessness this rendered. On multiple occasions, bullies loomed over me, threatened and shouted at me, even encircled and shoved me— and every time, adults repeated, I was responsible to de-escalate the situation, even at the cost of my own dignity.

So yes, I can imagine how powerless subway riders might’ve felt when Jordan Neely acted belligerently.

The obverse of this situation, though, is paradoxical: the few times I ignored adult advice and resisted my bullies, I didn’t feel more empowered. Answering force with force didn’t break the cycle. Instead, it reinforced a violent, helpless worldview, where vigilance often shaded into paranoia. Once I began identifying and preparing against enemies, I inevitably started seeing enemies everywhere. Like after Hurricane Katrina, my enemies were often racially coded.

Cyclical paranoia and preemptive violence might make sense to children, whose limited experience means they usually can’t see the longer view. Unfortunately, in today’s America, this shallow depth of field has become mandatory among many adults. Ron DeSantis has identified enemies among schoolteachers, drag performers, Black teens in hoodies, and the kitchen sink. Florida may be a cartoonish exaggeration, but it’s a microcosm of America today.

Conventional American politics has devolved into an exercise in identifying enemies. Republicans display this pronounced tendency more visibly, certainly. Enemy-baiting has become their brand. But Democrats occasionally bump into that paranoid tendency; remember the outcry about hip-hop in the 1990s, or sex in video games in the 2000s. Like me in elementary school, Democrats try to appease the opposition by acting tough, but descend into paranoia.

Because I, too, descended into vigilant paranoia, I have great sympathy with politicians like DeSantis, who identify enemies around every corner. It isn’t mere political posturing; once you start preparing for enemies, it becomes an all-encompassing worldview. Fortunately, adults and other authority figures around me saw it happening, and broke the cycle. Because that paranoia was really starting to take a psychological toll.

Tragically, today’s political sphere has no authority figures prepared to break the cycle; today’s authority figures are the cycle. Ron DeSantis, Greg Abbott, and Donald Trump desperately need a grown-up to intervene, but voters have granted them grown-up authority. Thus the paranoid feedback loop continues until citizens stop it. Voters need to step up and stop this paranoia, because if they don’t, the next stage is revolution.