From New York Subways To Bethlehem, Where Are The Heroes This Christmas?
Prying a schoolyard bully off the new kid in town seemed to be the natural thing for me to do. But even in mid-’80s small town Texas, the “Daniel Penny Effect” was on full display as the rest of my classmates in view sauntered by, unwilling to risk getting involved in one of the many scuffles that seemed to happen on a daily basis after our lunch period was over.
My only reward at the time was a handful of store-brand gummy candies, but the victim and I developed a lifelong friendship. I’m actually social media friends with the bully, too: If I brought it up I’m sure we’d all laugh it up as simple dumb kid stories.
The wider picture was this: our little town was on the cusps of change as the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex to our south continued to grow, yet our culture still hanging on to the more agrarian and martial ways of an unwritten school yard code. “Boys will be boys,” was what we heard. And if the punches started being thrown below the belt, corporal punishment at the hands of a principal with a large wooden paddle was the usual result. Or a few days isolated in the “bus barn.” Those sentences were given out often indiscriminately, even if you were just caught in the middle of a fight — thus, it was probably safer just to walk on by. Those may have been different times, buy many things remain the same in terms of our self-preservation.
My fellow underdog friends and I engaged in some self-inflicted dangerous activities of our own: “go-kart surfing” down a flood control berm comes to mind. Probably the least dangerous activity was playing Nintendo in the comfort of a plush-carpeted living room while our scrapes and bruises subsided. Most enemies and threats could be simply “scrolled off” or ran past while ignoring the numerous non-playable characters, or NPCs, in the background.
We wondered then if World War III or a “Red Dawn” like invasion would be our generation’s big challenge. Little did we know that such NPCs would become the major threat of our adult years. And nowhere is this more apparent than 1,600 miles away from our hometown and nearly four decades later, in New York City over the past weekend.
The nation watched in horror as social media videos surfaced of a woman burned alive on a subway train. While police responded, those “NPCs” present seemed more interested in recording the spectacle on their phones rather than putting out the flames that eventually engulfed her body and killed her. It would seem the attacker was the only one taking any action: fanning the flames with his jacket, as police walked back and forth clearing the scene. This wasn’t a mere school yard tussle, but an extreme crime brought to us in large part by a presidential administration that refuses to enforce our Southern border. It was also a cowardly act, perpetrated on a victim who was, according to observers, asleep when attacked. Though details are still emerging, we have since learned the attacker was a Guatemalan illegal immigrant who skipped to the U.S. to avoid authorities.
This naturally brought to mind the Daniel Penny situation. Penny was recently cleared of any wrongdoing for being the only hero on a train car. You know the story there, including the familiar sight of onlookers doing nothing.
Closer to home, and now a parent of three Texas public school students, I’m routinely shocked at the videos that surface from my kids’ suburban campuses: of schoolyard fights with nobody willing to step in and physically enforce the peace. Rarely will a Daniel Penny rise up from their ranks, and for different reasons than in my old Thunderdome of a school yard.
While I don’t have the phone numbers of any of the subway riders to interview, I have been able to talk to those who did nothing to stop the recent fights in my children’s schools. Among the excuses: There are school police officers now, and you can get a ticket, not just a write-up. Many were on their first or second strike, and just being involved would automatically incur a third strike and expulsion from various activities. Cameras are everywhere and everyone is constantly judging motives. The list of goes on, but I couldn’t help but notice vinyl banners over the school cafeteria decrying bullying and declaring the campus as “No Place for Hate.” The irony there is delicious if not the food.
New York recently took a stand of its own, as Gov. Kathy Hochul committed a thousand National Guard troops to secure the subway system over the Christmas rush. You couldn’t reasonably ask for tighter security than a literal army, yet a subway passenger was still lit on fire. New York state and/or city could crack down even further: require fingerprints and background checks for riders or enforce TSA-style checkpoints. But these things would still be likely to happen despite the crackdown on “hate.”
What’s missing are heroes. The definition being those who are willing to risk the physical or social consequences of being hauled off (yes, even by the National Guard!) for stepping in to a hairy situation, simply because it’s the right thing to do.
Alas, the de-hero-izing of America has been taking place for a long time, usually under a banner of safety and security. One of my first op-eds, submitted as a journalism school assignment, was about a situation in which a 7-11 store clerk was fired for standing up to a robber. Come to find out, the corporation had a “just hand over the money” policy. Was a life worth the couple of hundred kept in the cash register? My point at the time was that it was part of the overall “wussification of America,” but I would never at that time imagine 7-11 wouldn’t want someone to step in if someone’s body was to be set on fire.
Maybe my current assessment is too harsh: There are numerous tales of heroism across the nation on a daily basis. If we hear about them at all, we tend to forget them more quickly than the heinous acts of pure evil that tend to linger in the mind, even over a holiday week when sugar plums should be dancing in our heads. Still living in Texas, I’m relieved to live under a pro-Second Amendment government that tends to reward the “good guy with a gun.” As a contrast: looking for an update on the subway burning, I saw on NYPD’s website a dashboard bragging about how many guns have been “taken off the street.”
Christmas decorations and especially nativity scenes that line both of our states’s neighborhoods remind us of the ultimate act of heroism. God himself took on human flesh to save humanity from our sinful nature. That’s the Christmas message if you’ve never really heard it, by the way. It should serve as an example. Yet even in actual, modern-day Bethlemen we’re left with a counter-example. Of the 6,000 women and 11,000 children killed in the Gaza region over the past year, most are innocent victims, stuck in a war between terrorist thug-ocracies and a world power doing everything it can stop terrorism. Many of those killed are “Palestinian Christians,” having nothing to do with the radical Islamic elements driving groups such as Hamas.
Small town Texas and Israeli territories are worlds apart, and I don’t dare to pretend to understand the choices that are being made by either side in the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict. I may side with Israel politically, but in my heart I wonder if what’s going on there is the Daniel Penny Effect taken to its full, rock-bottom, and most horrendous extreme, Are grown men unwilling (or unable) to stand up to Iranian-funded bullies? The stakes are so much higher if they do, for themselves and their families. Yet this is where things could hypothetically lead, even in America.
Now back to our relative peace here in the U.S., whether in the Empire State or the Lone Star State: our bullies aren’t nearly as coordinated or funded. The weapons used are often less explosive. And the acts are much more sporadic. But they are nonetheless present, and growing in places where Big Government attempts to solve all the problems.
This Christmas, can we remember that God was willing to take on mortal flesh (later dying on a Roman cross) for our benefit to give us hope for tomorrow? The next time we see a subway rider being attacked or a high school kid being beaten, could we take a moment and just be a hero? It’s not that hard — yet.
