Killers, Drones, And The End Of The Universe

Killers, Drones, And The End Of The Universe

By

Leonard Zwelling

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/16/opinion/mangione-penny-biden-trump.html

In one of his most famous routines, the great Lewis Black notes that the end of the universe must be at the corner of Shepherd and West Gray Streets in Houston, Texas. Why? Because at one time there was a Starbucks coffee shop right across the street from a Starbucks coffee shop. Black wonders what the builder of the second of these shops was thinking when he conceived of opening his store. (https://www.facebook.com/watch/?v=337397454097868)

Wouldn’t Black be surprised to learn that at one moment in the past there were actually three Starbucks coffee emporiums there as the Barnes and Noble across the street from the second Starbucks also contained a Starbucks. The end of the universe? Maybe.

It’s with this sense of wonder that I read the wrap-up edition of the on-going conversation between conservative Bret Stephens and liberal Gail Collins (link above) that has been going on for several years in the Tuesday edition of The New York Times.

Today’s conversation contrasted the trial of Daniel Penny for fatally strangling a mentally incapacitated black man and former Michael Jackson impersonator who was menacing passengers on a New York City subway, with the murder of Brian Thompson, United Healthcare’s CEO, on a midtown Manhattan street putatively by Luigi Mangione.

In the first case, Penny was found not guilty probably because people in general want to feel safe and when they don’t, the fact that an ex-Marine hero stepped in and took down the danger should not be met with a penalty or surprise. Rather he gets to go to the Army-Navy game with the President-elect. It’s hard to argue with that. Yes, the man Penny killed probably should have been institutionalized and not on a subway, and perhaps Penny went too far. It’s easy to be a Monday morning quarterback in this case. I think it turned out right for Penny, but the dead man never should have been on that subway.

As for Mangione, it appears that he was a model citizen until around six months before the shooting of the insurance executive. Then, he appears to have committed first-degree murder. The scary part here is that he’s being lauded as a hero on the internet because his victim was an executive of a health insurance company, today’s version of evil incarnate. That’s wrong. Mangione, if he is prosecuted, probably suffers from a mental illness as well (I’m betting schizophrenia) and will probably be innocent by reason of mental illness.  We shall see. But he is no hero for shooting a father of two in the back. That thousands of on-line lunatics cannot see that is frightening.

Finally, to cap off a crazy year when the athlete of the year ought to be the United States’ women’s Olympic team and a convicted felon and world-class huckster managed to convince America and Time Magazine that he has the answers to what ails us, we have the drones.

Day after day, the nightly news leads with a story of drone sightings over New Jersey with absolutely no insight into the story at all. Is that NBC’s idea of news coverage? No information for days at a time? The federal government will not tell us what us going on. They claim that the vast majority of sightings are of no concern to us (always suspect when they say that), but why, all of a sudden, are the sightings so widespread over the northeast?

But the sightings are not the story. The story is the government being unable to tell us what the heck is going on and yet warning us not to shoot at the flying lights as they might be small planes or legitimate commercial helicopters or even working drones.

Horse hockey! Who are those drones working for?

Surely a government that can regulate commercial aviation can tell where a drone came from and where it is going. If these are planes, then trace them back to their takeoff locales. Ditto helicopters. If they are commercial drones, tell us which ones they are. And the ones you can’t explain need to be approached by Air Force planes and photographed to determine what they are and if need be, like the Chinese balloon, shot down. I truly believe Donald Trump would have shot down several already.

But isn’t the drone story epitomizing the ineptitude of the current administration when it comes to just about everything? No wonder Donald Trump won. The Biden Administration can’t even tell us what is flying over our heads. And if they could and if it was illegal, Biden would just pardon the perpetrators anyway.

This year, instead of champagne at New Years, I’m going up to Shepherd and West Grey for a cup of coffee. Care to join me?

Or, as Lewis Black might say: “I’m going to take a nap.”