Yesterday, a mutual on Bluesky shared this news:
How can you be deadlocked when HIS HAIR PROBABLY SPEAKS AFRIKAANS BY ITSELF?!!
— Ash Higgins (@ashhiggins.bsky.social) December 6, 2024 at 3:48 PM
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It reminded me a post I wrote last year about just how broken this allegedly Christian nation’s understanding of the parable of the good Samaritan is. “He had to die, just in case” may yet spare Daniel Penny up to 15 years in prison that a manslaughter conviction could yield as a sentence. Like the trial of those who lynched Ahmaud Arbery, the only reason there was a trial at all was some public outcry that Penny was initially released without charges after he was first questioned by police. While Penny is also charged with criminally negligent homicide, the maximum sentence for a conviction on that charge is just 4 years. It’s also possible (if not probably) that the jury will will show Penny the mercy he lacked for Jordan Neely and find him not guilty–despite video evidence of him slowly but surely squeezing that man’s life out of him.
In the time since I first wrote A Nation Without Mercy, the “active and ongoing dehumanization and criminalization of the poor and mentally-ill” has continued. The conservative majority on the Supreme Court ruled that cities can ban people from sleeping and camping in public–even if the cities offer no alternative shelter. In a country where homelessness is rising, a housing shortage persists, and Trump is returning to the White House with a government unified under GOP control, the likelihood of homeless people ending up with fines, criminal records, and even prison terms seems uncomfortably high.