Murder in a New York subway station
A 40-year-old woman named Michelle Go was killed Saturday morning by a 61-year-old vagrant who pushed her onto the tracks in the path of an oncoming train. The woman was Asian, the man black.
That NY Post writer asks a good question:
The point is this: Why are the subways so full of babbling lunatics in the first place — them and nodding-out addicts and in-your-face panhandlers and cold-weather campers who easily could find space in New York’s billion-dollar-plus shelter system, but who prefer not to?
They are there because de Blasio aggressively rejected the tough-love approach to public-space management initiated by Rudy Giuliani and maintained by Mike Bloomberg. They kept the city’s subways and terminals and parks mostly clean and safe for two decades.
The question made me think of my own experiences when I used to ride the subways as a child starting in the late 50s and going through the mid-60s. That’s a long time before de Blasio or even Bloomberg or Giuliani. Most of the time I rode the subways I was on my way to ballet class, which meant destinations that were some of the rougher parts of New York at the time (Times Square and a bit north on Broadway or 8th Avenue). I often was returning home in the early evenings.
It was a frightening experience – at least, I was frightened – because the subway seemed to me to be “full of babbling lunatics.” How full? I don’t know, but over the course of a few years I encountered quite a few on the fairly empty trains I often rode after transferring from express to local for the last leg of my subway journey.
My most vivid memory along these lines was once when the train was halted between stations for quite a while, which used to happen regularly back then on that line. A guy sitting across from me took the opportunity of the relative silence to begin a long rambling rant in which he blamed us for his various ills and disappointments, and threatened us with death. He sounded very angry, although he didn’t actually do anything but talk. There were only a few other people on the train, and no one did or said anything. I didn’t want to move away and draw his attention, so I just averted my eyes. After what seemed like a really long time, the train started up again.
I knew such people were drunk or insane or on drugs (or all three), because it was obvious. But that didn’t make them any less frightening. That’s why I was so delighted when New York was cleaned up during the Giuliani years. I’d visit my family and felt safe riding the trains, even at night – for the first time in my life, I’ll add. That feeling of safety and relief continued for decades.
I wouldn’t feel safe anymore.
There’s a heartbreaking photo of the murdered woman at that first link. I notice that the crime occurred in the Times Square station, my old stomping grounds. At first I thought that “Saturday morning” might mean the wee hours of the morning, but apparently it was 9:40 AM. Here are more details:
Before [the killing], police allege [the perpetrator] was also taunting another woman, who was able to escape unharmed. Police say that woman is not Asian.
“He approaches her. He gets in her space. She gets very raised up, very alarmed. She tries to move away from him, and he gets close to her and she feels that he was about to physically push them onto the train. As she’s walking away, she witnesses the crime where he pushes our other victim in front of the train,” NYPD Detective Bureau Assistant Chief Jason Wilcox said.
Transit police say there were six officers assigned to the Times Square station, and two of those officers were on the platform when the incident happened.
So, police were already present, and it still happened. Police probably can’t stop something that occurs that quickly, especially it they’re not allowed to do anything proactive about vagrants or public nuisances.
The problem, as you might imagine, has this background:
When former Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. announced he would no longer prosecute farebeating, he symbolically surrendered the subways to the lawless.
That is, if the DA doesn’t give a damn, why should criminals, to say nothing of people like Simon Martial? And now Vance’s successor, Alvin Bragg, has ratified the policy — and, indeed, has extended it far beyond simple turnstile jumping.
Sources tell CBS2 [that] Martial has a previous record of three emotionally disturbed incidents. They add he has four prior arrests, including several for robbery.
Police say there was a current warrant out for his arrest for allegedly violating his parole conditions.
Was there any attempt to find him? I doubt it. There are probably thousands of people like that in New York City. He probably wasn’t all that easy to find, since he was a vagrant, although maybe he was a fixture in that particular Time Square station and would have been easy to find.
The article mentions that “the train operator has ‘incredible trauma’ after witnessing the incident.” Of course, and the people on the platform who witnessed it probably will have trouble shaking it as well.
Officials say they’re not sure if race was an issue in the targeting. I had originally thought of course it was, but from the more detailed description of the perpetrator’s actions that day – first targeting another woman who wasn’t Asian – it sounds like his selection of the victim may have been random and opportunistic.
I haven’t been to New York since COVID began, but I know that a few years ago I started standing far away from the edge of the platform while waiting for a train – near the wall if there’s a wall, but if there’s just a middle platform between two tracks, then equidistant between the tracks. Was that during de Blasio’s tenure? I don’t know, but my guess would be that it was.
Things are really getting out of hand:
“UCLA grad student stabbed to death while working at LA luxury furniture store”—
https://www.foxnews.com/us/ucla-grad-student-stabbed-death-working-la-luxury-furniture-store
Move on, nothing to see here… But TRUMP!! AND HIS INSURRECTIONISTS!!… (And all those “white” people who have to be taught a lesson….)
Alvin Bragg is a cancerous growth in the body of Manhattan.
We will see if Adams will act with alacrity and courage to prevent New York becoming Baltimore without the charm.
Soros-funded DAs are wreaking havoc all over the country (and Baltimore’s worthless M Mosby has just been indicted), and now Gotham is set to experience exactly what has been happening in SF and LA, where a young woman studying design at UCLA was recently murdered by a black homeless man who accosted her in the middle of the day at her place of employment. No-one should entertain the slightest hope that Adams will have the proper response to the lawlessness engulfing NYC, and Bragg may well turn out to be even worse than Gascon, Boudin, Foxx, Krasner and all the other scoundrels who make a mockery of the rule of law.
I read stories about Democrats trying to figure out why their message isn’t working. I wonder how blind you have to be to the violence and crime occurring in deep blue areas. NY, LA, SF, Chicago, and Minneapolis crime is out of control, and it isn’t simple non-violent crime. How are Warren or Sanders more radical views going to slow this crime wave that it created?
When the soft on crime agenda began, I thought it was a silly attempt to set up an argument against gun control. Let crime get bad and blame guns. Well, Martial didn’t need a gun. He didn’t need to carry a weapon at all. So what’s the end game for Alvin Bragg? What’s he going to accomplish? It isn’t making a more social society, because everyday people aren’t feeling safe participating in society.
Not knowing the territory, must wonder if the cops were aware of man harassing woman and ignored it.
My first job out of college was in the city in the late 80s. I use to take the subway to get to work after taking a Metro North train to Grand Central Terminal. I always kept a healthy distance from the edge in the subway stations till the train came in.
‘Seattle’s Republican’ with Brandi Kruse.
At least Seattle is making an effort by electing someone like Ann Davison. She has a very difficult job.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QL_yM7E3bxM
It’s become very dangerous to the careers and liberty of the police or anybody else to interrupt insane African Americans when they are going about various criminal actions. All cops know this as do all criminals. Both sets behave accordingly.
Time to start a new movement: “Defund the DAs.”
Related in Los Angeles.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10411919/Union-Pacific-blighted-thefts-cargo-trains-near-LA-blasts-woke-DA-Gascon-soft-justice.html
Leland implies the question of what the end game is for the Soros AGs. He wonders how they can justify the results of their actions.
Soros is the creator of the Open Borders Society. Open borders are a direct and mortal threat to national sovereignty. Which is the goal and purpose of the Soros AGs. Soros funded like minded minions. Greatly increased crime, serious divisiveness and societal chaos are features… not bugs. They want much more of it because ending nationhood is a necessary prerequisite to their agenda.
I know what their claimed goals are, but their actions are not leading to situations that causes people to support their cause. This can be seen here. You would think when your strategy causes people to abandon you, then you might not just try a different message, but perhaps a different strategy.
“Law and Order” – starting to come in Nov, 2022. Maybe a bit before as Dems get scared – of losing more than of crime.
Police and policing can hugely reduce crime – if the politicians support it, request it, fund it – and win election based on implementing crime reduction.
All police systems have two errors: too much or too little; too tough on the not-guilty or too easy on the guilty. There’s always a trade-off.
Getting better on both is usually possible, with increasing costs and higher paid & higher trained & more police officers.
Magic thinking pretends there are no trade-offs, and almost no gov’t budget constraints. In reality, there are.
Reality is catching up with Democrat delusions.
Dem Delusion Syndrome, hysterical criticism, is temporarily being targeted at Manchin & Sinema, but will be directed at more Republicans by November. And then hugely at the Rep candidate for Pres. in 2024.
At one time, there were “Guardian Angels,” but NYC doesn’t have that kind of young, brave men anymore . . .
“Officials say they’re not sure if race was an issue in the targeting,”
There have been several similar subway incidents in NYC where people have been pushed onto the tracks or pushed down subway escalators .
I will speculate that none of the victims were black and just about all of the perps were black.
I too used the ride the subways when I lived in NY; going to school and work beginning in 1969 thru about 1980 or so.
All the subway cars in those days had every square foot of surface area covered in graffiti. You literally could not see out the subway car windows. The walls of the subway stations too, were covered in graffiti.
As a subway rider, esp. late at night, you would always be on the alert, and learned where not to walk, not to go, where to stand on the platform, when to exit a subway car and go into another – while the train was on the fly., etc.
(One summer I worked the late shift – 4PM to midnight – at 59th Street , Columbus Circle; walking to and riding on the subway was just great fun; not) .
Many of the subway cars in those days did not have AC; in the summer it was miserable.
When a train pulled into a station, and every subway car was jam packed, except one – which contained only ONE person – after just the first time, you learned not to bother stepping into an empty car and instead just push your way into a crowded car.
Yea, as NEO says, Times Square in those days was literally an open sewer.
The weird part to all of above is that in living there you get acclimated to all of it and it becomes “normal.” You actually do not think anything is amiss or abnormal.
It’s only when you leave and move somewhere that is actually civilized, you realize that what you considered normal was in no way normal.
Terrible that DeBlasio allowed it to get to this point (again).
I rode the Boston subway, The T, daily in the 80’s and early 90’s. Somewhere along the way there were a couple of these sorts of incidents. After one I started waiting for the train with my back against the station wall – as far from the tracks as I could be and with no room for someone to come up behind me.
Crazy to me that people think it is compassionate to allow the drug addicted and mentally ill to live in this way. I suppose it is less expensive than scooping them up and putting them in a place where they can get professional care, their approach amounts to abandonment.
“The weird part to all of above is that in living there you get acclimated to all of it and it becomes “normal.” You actually do not think anything is amiss or abnormal.
It’s only when you leave and move somewhere that is actually civilized, you realize that what you considered normal was in no way normal.”
Which is reason number 785.3 why societies have great trouble reforming themselves through peaceful means. The frog boils slowly. People living in a place learn to tolerate the intolerable.
John Tyler:
There definitely was no AC on the subways when I was young, and they were ordinarily insufferable in summer.
Then much later, of course, all the hideous graffiti came.
How long before another Bernard Goetz decides to get involved? Nature abhors a vacuum.
Mentally disturbed or not… The media and friends have been busy telling this Black and the rest of them that they can indulge themselves pretty much without fear of reprisal.
Random thought for the Melting Pot Fans. Blacks have been increasingly robbing and killing Asian Americans this past year or so… especially older ones. Exactly how many complaints about *Blacks* have you heard in the national media from AA’s? Right. None. What the AA’s are doing is adding their bit to the chorus about Systemic Racism and Whitey being responsible for all ills.
You have ZERO allies from the other races who think and vote and act virtually en bloc… and are divided amongst yourselves. You don’t need to be a Game Theorist…
If I am not for myself, who is for me? When I am for myself, what am I? If not now, when? (Yes… I know :P)
Capnrusty:
Actually, they ARE around, just not young anymore. Now they’re oldish. You might not be aware that the Republican candidate for NY major this past time was none other than Curtis Sliwa, age 67:
He’s had a colorful life, to say the least (read the Wiki entry; note also that he dislikes Trump, and that Wiki seems incapable of mentioning Trump’s claims of election fraud without adding the prefix “baseless”).
Zaphod:
I think just about everyone here is well aware of the fact that recent attacks on Asians have been perpetrated predominantly by black people. It’s been written about extensively on the right. That is one of the reasons I assumed this was another example, but from the details I think it was just a crazy guy of the type you often see in New York – and the type I used to see on subway as a child, many many years ago. Of course, there are more actual acts of violence now, although there were some back then as well.
Oh, and by the pharse “the type,” what I mean is that they could be black or white back then, and even sometimes women. Men were way disproportionately represented, though, and black men somewhat disproportionately represented among the men. Fortunately I never witnessed an act of violence – just bad words and touching, and some exhibitionists (white in that case).
Something else I remember from those days of subway riding was that I felt especially safe if I was near a black woman on the subway. I had noticed they seemed not to take any nonsense from anyone. Recall again that I’m talking about the late Fifties and early Sixties.
John Tyler; Zaphod:
I never thought it was normal. Of course, I was young, but you could argue that would normalize it even further for me. But it didn’t.
I left NY when I went to college, but I don’t think I ever felt as safe in public places as my friends who had grown up outside of big cities. I had friends who until maybe 10 years ago never locked their homes. I would never think of doing that no matter where I lived; you can take the girl out of NY but you can’t take NY out of the girl.
Always helpful, the voice of the Far East, sage of North America. A mob is hard to organize, a race war is harder still? Some just want to burn it all down. Xi smiles.
A sad side note is that the woman who was killed volunteered in homeless assistance work.
@Neo:
One thing to be said for the Confucian Ethic is that even if a crazy family member is not crazy enough to be institutionalised, it’s expected that the family will take care of them and be responsible for their behaviour in society at large.
After living in the Far East for so long, the thing that drives me nuttiest about the West is the sheer number of the dangerously insane wandering the streets and endangering the rest of the populace. I guess the next item would be the obviously prematurely ravaged health of most elderly Westerners cf. East Asians. It’s not just a US thing.
I was last on a NYC Subway line in Year Zero of the Bloomberg Reign. Not enough time for things to have gone really downhill after Giuliani and Bratton. Even then while I saw no obvious violence or panhandling, it was clear that the subway bums could work around Broken Windows style enforcement by being as foully unclean and unkempt as possible and then aggressively standing close to a person until the victim paid them to go away. ‘Good’ and ‘Cleaned Up’ were always relative terms.
Tolerance is a double-edged sword which needs to be wielded with surgical precision. Not something for the woolly-headed.
The Take No Nonsense Black Church Lady isn’t quite as extinct as the Dodo… but per Daniel P. Moynihan’s warnings about the Great Society, she’s very much an endangered species. I’d certainly be very careful about accidentally bumping into Shaniqua in the Current Year.
There was no white perp involved. Therefore, this did not happen. Feel free to add the plural.
The last white perp wore out months ago, so this stuff is not happening.
I would argue that this killer was not in fact weaponless – his ‘weapon’ was the train.
(I suppose one could even argue that traits such as docility, passivity, and the psychological normalization of abnormality on the part of the public that JohnTyler mentioned above are being ‘weaponized’ in such cases, but that seems to me to stretch the definition of a weapon – and anyway, speculations of that sort don’t really matter much when there’s a body on the tracks. So I’m not going to argue that.)
I wonder how many people get killed in this particular way. Obviously it’s something that can only happen in cities with subways or train stations, but I’m interested in the data for subway cities specifically.
Kate, I’m very sorry to hear that.
In (presently and more recently) civilized countries, subway platforms have auto gates or are even fully enclosed so that you can’t jump, fall, or be pushed onto the tracks. The fully-enclosed versions are also very helpful for heating and cooling purposes.
Problem with this is in the West that by the time you have sufficient loonies roaming around so as to make it necessary to retrofit your late C19 ahead of their time technological marvels with these gates, you can’t afford to do so (what money there is has to go on IVF treatment for POC Tranny Bronies) and your bureaucratic state is so sclerotic that it couldn’t do it even if it could afford to do so.
The good thing about late Victorian Era Infrastructure is that it’s perfectly suited to the people and morality of that time. So all you need to do is make everyone fit that mold, errr… Procrustean Bed. Simple! And my preferred solution. Any takers? DNW? Anyone?
Richard Aubrey:
In New York City this is getting a lot of coverage. People are frightened.
Not that it will matter to the Soros DA.
Zaphod:
During the Giuliani and Bloomberg years, I saw almost zero incidents on the subways. It was great, and amazing.
Note also that the bad incidents I write about in my youth occurred in the late 50s and early 60s. That was a period of relative calm elsewhere. But I perceived danger in the subways, especially during non-rush hour times. How that translated into actual subway crime I’m not sure, but the atmosphere was not benign.
Retrofitting the NY subway system, in its antiquity, is a daunting proposition. Putting in the gates you mention would of course be astronomical in price (as you also mention), although I think I recently saw something of the sort in an airport as part of the train system that takes people to the car rental.
Cracking down on vagrancy and petty crime is the answer – or one answer – and it was done during the Giuliani et al years. The degree of tolerance now is incredibly self-destructive.
The ordinary citizens of such cities are not at all happy about this. People are leaving, and the ones who stay are complaining. The thing they need to do, however, is vote differently. So far they’re not doing so, although apparently Seattle made some moves in that direction, and the new NY mayor is promising to be tougher on this stuff. Unfortunately he’s got a DA working furiously against him.
neo,
I started riding public transportation in Chicago by myself around the age of 8, 1971. My experience there is identical to what you write about, regarding NYC. On Sundays kids rode all day for a dime so a friend and I spent many a Sunday riding subways (the “El”) and buses, mapping out the routes later at home on maps and graph paper*.
It was probably the same for you, I didn’t consciously adopt a “subway personality,” one just learns the behavior. Don’t smile at anyone. Don’t make eye contact with anyone. The more someone attempts to draw attention to themselves the more you most avoid him or her. Kids alone are especially tempting to reprobates and the mentally unsound, as are women. Once I got to my teens I was in sufficient shape that I wasn’t too worried about the mentally unstable; I could outrun just about anyone, but I still did everything to avoid confrontations. However, I would step in to help women and children (I never sat if a woman was standing, no matter how many empty seats were available.)
Back then tourists rarely used public transportation, but if I saw a rookie about to be preyed upon by one of the three card monte specialists or other sketchy folks I’d approach and begin a conversation, politely offering advice and making sure they knew how to reach their final destination.
In the early ’80s I had to ride a particularly rough stretch for work and school, often at 11pm or later. I would wear very ratty clothes, doing my best to look homeless and insane myself, carrying a change of clothes in a non-descript bag.
I then moved away and was astounded at the change in the ’90s under the second Mayor Daley. It sounds much like New York under Giulliani and Bloomberg (I was also astounded at the change in NY when I visited). Coincidentally, one of my oldest and best friends was working for Chicago PD, assigned to the CTA and working to make the stations, trains and buses safe.
And, like NY, there has been a tremendous reversal in the past, several years. It is very depressing to witness.
*There is a wonderful book, “Hackers” by Steven Levy where he describes personalities drawn to the earliest computers at MIT. Like me, many spent their childhoods memorizing NY’s public transportation routes, including mapping out the shortest distances between disparate locations. Also mapping the NY phone switching system. I’m sure many here know of the exploits of Captain Crunch, one of the early “phone hackers” or “phone phreaks.”
Geoffrey Britain at 6:18pm,
I think it’s also personal, but hasn’t Soros been long on the devaluation of the U.S. dollar and didn’t he contribute to something similar with the British pound?
^– Human adaptability is wonderful (Re various recountings of riding sketchy transit systems and living to tell the tale.)
But We (well, You) Shouldn’t Have to Live Like This. ™
That should be axiomatic.
Zaphod,
I moved to Texas in my early 20s. I didn’t know it at the time, but living there was changing me, giving me a new perspective. I went back to Chicago and stayed with a friend. We left his condo in the morning to drive somewhere and walked about 3/4 mile to where his car was parked (finding a space within 1/4 mile of one’s residence was considered very lucky). When we were still about 25 feet from his car we noticed shattered glass on the ground. My friend slapped his forehead, saying, “Oh Man! I forgot and left my sunglasses on the passenger seat.” He was blaming himself. I looked at him sidewise and said, “You know, you should be able to leave things in your car without them being stolen.”
A year earlier I thought precisely like him. It wasn’t the thief’s fault, it was his fault for leaving something worth stealing in view. A few years later I went to work in Singapore and learned it wasn’t the size or congestion of a city that created the crime. If crime is tolerated it will persist and expand.
As the Soros D.A.’s are teaching us, crime is like taxes and subsidies. Want more of something? Subsidize it.
@Rufus:
Absolutely.
I’d also add that you can in some places (depending on ethnicity) police and dispense justice with a lighter hand than Singapore does and still have pretty safe and harmonious societies.
But Singapore is absolutely the model for a multi-racial society. Everyone is treated with respect as long as they behave. The lines demarcating what is legal and what is not are very clear. One Race (Han) Rules. The others get their designated pieces of the pie. Democracy has no place in this, although some face-saving forms are observed. And the government doesn’t hate its citizens. That always helps.
Damn, I miss Singapore, too. It’s exactly two years and three days since was last there. Can remember sitting by the Cathay Pacific lounge noodle bar slurping the aforementioned and wolfing down wontons and reading online chatter about Wuhan — which locked down 8 days later.
The two people he menaced that day might have been of different races—but they were both women.
I started commuting into NYC and rode the subways in Manhattan from the mid-90s until the pandemic shutdown (Holy Cow! Has it really been 25 years!). At the end of 2020 my company moved our office to New Jersey. The company hired movers to come in to pack up our desks and move our belongings to the new office for us. I didn’t have to do anything myself; and really we couldn’t since we were not allowed into the office.
Seeing what had been happening under DeBlasio firsthand, and then reading/hearing about the total chaos that started sometime after the pandemic shutdown (I heard some describe it as “only the crazies are on the streets”) makes me so glad to never have to step foot in Gotham again.
When I was younger I remember being drawn to the “big city” for its excitement and such. And, I can still understand some young folks today who might think the same; but, it just doesn’t seem worth it any more.
A question for Neo, from a longtime reader, 1st time commentor.
If laws are written by dishonest ( liars ) and corrupt ( criminal ) politicians, do we have a legal obligation to follow them ??
neo
Our pastors have been sufficiently outraged about exactly one case of anti-Asian violence and that was the case of the guy who shot up a massage parlor. Or, should say, sufficiently outraged to mention it in a service.
Not before, not since. See Justine Damond. Jessica Whittaker.
For some reason, Itzaak Semmelweis was raised as an example of somebody who takes huge risks for others sake. Not sure where it fit in the sermon but there it was. So I mentioned to the pastor afterwards that you really don’t want to be a science denier like Semmelweis. He got it after a moment.
I’m not sure there is a term with four or fewer syllables for double standards to the nth power which everybody can see but you’d better not mention it.
Couple of years ago, the NYT noted that among the anti-Jewish violence, no white supremacists could be found. This was, apparently, considered news.
Rufus @ 10:04 and 10:30: Great reminiscences, thanks. (Other contributors to Subway Days Of Yore, thanks also). I lived/worked in Manhattan in the late 70s and early 80s. Subways were in appalling shape: graffiti, homeless folk, thugs, no AC, deafening noise. I was careful not to go too far uptown (south of 96th was generally OK; Times Square was always sketchy, etc). I was young and in shape and stayed alert and wore a distinct Subway Face. A friend came from out of town and remarked, “The minute we went down the stairs into the subway station, you…changed. You were radiating ‘Do Not Fuck With Me.'” I was puzzled. I had been so long in the habit, I no longer noticed myself doing it.
Good times, good times. (Not).
Tinman1956:
Well, if the laws are enforced and you don’t want to be fined or jailed, you have a legal obligation. Or you can go the civil disobedience (Thoreau) route and risk jail.
RigelDog:
Yes. My guess is that both women were small and slight as well, the easier to push. Another target might be the small, old, and frail of either sex.
Richard Aubrey:
That NY Times report was probably more than a couple of years ago. There were 2 fairly well-known fairly recent synagogue shootings by white supremacists. One was in Poway, California, and one in Pittsburgh, PA. One dead and 3 injured in the first, in 2019 (see this). The other was the Tree of Life shooting of 2018 that killed 11 and wounded 6. Both perps were apparently white supremacists.
That’s true, Neo (1:47 pm.), which might excuse what the Michigan AG said — but a law enforcement official would be much better advised to wait until the evidence shows who the offender actually is.
Kate:
She absolutely should not have said what she said.
Tinman1956 (8:28 am) said: “If laws are written by dishonest (liars) and corrupt (criminal) politicians, do we have a legal obligation to follow them??”
M J R suggests, we have a *legal* obligation to follow laws that are on the books — by definition, it seems to me.
But M J R also suggests that a more penetrating question to ask would be whether we have a *moral* obligation.
[Not entirely sure why I went to third person here. Bear with me, okay? (smile)]
MJR
I feel very little moral obligation to do anything ordered by a blatantly corrupt politician. Perhaps Dr Fauci, Pres Biden and the entire D.C. elite have finally placed one straw too many upon the reasonable population’s back. I’m beginning to feel and hear a sea change, and honestly hope it’s not a tsunami. Although there needs to be a complete scouring of all our government institutions, let’s pray the reasonable population remains reasonable.