On the slaughter of Iryna Zarutska: Republicans pounce and the MSM doesn’t

The New Neo Posted on by

I saw a link to an article about the murder of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska back when it happened a couple of weeks ago, but I didn’t click on it because one can’t follow everything, and I figured it was a more “ordinary” murder (for example, boyfriend or stalker or robber), if any murder can be called ordinary. She was clearly a beautiful young woman and her murder a terrible crime and tragedy, but there wouldn’t be any particular reason to write a post about it.

Now that a horrifying surveillance video of the crime – which occurred on public transport in Charlotte, NC, and was an utterly unprovoked attack by a stranger who had a long history of crime and mental illness – has been released, it’s big news on the right but the MSM is still either ignoring it or using the “racist Republicans pounce!” angle.

The perp (Decarlos Brown, Jr.) is black and the victim white, but it’s the mental health element and the well-known dangerousness of the perp, plus the sudden switch to murderous action which happens in an instant, that gets the attention of the right. Crime is a big big issue; who on earth would want to defend such an action, or rationalize it away? The left, which says (among other things), oh, crime is down in Charlotte.

Who cares? We’ve come to be suspicious of such statistics, which can be easily manipulated by downgrading criminal acts, as happened in DC. But even beyond that, a statistic can be down from a previous high without being something people want to tolerate, and being stabbed and murdered on a local train by a perp who is a schizophrenic with a bad criminal history isn’t tolerable to most people.

Here’s the more common response:

The nightmarish video from Charlotte, N.C. of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska being murdered by a psychopath who was roaming freely thanks to the Democrats’ violent felon fetish is sickening and infuriating.

Of course, if the races of perp and victim had been reversed, you know that the left would have demanded the killer be treated very harshly and the crime would have been big big big news in the MSM.

For me, the questions are: what was the perp’s actual history? Could this crime have been predicted? Did his situation prior to this warrant much longer incarceration? And if so, where? What was the nature of his prior criminal acts? Were they violent? The answer to that last question is yes, they were:

Records obtained by The New York Post showed that Brown has a history of arrests going back more than a decade, including charges of felony larceny, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and communicating threats.

More [emphasis mine]:

Brown has been arrested a slew of times since 2011 for felony larceny, robbery with a dangerous weapon, and communicating threats, according to court records obtained by The Post.

He is homeless and served five years in prison for the robbery with a deadly weapon charge, according to WSOC-TV.

So he was in prison for at least one of the charges, and it was a significant sentence. How long can people with mental illnesses who have criminal records be kept behind bars? Should it be longer than their sentences, and should their incarceration be in a mental hospital, or a facility for the criminally insane (some still exist, although they’re now called “forensic psychiatric hospitals”)? It doesn’t seem that Brown was ever sent to one, but perhaps he should have been (see this for North Carolina’s facilities). It seems that someone – or many people -dropped the ball:

The alleged killer, however, currently has pending charges for misuse of the 911 system in January following a police welfare check — which revealed his troubling thoughts, the outlet [Charlotte Observer] reported.

Brown told authorities during the visit he believed someone had given him a “man-made” material that controlled when he ate, walked, and talked, an affidavit obtained by the newspaper said.

“Brown wanted officers to investigate this ‘man-made’ material that was inside of his body,” the affidavit said.

Officers then advised Brown that he was suffering a medical issue, and there was nothing more they could do to help him.

He became upset over their response and called 911. He was arrested after he hung up the phone, the outlet reported.

More [emphasis mine]:

His mother has said he was diagnosed with schizophrenia following his release from prison for an armed robbery conviction. She said the courts failed by allowing her son to be out in the community despite knowing about his previous criminal history and mental health issues.

Brown has past convictions for armed robbery, felony larceny, breaking and entering, and shoplifting, WBTV reported.

According to WSOC-TV reporter Joe Bruno, Brown’s mother said that she had her son evaluated when his behavior became aggressive. This followed his release from prison after he had served more than five years for armed robbery.

She got an involuntary commitment order and he was placed under psychiatric monitoring for two weeks and diagnosed with schizophrenia, Bruno wrote on X. She said that he became so aggressive after his release that she had to kick him out of her home, so he became homeless.

Apparently, she wanted him committed and he was “monitored” (whatever the consisted of) for two weeks. Then – nothing? It says “after his release” he became very aggressive – does that mean after his release from prison, or from the hospital? I think the former, and it doesn’t seem he was ever in a mental hospital, although it’s hard to tell.

I also seems he was never judged incompetent to stand trial [emphasis mine]:

Brown’s public defender had filed a motion [after the 911 arrest] questioning Brown’s “capacity to proceed” in the case. A judge then ordered a forensic evaluation, which was never done, Queen City News reported.

How much time had elapsed? Was it ever going to be done? More:

Randy Fine, a Republican, wrote on X: “I’m going to introduce legislation to hold judges accountable when violent repeat offenders they release commit new crimes. It’s easy to release criminals when you’re protected by an armed bailiff at all times. The rest of us aren’t so lucky. Those 12+ judges that released Decarlos Brown Jr. should have their day in court too.”

Elon Musk wrote on X: “Let’s change the law. Between now and then, name and shame the DAs and judges who enable murder, rape and robbery. But especially shame those who funded the campaigns of the DAs and judges. That will make the biggest difference.”

I disagree. You can’t expect them to be perfect prognosticators, even if a release seems egregious. And in this case, he wasn’t released early, and the judge later did order an evaluation. Why wasn’t it done in a timely fashion?

Liberty is important too. Where to draw the line is the question; it’s an old one and a difficult one. Funds are needed for all of this, too.

At least at present Brown was denied bond. And guess what? Maybe this time they really will evaluate him for competence to stand trial (which is very different, by the way, from not guilty by reason of insanity because it takes place before the trial):

Brown’s lawyer said he will file a motion for an evaluation of Brown’s competency to stand trial because of his “long history” of mental health issues, WSOC reported. Brown appeared for the brief hearing via video. He wore an orange jail uniform, a face mask and his right hand wrapped in gauze from an injury during the attack.

This is also a case that illustrates a failure to apply the broken windows approach. See this [emphasis mine]:

I spoke with District Attorney Spencer Merriweather this week. He is limited in what he can say about this particular case, but he made clear that the system is full of gaps. Repeat offenders who pile up “lower-level” charges can still cycle in and out. Defendants with severe mental illness can sometimes be released when they’re found incompetent to stand trial, even if everyone knows they’re a danger to the public. “It is unreal,” Merriweather told me. He’s right.

In the meantime, there are things to do immediately. I spoke with former Mayor Pat McCrory, who pioneered both transit and public safety over seven terms as mayor. He put it plainly: “Public safety has to be the No. 1 objective in transit, and it obviously is not.” When Charlotte chose not to install fare gates, it made a different bargain: enforce payment another way. Failing to do so creates an environment where rules don’t matter, turning trains and platforms into places to loiter, and in some cases, to prey. That culture of permissiveness has to end. Riders should know every person on that train has paid to be there. CMPD and CATS must post a visible security presence on platforms and trains. And judges must stop releasing violent offenders back into the community on little more than a promise.

A perfect storm that led to this heinous crime. RIP, Iryna Zarutska.

[NOTE: I’ve written previously about the history of the mental hospital de-institutionalization movement. Please see this.]

The blog is back, long live the blog!

The New Neo Posted on by

For all of you who tried to visit this site past about 10 AM today, you probably were met with an assortment of messages indicting the blog had gone down. That happens now and then, unfortunately, but this was different. By sometime in the afternoon, all the posts had disappeared – that’s all 21,707 published posts and over a thousand drafts.

Quite a mouthful. Vanished.

At that point, I could get to the backend of the blog, but the posts had disappeared internally, too. I also could not post any new posts; I’d get an error message when I tried. I know I’m supposed to backup the blog periodically, but it’s a long process and because I knew (or thought I knew) that the host backs it up regularly, I had let that chore slip and hadn’t done it in years.

I spent the entire day and evening talking to the host on the phone and trying to figure out a way around it, and waiting for the “escalation” team to get back to me. The phone conversations were frustrating exercises in miscommunication. I’ll skip the details, except to the say that after many hours, phone conversations, and emails, I was losing faith that it would get fixed.

And then suddenly: voila! The site is restored to the way it was on September 4, 2025. I’ll take it.

Thing is, the WordPress version is still the updated one that – supposedly – broke the blog in the first place. So I feel very wary. I think I’m going to have to try to modernize a bit more, although my own skills are rusty and web developers are mega-expensive. If anyone has any ideas about a solution, please let me know.

If the blog goes down again – perish the thought – please go to this ancient site where I’ll try to post a notice: https://neoneoneocon.blogspot.com .

Kudos to the mayor of DC for admitting the truth

The New Neo Posted on by

It shouldn’t be unusual for a politician to be able to admit an inconvenient truth, but it is. So praise is due to Muriel Boswer for this:

Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser admitted on Wednesday that crime in the district has plummeted since President Donald Trump’s federal takeover.

Bowser, a Democrat, touted the cratering crime rates and said she “greatly appreciates” the resources that have been surged into the city since Trump’s early August emergency declaration. She signaled that she would like to continue to work with the federal government to police the city after Trump’s emergency declaration times out at the end of 30 days. …

“We know that we have had fewer gun crimes, fewer homicides, and we have experienced an Extreme reduction in carjackings,” she continued. …

“The most significant thing that we are highlighting today is the area of crime that was most troubling for us in 2023,” she said. Carjackings during the time that Trump has marshaled federal law enforcement to D.C., carjackings in the district have declined 87% from the same period of time last year, according to the mayor

“We know that when carjackings go down, when the use of gun goes down, when homicide or robbery go down, neighborhoods feel safer …

They feel safer because they are safer. Obvious, but still it’s good to hear a Democrat say it.

More evidence that part of being a leftist for some people is being misinformed/uninformed

The New Neo Posted on by

Indeed:

This must be discussed more. I know people who believe that the assassination attempt was faked and that Trump was not shot. When I ask how did Corey Comperatore [spelled wrong; I’ve corrected it] die, not a single one of them knew who he was.

These are people who consider themselves very savvy news consumers.

This type of ignorance is commonplace. It’s partly because the MSM barely covers certain facts (or doesn’t cover them at all) and it’s therefore easy to miss them if your sources are the MSM and the echo chamber of social media. And it’s partly because an enormous number of people read only the headlines. They also often live in bubbles where just about everyone they know agrees with them.

As another commenter in that same thread tweets:

There is a lot of overlap among “savvy news consumers” who are certain, including names, of the narrative that Kyle Rittenhouse shot Black protestors, that Brian Sicknick died due to head injuries inflicted by a fire extinguisher, etc.

Absolutely. And remember that most of these falsehoods were printed and widely circulated in the MSM (for example, the Sicknick “news”), or they were implied and never explicitly corrected (that the people Rittenhouse killed were black).

Then again, regarding the attempted assassination of Trump, this is also true of some Trump-haters (from a tweet in the comments to that original posting):

They claim that he [Comperatore] was sacrificed for the sake of the ruse, “proving” just how evil Trump is.

Cognitive dissonance is very uncomfortable, and most people will try to find a way to stick to their beliefs, even if it means they need to engage in mental gymnastics. As Winston Churchill once said (the following or something very much like it):

Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened.

Is anyone else having trouble …

The New Neo Posted on by

… with updating this blog on a cellphone? I have no trouble at all viewing it on my laptop. But for the last day or two my cellphone keeps showing versions from a couple of hours earlier, and I have to keep hitting “refresh” to get the latest posts and comments.

It may just be some sort of cache problem on my particular phone. But I’m wondering whether anyone else is experiencing something similar.

Tim Kaine, ignoramus

The New Neo Posted on by

You may recall that Tim Kaine was Hillary Clinton’s VP running mate. What is it with these Democrat VP candidates named “Tim”?

Not his finest hour:

Most of the criticism I’ve seen of Kaine rests on his ignorance of the Declaration of Independence, some of the most memorable lines of which are these:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed …

Self-evident? Not to Kaine. Nor was it “self-evident” to Obama, who sometimes would omit the “Creator” part. But the Declaration makes it clear that the rights come from God and are only secured by governments.

And of course some governments don’t secure them at all.

But Kaine’s ignorance of the words of the Founders, which form the basis of our government, is only the beginning of his stupidity. Does he really think that the mullahs of Iran believe that there are any inalienable rights that come from God – except the duty (not the right) to worship Him as the mullahs dictate? Iran is a theocracy, and as far as I know there are no rights guaranteed there at all. Certainly there is no freedom of religion and generally no liberty.

Does Kaine think that invoking God as a foundation for something like rights is the equivalent of creating a totalitarian theocracy? How absurd. If a government believes that the deity controls everything, but secures no rights at all to the government’s citizens, then the belief in God would be the only commonality between that dictatorial theocracy and a government that secures many rights that are endowed by God. Such governments would be opposites, not similar.

Kaine’s failure is basic. But it’s not arbitrary. It’s in the service of saying it’s only government that you can rely upon, that it’s government that decides what’s a right and what is not.

ADDENDUM: I just found this rebuttal to Kaine, from Bishop Robert Barron:

On “progressivism” and barbarism

The New Neo Posted on by

Just today I discovered this essay written in December of 2023 by Benjamin Kerstein. It’s entitled “The rise of barbaric progressivism,” and subtitled “Antisemitism, racial hierarchy, violence, and an alliance with radical Islam have seized the commanding heights of the movement.” The phenomenon has only become clearer and more intense since then, but it was already apparent. What sounds as though it might be an oxymoron – “progressivism” allied with “barbarism” – is nothing of the sort. Instead, it is perhaps inevitable, a built-in feature of the former.

Kerstein writes:

Shortly before he died in the late 1930s, Sigmund Freud, by then a refugee from Nazism, wrote, “We live in very remarkable times. We find with astonishment that progress has concluded an alliance with barbarism.” He was referring to the rise of fascism and communism, and their combination of the most modern forms of science, technology, economic theory, and even aesthetics with the most horrific and savage forms of violence and sadism.

Freud was a man of the Enlightenment—perhaps the last man of the Enlightenment—and equated modernity with progress and civilization. Thus, to witness the degradation of modernity as it comingled with the kind of animalistic brutality that he saw as belonging to earlier and less enlightened stages of human history was shocking to him, as it was to many.

His obsession with this problem dated back to the carnage of World War I, in which the most “civilized” part of the world had turned itself into a technological charnel house that consumed millions of lives seemingly without reason. In the face of this, Freud eventually reached very dark conclusions about human nature and the nature of human civilization. He concluded that because civilizational progress required greater and greater repression of the most basic human drives, people are more and more repressed and unhappy the more they progress and the more civilized they become. Eventually, this repression cannot hold, and the savage energies built up beneath centuries of sublimation explode in periodic eruptions of horrendous violence and destruction. Progress, in other words, leads inexorably toward barbarism.

It’s become fashionable and commonplace to denigrate Freud and even mock him, but by no means was he wrong about everything. In this case, I believe he was right, although he didn’t go far enough.

Kerstein’s entire essay is worth reading and contains many thoughts that could each be a springboard to a lengthy post or even a book, but I’ll just say a few things here. The first is that “progressives” have hijacked the word “progress,” because the progress they propose is illusory and only a dream. It is also wedded with barbarism not merely because of what Freud asserted – which I believe is correct – but also because it contains an unrealistic Utopianism that goes so strongly against human nature that it requires totalitarianism to attempt to implement it, and totalitarianism requires barbarism.

Or, as one of my favorite quotes from Milan Kundera states (found in his Book of Laughter and Forgetting):

…human beings have always aspired to an idyll, a garden where nightingales sing, a realm of harmony where the world does not rise up as a stranger against man nor man against other men, where the world and all its people are molded from a single stock and the fire lighting up the heavens is the fire burning in the hearts of men, where every man is a note in a magnificent Bach fugue and anyone who refuses his note is a mere black dot, useless and meaningless, easily caught and squashed between the fingers like an insect.

There’s a seamless progression from lyricism to violence: no matter if it begins in idealistic dreams of an idyll, the relinquishment of freedom in always-futile attempts to impose that dream and make it reality will end up with humans being crushed like insects. And “progressives” (leftists) will in the main applaud and justify the crushing.

However, the current alliance of progressivism with Islamic jihadism may seem odd. And yet, as Kerstein writes, it’s not odd at all:

… [P]rogressivism’s increasing antisemitism … naturally leads it to align with fellow antisemites. Statistics have consistently shown that the Muslim nations are the most antisemitic in the world. …

Progressives share more with radical Islam than hatred of Jews, however. For example, both movements have an essentially messianic worldview. Islam has its final day of judgment and the progressives their blessed society. The two groups are also obsessed with the same alleged evils, such as imperialism, American foreign policy, and Western civilization in general. The alliance further plays to progressives’ obsession with race, as they have convinced themselves that all Muslims are “people of color” (they aren’t) and therefore oppressed by “white people” (they aren’t). Despite the Muslim world’s considerable trade in black African slaves, which continues to this day in various forms, progressives have decided that radical Islam is simply pursuing the shared task of overturning the global racial hierarchy and defeating “white supremacism.” That the Islamic radicals seek to replace it with Muslim supremacism does not perturb the progressives, as they likely consider it just revenge for centuries of depredation.

Most important of all, however, is that most of today’s progressives and all radical Muslims are against freedom. In the case of radical Islam, this is obvious, as they make no pretense of valuing freedom, and the movements and regimes they have built are, without exception, brutally oppressive, violent, terroristic, and totalitarian. In the case of progressives, the issue is less clear-cut, as they publicly proclaim that they value freedom, particularly for oppressed groups. But if we examine progressive actions rather than rhetoric, a different picture emerges.

Please read the whole thing; food for thought.

The reports of Trump’s death were greatly exaggerated

The New Neo Posted on by

The left so badly wants Trump to die.

Did I say “the left”? It’s not limited just to them. Ever since Trump took office, I’ve heard random friends, acquaintances, and/or relatives wish fervently for his death and praise those who would accomplish it, and none of these people are on the left although they do consistently vote for Democrats. Yes, you might quibble with my definition of “on the left” and say that anyone who votes for Democrats these days is on the left. But I’m referring to what these Democrats would say if you were to quiz them on their beliefs about public policy and the like; those beliefs would bear more resemblance to what one might call “liberal” than leftism.

For example, just on the trans issue, the two or three people I’ve spoken to about this are profoundly ignorant of the facts, and shocked and disturbed to hear them from me. However, because they are firmly convinced that Trump is a profoundly and uniquely evil and despicable person, they will always vote against him and anyone who supports him. My own support for Trump is grandfathered in, as it were, with those who continue to speak to me and haven’t cut me off.

So this sort of thing is no surprise:

The NYT’s Trump story should be that the Far Left is spreading baseless theories about his death. Instead, the story lays out all the “evidence” for why people were right to speculate about it.

And speculate they did, rumors spreading until Trump rained on their parade by appearing, hale and hearty. And these are of course the same people who never noticed how feeble Biden had become, a process that had begun even before he took office although it continued to get worse for his entire term.

I get tired of saying “no surprise,” but it’s no surprise. Most people’s minds are shaped by the things they read and the company they keep. And wish fulfillment fantasies are rife, based on their beliefs.

What the press calls “far-right” parties are growing in Europe’s most populous countries

The New Neo Posted on by

Here’s the phenomenon:

For the first time, populist or far-right parties are leading the polls in Europe’s three biggest countries of the U.K., France, and Germany, the latest sign of growing voter discontent in much of the continent following years of high immigration and inflation.

Far-right and anti-immigration parties have already entered government in countries such as Italy, Finland and the Netherlands. But this year marks the first time that they have been ahead in Europe’s biggest economies at the same time. That could provoke a period of political turbulence in all three countries, even if national elections are likely still a few years away.

“It’s significant. Leaders in all three countries are grappling with an ascendant far right that looks on the cusp of power unless politicians can address what’s fueling the rise, which is immigration and cost of living,” said Mujtaba Rahman, head of Europe for risk consulting firm Eurasia.

The left will not be addressing either of those things; their priorities will not let them pivot on that. But in Europe, parliamentary systems allow the most popular party to remain out of power because of alliances between and among less popular parties determined to unite in order to squeeze out the right. This is what’s happened so far in the three countries in question.

As I see it, the “far-right” populist parties that want to curb immigration need to win absolute majorities to take power, and they are nowhere near that level right now.