On neo-pagan notions of justice, power, and violence
A deranged man walked into a Manhattan skyscraper on July 28 and murdered four people before turning the gun on himself. His motivations are unknown and will probably remain so forever. For the first few hours after the shooting, social media reflected the somber mood that properly follows hearing news of a tragedy. When it became clear that one of the murdered was a police officer — a husband and father of two young children, with a third on the way — some of us worried we would see celebrations from the anti-police crowd. But that didn’t materialize.
It turns out we were right to worry about grotesque celebrations of random violence, though. The first indication came in an X post from leftist podcaster Sean McCarthy: “New York City is so evil that if you walk into a random big building to do a mass shooting there’s decent odds you’ll hit the person in charge of buying up single family homes for blackstone [sic].” He was referring to Wesley LePatner, an executive at the asset management firm, a lay leader at her synagogue, and the mother of two children. To McCarthy, she was nothing more than an avatar for the evils of capitalism.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the National Review (paywall)
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Tal Fortgang is an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute. He was a 2023 Sapir Fellow
Photo by ANGELA WEISS/AFP via Getty Images