Alrighty then. This particular bit of video has been making the rounds the last few days. In short, it shows an apparently unhinged feller going bugnuts on a subway train in New York City, at one point assaulting a woman who begs for help from her fellow passengers. Nobody raises a finger, other than to film it.

The arguments I’ve seen basically boil down to two sides;

1: “Where are the men? What has happened to make men such cowards that they will not help a woman in distress?”

2: “Strong independent woman don’t need no man.”

Argument #2 is of course pure snark. There is validity to it… a lot of modern feminists sneer about the utility of men, but they get kinda quiet about that when TSHTF. But that need not be litigated here. Argument #1 is of greater interest.

This is hardly the first Public Transit video depicting violence and a lot of people standing around doing nothing more helpful than looking uncomfortable. The basic story is not new; look at Kitty Genovese. People stand around and are basically useless a lot of the time. “It’s not my fight.” “I could get injured.” “If I ignore it it’ll go away.” “Someone else will help.” “Maybe I’m wrong about what’s really going on, who’s the bad guy.” And so on.

But there are of course a few new ones:

“If I wade in, I could get sued, by the perp, by the bus/train company, by a bystander, by the victim herself.”

“If I use any kind of force, I could get arrested.”

“That guy is black. I’m white. If I intervene and edited video goes out, I could get cancelled, lose my job, my career, my friends, home, family.”

It is normal for people, and I believe men in particular, to fantasize about playing the hero. I’ve often seen people, and here in particular that tends to be man-hating modern feminists, claim that the “male power fantasy” is that they will be Billy Badass, able to lay a beatdown on their opponents, be just the meanest, toughest, strongest, scariest sumbitch out there. I have no doubt that many men daydream about just that, viewing themselves as the GigaChad that all the women insta-swoon over. But I also believe that a lot of other men have a different sort of “male fantasy:” that when the moment comes, when they are needed, they will prove to be competent. That they will be up to the task, whatever that task is. Change the tire, put out the fire, save the damsel in distress. And, if needed, wade into the fight and succeed. But these sort of fantasies rarely ever get put to the test. And actual violent lunatic is *not* someone you, a sane person, want to go up against. And so if you don’t actually have to… it seems most of the time, you don’t.

Especially now when trying to be a hero, doing the right thing, being selfless, stands a not unreasonable chance of having a large and vindictive chunk of society dropping on you and your future like a ton of angry, unthinking bricks.

What would you do? What would I do? Hell if I know. What I’d like to *think* I’d do is, to start off, *not* wade in and try to lay out the whacko. That would not go well. But what I’d like to think I’d do is to spot one or two likely looking other guys, preferably large and young, get their attention and have a *group* wade in. A few people stepping between whacko and victim might shut down the aggression. Might not. But three against one is way better odds than one against one.

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Perhaps just through random chance, YouTube recommends this video after the one above:

It shows the sort of thing that any decent man *wishes* he could pull off… and any smart man knows he couldn’t. In reality, Our Hero would be incapacitated or dead in seconds.

Counterpoint: Snack Man.

Huh. The Snack man video is “age restricted.” The clip from “Nobody” doesn’t seem to be. Go ahead and try to make that make any kind of sense.