We Need More Good Samaritans And Fewer Jokers

Daniel Penny and Luigi Mangione mark a strict divide in how a society should function

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There’s A Big Difference Between A Good Samaritan And The Joker — Created By Author In DAL-E3

“We do not kill people in cold blood to resolve policy differences or express a viewpoint…In a civil society, we are all less safe when ideologues engage in vigilante justice.”

— Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, BBC

Lately, it seems like we’re in the middle of a historic event every week. This one was no different. It involved the strange, targeted murder, in broad daylight, of a healthcare CEO by a masked assassin with a gun.

It only got stranger when the murderer was captured, then discovered to be the graduate of an Ivy League elite college and from a prominent family. The killer, Luigi Mangione, did it for ideological reasons, because he despised the healthcare industry and capitalism itself.

A case of the 1% killing the .01% for being too elite. But not everyone saw it this way. As the BBC points out, a “dark fandom” began developing for the murderer.

• A lookalike contest was held mimicking the hooded assassin days after the murder of CEO Brian Thompson.

• Etsy and Amazon were flooded with “pro-Mangione apparel.”

• TikTok videos appeared celebrating the killer and Spotify playlists were dedicated to him.

• A McDonald’s employee who called the police on the suspect was targeted online for turning him in.

• Wanted posters began appearing for CEOs in NY.

• Journalist began writing articles about “Why We Want Insurance Executives Dead.”

• A public defense fund for the killer raised over $200,000 in a short time.

It reminds me of the 2019 movie Joker, where a pitiful character puts on a costume and goes on a murder spree in a large city. Then, a crowd of clown-faced sympathizers cheer him on. They do so because this Joker was murdering whatever nameless pain was tormenting each of them individually.

In the middle of all this drama, Daniel Penny was acquitted of homicide charges. This former marine had stepped in and subdued a deranged man in the NYC subway when he had threatened to kill everyone in his train car. At the end of the incident, the man was dead, and Penny was arrested then tried for murder.

These two events mark a strict divide in how we should interact as a society. Namely, we shouldn’t celebrate Jokers who engage in vigilante justice, nor punish Good Samaritans who help their fellow citizens.

In a way, they’re each a part of the same scale, but there’s a big difference between the two. Premeditated murder of someone you disagree with is wrong, while stepping in to help a neighbor in danger is laudable. Or at least it should be.

When this scale goes out of balance, it creates a society where terrible things can happen, and when in balance, it enables miracles. There’s historical evidence of both. But before we go there, let’s review Penny’s case, since it may not be fresh in our minds.

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A Different Narrative Than The Media Portrayed

In May of 2023, a homeless man and former Michael Jackson impersonator, named Jordan Neely had an outburst on a subway train, in which he threatened to kill people. Out of fear for passengers on the train, Penny took him to the ground, and in the struggle, Neely died.

At the time, the media only focused on one aspect of the event: race. Neely was black and Penny white. But it’s a lazy narrative that totally misses the point. The ultimate story was about a system wide government failure that left Neely and the citizens of New York in a perilous situation.

On journalist Bari Weis’ podcast, a group of mental health advocates and journalists discussed the case. They reveal Neely had a history of mental health issues since he watched his mother murdered as a teenager. He was also on a list of the top fifty homeless in his section of NY in need of treatment.

At thirty, he’d been arrested forty times. Most were for petty crimes, but the last three were getting progressively more violent.

• One involved trying to kidnap a child.

• In another Neely punched a 67-year-old man.

• Finally, he punched a 67–year-old woman in the face.

For this last crime, Neely was sentenced to a live-in facility instead of prison, which he left on his own before the sentence was up. An outreach worker who saw Neely weeks before his death also warned he’d be a threat to himself and others without treatment.

The major problem was Neely had to voluntarily agree to this treatment. But the panelists on the podcast note it’s difficult for “someone having a break with reality” to consent to something logically in their best interest.

Photo by Random Institute on Unsplash

This left Neely as a ticking time bomb that eventually went off on a subway train, filled with random people with no expertise on how to deal with it. Some may call Penny a vigilante, like Mangione, and say he should have just ignored Neely’s threats.

But just turning your head and looking away can create its own set of problems, and there’s documented examples of this.

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The Good Samaritan’s Extinction

In 2011, a horrific event occurred in Foshan, China, which sparked soul-searching and outrage. A toddler named Yueyue crawled into a street and was run over by a van. The driver got out, looked at the child, and left. In the process, he ran her over again.

Eighteen people passed by, looked at the child in the street, and did nothing. This included another van, which ran over the child again. Finally, an old woman collecting cans grabbed the child and pulled her out of the street. This was all recorded on CCTV cameras and spread across the world.

Mark Mackinnon in the Globe and Mail reveals — despite appearances — the people in Foshan aren’t callous. They’re afraid. Getting involved can put you at risk. Many of the guilty passersby recounted cases where someone rendering aid was deemed liable for the injuries of the victim.

So, you can be punished for helping. The old woman was the only one to intervene…because she had nothing to lose.

In an interview on the Jordan Harbinger Podcast, an investor named Bill Browder recounts a similar story. While living in Russia, Browder forced his reluctant driver to pull over so they could help a man lying in the street.

Soon the police arrived and tried to arrest Browder and his driver. The chauffer warned that helping a stranger in Russia is dangerous because you can be held liable for their injuries. While we’re not on this level just yet in the West; we’re close.

Getting involved comes with risks — not only to your own personal safety — but if things go sideways, you may find yourself on trial, like a certain former marine.

A recent event here in Philly captured national headlines when a woman was groped for forty minutes in front of other commuters, and her assailant only stopped when a subway employee arrived and intervened.

While some commuters may not have understood what was happening at the time, they were aware enough to film it with their phones, but not step in to help.

There’s also the case of a deranged man dragging a woman by her hair through the NYC subway. Again, no one intervened, although they were kind enough to film it. After all, getting involved can be messy.

While our scale is out of whack, it makes you wonder what happens when a society’s scale is totally in balance. Well, there’s a historical example of this too.

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Runners Perform A Miracle On Crete

In 1941, Nazi forces invaded mainland Greece, capturing it rather quickly. But their invasion of nearby Crete wasn’t so easy. Numbers of elite paratroopers dropped on the island were devastated by Allied forces. Even after the island fell, things didn’t go as planned.

Usually the Germans could terrify populations into submission, but the Cretans were different. The Nazis had to leave 30,000 soldiers on this island of shepherds to keep it subdued.

In his book Natural Born Heroes, Christopher McDougal reveals these islanders had been repelling invaders since the time of Alexander the Great. Their culture also saw it as shameful to turn your head away from trouble; even death was preferable to this shame.

An adult Cretan was called a “dromous” or runner, because you were only considered an adult when you were strong enough to run to a neighbor’s aid. So, this culture had no problem finding volunteers for a powerful resistance movement.

German Soldier Standing In Front Of A Sign On Crete That Says, “In retaliation to the brutal murder of paratroopers and combat engineers in an ambush by armed men and women, (the town of) Kandanos was destroyed.” — By Segers (1943) Via Wikimedia Commons

They bogged down the invaders for months, and eventually kidnapped a high-ranking German general, spiriting him from the island with the help of British special forces. McDougal interviewed Yiorgos Pattakos, a surviving member of the Greek resistance, who summed it up this way:

“When you live in a place like this — small, by itself — you’re brought up to give help, not wait for it. When your neighbor needs something, he needs you. The person he knows. Not the army. Not the police. You. And if you’re not there, someday you’ll have to look him in the face and explain. The Germans…believed they’d never have to look anyone in the face and explain. They’d never have to pay for what they did. And I believe that is why we defeated them.”

While this effort of a small group of shepherds in the war isn’t well known, the Germans realized its significance much later. Hitler’s Chief of Staff, Field Marshall Wilhelm Keitel, blamed the Greeks for delaying the invasion of Russia and possibly losing the war.

This is what it looks like when your society’s scale is in balance. Miracles become possible. With this in mind, let's recap.

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The Joker And Good Samaritan Aren’t The Same

Conrad Veidt As Gwynplaine In The Man Who Laughs (1928), Thought To Be The Inspiration For The Joker — Via Wikimedia Commons [Public Domain}

Daniel Penny’s trial has ended, but Mangione’s is just starting. While the former has been relatively quiet, it’s been discovered the latter wrote his own manifesto justifying the cold-blooded murder of Brian Thompson.

Expect this one to play out in the media. Expect groups of clown-faced sympathizers to take up Mangione’s failed logic. Anticipate it to mirror the script of the movie Joker, but we don’t have to follow along with its plot.

There’s a big difference between the Joker and the Good Samaritan. The Joker is an agent of chaos that destroys things and feeds off the pent-up anger generated by every slight and injustice of the world. Inevitably, he can only burn things down and make them worse.

The Good Samaritan is that random person, accosted by fate, who chooses not to turn their head away when it would be truly easier to do so. They’re runners. They act because the shame of not doing so would be too painful to live with.

When we choose the Joker over the Good Samaritan, we create a world where injured toddlers are left in the street by passersby. Where assaults on trains are ignored by the masses. It builds a society where people are afraid to help, because so much could go wrong, it’s just not worth it.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in that world. Hopefully, I’d be a runner if the situation ever presented itself, and you would be too. We need more Good Samaritans and fewer Jokers.