You only get one chance to not die

So how do you use it? The question is not rhetorical.

Outrage is not-surprisingly circulating over video footage of a man being chokehold-ed to death on a New York City subway. The man in question, Jordan Neely, reportedly entered a subway car and began yelling at people about being hungry and thirsty. “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die,” he allegedly said. A U.S. Marine who was present at the scene subsequently put him in a chokehold, one that was powerful and protracted enough to kill him, which it did.

New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has dubbed the incident a “murder,” a shockingly reckless claim for a popular congresswoman to make, though I get the opinion she really honestly doesn’t care if her district goes up in flames. The writer Elizabeth Bruenig said the incident was indicative of “the overwhelming fear we have come to accept in our culture of violence.” A New York City councilwoman said it demonstrates “the double standards that Black people and other people of color continue to face.” Everyone, in other words, has responded rather predictably.

Here is what I think: I think that you only ever get one chance not to die. You lose that chance and that’s it: You’re dead. It can be a hard call to make. But I’m not sure I can blame someone for responding rather fulsomely when an apparently crazy person goes onto a crowded subway and says, “I don’t mind going to jail and getting life in prison. I’m ready to die.” That sounds like someone who is about to do something extremely violent and irreparable. I’m not saying you have to kill someone who says something like that. Maybe you don’t. On the one hand it does seem like the Marine went overboard here. It seems like maybe he could have just incapacitated the guy and then had the other passengers, like, sit on the guy’s arms or something.

But I guess he didn’t want to take the risk. Would you? If it looked like a crazy man was about to maim and possibly kill a bunch of innocent people, and you got the drop on him, you might do the same thing. Don’t play dumb and act like you definitely wouldn’t. If you got your boot on a rattlesnake’s head before it bit you—would you be quick to take it off and jump away?

Most everyone will never have to worry about this sort of thing, thankfully. I know I’ve never had to worry about it, sort of. There was one time I was in the Times Square McDonald’s in New York City. My brothers and I had determined to each eat 20 Chicken McNuggets, for some incomprehensible reason. We were about 10 deep each when a random guy sat down next to us, a black guy, maybe late 30s, filthy clothes, he looked basically homeless. He stared at me with heavy-lidded, dead-looking eyes for a moment, and then said quietly: “Put yuh hands up in the air, motherfucker.” My insides froze into a solid block of ice: I was being robbed! There was a chance I could die here! I couldn’t speak. Then he continued: “Wave ‘em around like yuh just don’t care.” Ah! This wasn’t a robbery, he was just strung out on something and being weird. It wasn’t larceny, just standard old Manhattan degeneracy. We gave him our nuggets and left. Nothing happened. But in those brief few seconds of paralyzing fear I very vividly pictured my own death. This is not something you encounter that often and the feeling is very distinct, and awful. I suppose if I’d gotten the drop on this guy before I knew what was happening, I might have held on too. You only get one chance.

What you hope is this: That every fraught situation can be solved without death, or even without violence. But sometimes violence is necessary, or at least completely understandable. And sometimes, when things get violent, people die. I don’t really know if we can say this went down rightly or wrongly. One guy looked very much like he was about to hurt and maybe kill people; another guy did what he thought he had to do to stop him. You could argue that the Marine should have done things differently. Maybe he should have. But what if Jordan Neely had gone on to kill someone on the train, or multiple people? What would the Marine say after that? “I didn’t want to perpetuate a culture of fear.” “I didn’t want to subject a black man to double standards.” What would you think of such a weak and pathetic man? What would you think of yourself, if it were you? The answers are not very simple and even less pleasant.