The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

May Is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Crazy People Are Dangerous

Posted on | May 24, 2020 | Comments Off on May Is Mental Health Awareness Month, and Crazy People Are Dangerous

 

Last week, a shocking video went viral showing a young black man brutally beating an elderly white man. James Woods posted the video to his Twitter account, and even President Trump took notice. Online sleuths using face-recognition software quickly identified the suspect as 20-year-old Jaden Hayden, and linked him to social-media accounts with bizarre racial rants:

Content Hayden had previously uploaded to his YouTube channel suggested he holds black supremacist beliefs.
“The black race is the chosen race, the black race was supposed to rule the earth, but now…they have to go to the white man for everything and that’s not good,” Hayden says in one video.

Hayden had also reportedly uploaded other videos showing him attacking elderly white people and, according to his father, was being treated for mental health problems in Washtenaw County — the Ann Arbor area — before being diagnosed with COVID-19, and being transferred to the Detroit-area nursing home where the attack occurred:

The suspect’s father, who asked not to be named, said his son has mental health issues and a pending assault case in Washtenaw County and should never have been placed in the nursing home.
“He has issues and for them to put him in a facility like that, nothing good was going to happen,” the suspect’s father told 7 Action News.
He said his son was recently moved to the nursing center because the 20-year-old was diagnosed with COVID-19 at the University of Michigan Hospital.
The father said he’s been working with Washtenaw County Mental Health Services to get his son the help he needs and that he was placed in a group home in Chelsea. But, recently, he said his son began hearing voices and that’s when he was taken to the hospital and it was there he says that his son was diagnosed with COVID-19.
“He never should have been housed… quarantined with the victim that he eventually assaulted. That should have never happened,” he said. “Someone dropped the ball.”

Why am I thinking about the title of a 1974 Richard Pryor album?

Never mind — the point made by many people on Twitter was that, if something like this had happened with the races reversed, CNN would be in 24/7 coverage mode, and the liberal media wouldn’t be satisfied until they had whipped up enough anger to spark a deadly riot. As it is, of course, most of the media are ignoring this incident, and certainly none of them are suggesting that the actions of Jaden Hayden represent any widespread danger. Whereas, by contrast, we are told by the media that incidents like the death of Ahmaud Arbery are socially significant, as if no black person is safe from such violence. The media’s distortions of reality — white on black violence is actually rather rare — probably play a part in inciting the kind of paranoid racial resentments that may have inspired Jaden Hayden’s crime. His posting of hateful video rants suggest that Hayden’s mental illness had a racial aspect, and it is fortunate that he is now in custody. Just imagine what might have happened if someone like that had gotten his hands on a firearm. It’s scary.

Meanwhile, we can report that the victim in this attack, 75-year-old Army veteran Norman Bledsoe, is recovering from his injuries, and Hayden has been charged with assault and larceny.


 

Category: Crime, Michigan, Racism

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