Darwin, Queens and The Theory of Devolution

The other night, in a macabre, sad homage to an attack led by white men on a black youth in the Queens neighborhood known as Howard Beach, several white men, led by Nick Minucci, took a metal bat and their agressions to a black youth by the name of Glenn Moore. Minucci is 19 and white, Moore is 22 and black. Minucci has had a variety of experience with hate-crime in his all-too-brief youth; he was convicted of firing an airgun at worshippers at a Sikh temple in the aforementioned neighborhood after 9/11. Not to be ignored, however, Moore was arrested last week in connection with a domestic assault charge, and he and his two friends (who managed to escape Minucci and his friends' wrath) were, admittedly, in the mostly-white neighborhood with the intention of stealing a car.

There's an element of uniquity to the story; aside from Mr. Moore's admission that he and his friends had intended to steal a car, Mr. Minucci -- who has been charged with a variety of hate crime-related charges after fracturing Mr. Moore's skull with a bat -- told police he was merely retaliating for Moore and his friends' attempted robbery of Minucci earlier. While police dispute that, Moore's friends had a toolkit -- Minucci claimed Moore held a screwdriver to his neck and demanded his watch (a $6,000 Rolex) and his necklace (a $4,000 cross). The botched hold-up may or may not have been captured on a security camera from one of the nearby stores where the supposed incident occurred.

There are a variety of things wrong here; does Minucci, a full-fledged scumbag, have the right to bash someone's head in because he tried to rob him? On the surface, I think anyone who has been mugged can admit they have wished they encountered the individual(s) who perpetrated said mugging again so they could inflict some revenge and/or justice on said perpetrators. Personally, if someone mugged me by shoving a gun or another weapon in my face, I would wish for the opportunity to return the favor in the future. But taking a metal baseball bat, chasing a man down and beating him -- over the head, repeatedly -- is extreme.

So we've got a minor -- and thus-far, unmentioned -- conundrum. I don't advocate vigilantism. I don't want to see people combing the streets in the name of bloodlust. It worked for Charles Bronson -- five times, actually -- but in reality, the empowerment that comes with walking the streets with a gun and an agenda virtually guarantees a person resembling the one who wronged you will wind up in your sights. And invariably, that will create a cycle of violence. Because the person who receives your wrath will have relatives and friends who will respond in kind. And the solution quickly, and tragically, becomes the problem.

However, having said that, it occurred to me that Mr. Moore and his friends, who are black, had the intention to steal a car in a white neighborhood. My guess -- and of course I could be far off here -- is that Mr. Moore and his friends will choose another neighborhood to find future victims, both cars and people. So in essence, Mr. Minucci's efforts to deter Mr. Moore and his friends were successful. Obviously, that doesn't make said efforts right; but what does that say about the situation?

At this point, Mr. Moore is being consoled by friends and family and black leaders, including (of course) Reverend Al Sharpton. But -- if Minucci, a Scumbag Extraordinaire, was telling the truth that Moore and his friends tried to rob him, and then planned to steal a car, shouldn't Mr. Moore -- fractured skull and all -- be charged with one or more crimes as well? I don't dispute Mr. Minucci deserves some supervised alone time care of The City of New York, but it seems to me that his actions were provoked -- at least in part by Mr. Moore's actions, if not merely by stupidity and hate -- so isn't this a case of matching sets of assholes, sort of like the dual penalties during an NFL game that offset one another? Shouldn't both parties be responsible, at least for their part in this incident?

Clearly there are things about this incident that need to be addressed and investigated; but it seems to me that this episode reminds us that, left to its own devices, and its most base, animal, predatory behavior, mankind is not any friendlier to its own than any other four-legged creature.

And in many ways, as evidenced by this story, mankind sometimes -- often -- seems far worse.