New GOP Rep Wants ‘More Daniel Pennys’ Decreasing Surplus Population

Humbug, indeed.

Daniel Penny has become quite the MAGA hero after his acquittal for choking Jordan Neely to death on the New York subway. Last Sunday, he was feted in absentia at the New York Young Republican Club’s annual gala.

Multiple speakers praised the former Marine for ably dispatching a homeless, mentally unwell man who probably hadn’t eaten in a while. One of the chokehold cheerleaders was incoming GOP House Rep. Brandon Gill, who called Penny a “great patriot.” (Watch below.)

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We Can’t Give Up On A More Merciful World

“I don’t know about you all, but I think we need a lot more Daniel Pennys in this country,” Gill said to a receptive audience of sociopaths. “Because we have far too many Jordan Neelys.”

The right-wing rhetoric has quickly accelerated from “Daniel Penny was acting in self-defense” to “we need an army of Daniel Pennys to exterminate the undesirables.” Violence is a progressive disease.

Gill is from Texas, so he’s probably never even used public transportation. He’s a 30-year-old investment banker, so he’s probably never been without a warm bed. There’s something perversely on the nose about Gill making these remarks at a black tie gala. He sounds like he might’ve taken the subway afterward in the hopes that he could watch another vigilante kill a homeless person in front of him. That’s entertainment.

Christmas is exactly a week away, and Gill claims he knows the reason for the season. Two years ago, he posted on social media, “Merry CHRISTmas.” Maybe he’s referring to Jesus’s far-right cousin Lenny Christ, but the actual guy from the Bible once described how God would judge people at the end of their lives based on how they’d treated those who had the least:

“For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.” Then they also will answer, saying, “Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?” Then he will answer them, saying, “Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me. And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”

A jury might’ve determined that Penny’s actions were legal. Penny might even receive a thumb’s up from Ayn Rand — although she’d probably argue that Penny shouldn’t kill homeless people for free. However, Jesus has no reported body count.

Bah! Humbug! No, that’s too strong.

Brandon Gill’s appalling declaration that “we have far too many Jordan Neelys” recalls Ebenezer Scrooge’s response to the men collecting for the poor on Christmas Eve:

“Are there no prisons?” asked Scrooge.

“Plenty of prisons,” said the gentleman, laying down the pen again.

“And the Union workhouses?” demanded Scrooge. “Are they still in operation?”

“They are. Still,” returned the gentleman, “I wish I could say they were not.”

“The Treadmill and the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?” said Scrooge.

“Both very busy, sir.”

“Oh! I was afraid, from what you said at first, that something had occurred to stop them in their useful course,” said Scrooge. “I’m very glad to hear it.”

The gentleman reacts strongly to the “union workhouses,” because when Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, they had become a refuge for the elderly, sick, and disabled — likely where Tiny Tim would’ve wound up even if he’d lived. The “treadmill” was an “everlasting staircase” that prisoners walked on for hours each day with straps and weights attached to provide resistance. This was intended to teach the “idle” poor “habits of industry.” It presumably worked wonders for their calf muscles before they died from exhaustion.

The “Poor Law” addressed the problem of “vagrants and beggars,” but a decade prior to A Christmas Carol’s publication, the Poor Law Amendment Act overhauled the system to appeal to voters like Scrooge. The needy could only receive assistance within a workhouse, where the conditions were deliberately miserable so as to discourage people from going. That puts one of Scrooge’s more infamous lines in an even harsher context:

“I wish to be left alone,” said Scrooge. “Since you ask me what I wish, gentlemen, that is my answer. I don’t make merry myself at Christmas and I can’t afford to make idle people merry. I help to support the establishments I have mentioned—they cost enough; and those who are badly off must go there.”

“Many can’t go there; and many would rather die.”

“If they would rather die,” said Scrooge, “they had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Most stage and screen adaptations end here, but in the book, Scrooge adds feebly that he “doesn’t know” that people would rather die than go to the workhouses, even when they are structured by design to ensure just that.

Gill sounds more like Scrooge than humble lowercase Christ. Pre-reformation Scrooge at least is no hypocrite. He offers no Christian charity on the holiday but he doesn’t indulge in Christmas cheer, either. He could have enjoyed a hearty meal and a cozy fire at his nephew Fred’s house, while leaving Bob Cratchit to suffer in silent poverty. Too many people today think they are better than Scrooge simply because they deck the halls, sing carols, and otherwise celebrate their own good fortune while conveniently forgetting those who are without.

Later, Scrooge is an unseen visitor at the Cratchit family Christmas. Their own humanity stokes the dying embers within his soul, but when he expresses concern for Tiny Tim, the Ghost of Christmas Present turns Scrooge’s callous words against him. (Watch below this clip from the George C. Scott version, which first aired on December 17, 1984.)

“If these shadows remain unaltered by the Future, none other of my race,” returned the Ghost, “will find him here. What then? If he be like to die, he had better do it, and decrease the surplus population.”

Scrooge hung his head to hear his own words quoted by the Spirit, and was overcome with penitence and grief.

“Man,” said the Ghost, “if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man’s child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!”

In the 1984 adaptation, Edward Woodard’s Ghost of Christmas Present didn’t hide his contempt for Scrooge. He forces him to confront more of the “surplus population,” those whose Christmas Day is spent without the comfort of even a meager dwelling. “What does it have to do with me?” Scrooge asks, and a furious Present bellows, “Are they not of the human race!”

The 1984 A Christmas Carol is the first one I saw as a child, and I’m still moved whenever I watch the great Roger Rees as Fred defend Christmas to his obstinate uncle. The film keeps most of his speech intact, but his full words from the book are worth repeating and remembering, especially this year when even good people are tempted to harden their hearts.

“There are many things from which I might have derived good, by which I have not profited, I dare say,” returned the nephew. “Christmas among the rest. But I am sure I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round—apart from the veneration due to its sacred name and origin, if anything belonging to it can be apart from that—as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

This Christmas, Brandon Gill showed no charity toward Jordan Neely, who struggled with mental illness and existed in the margins of society. Gill dismisses Neely as merely the “surplus population” that belongs in either the prison or the grave, but he was part of the human race.

Marley’s ghost tells Scrooge, “Why did I walk through crowds of fellow-beings with my eyes turned down, and never raise them to that blessed Star which led the Wise Men to a poor abode! Were there no poor homes to which its light would have conducted me!” No compassionate light guides Gill, who puts a performative CHRIST in Christmas but remains an irredeemable Scrooge at heart.