Morning.
We are long overdue for a rant here and unfortunately there was a tragedy this week that deserves our attention.
It should also serve as a warning.
Erin Piacenti, a 32 year old Bank of America vice president, was stabbed and killed in Times Square by Pamela Cisneros of Queens, a mentally disturbed degenerate.
According to US media Piacenti was a new mom who had just returned to work after maternity leave. Days before being murdered she had posted a photo of herself smiling while holding her infant and standing with her husband and wrote how happy she was, the New York Times reported.
The attacker was shot dead by NYPD officers when she charged.
Pretty disgusting and gut wrenching.
And the worst part is, it was entirely senseless, random, and unpredictable. Both victims, an older man with his wife and Piacenti were attacked separately going about their business, stabbed in the stomach.
A spokesperson for the NYPD said that Cisneros had a “Documented mental health history with the NYPD, with one incident in 2019 and another in 2020”.
At some point you have to stop and ask yourself “when is enough enough?” as we look at an unending string of these senseless murders that all have similar common denominators.
The murder of Iryna Zartuska in North Carolina. Her killer is now currently in a four month treatment program said to “restore his mental capacity”
Bethany MaGee, the woman who was doused with gasoline and lit on fire onboard a CTA Blue Line train in Chicago
Lydia Zuñiga, a 65 year old woman who was pushed onto the subway tracks in The Bronx
Wesley LePatner, the 43-year-old senior executive at Blackstone who was killed during a tragic mass shooting at the firm's Manhattan office building on July 28, 2025
While the “mentally unwell” framework seems to be the easy excuse in all of these cases, there is undoubtedly more to what is going on than meets the eye.
The truth is (and many people want to continue to deny this or put their heads in the sand) is that we have truly entered a dystopian future in which we are living within an environment created and permitted to continue by sinister forces.
Since the madness of 2020 I have been yelling from the mountain tops that we do not have to live this way, we are simply choosing to accept it.
I have discussed anarcho tyranny many times before, on the podcast, on Arb Letter, and with my friend Will Tanner of the The American Tribune.
It has been a defining feature of the US since the Obama years and it is an incredibly frustrating environment in which citizens are terrorized by a refusal to enforce laws, the release of repeat criminals, and an ass backwards attitude towards threats. It punishes those who dare to stand up for what is good instead of the criminals perpetrating crimes.
Today we are going to take a look at some of the most telling reactions to this heinous crime as they are a warning to all of us about the social environment the US and other nations have at the moment.
If we can’t agree that the random murder of a new mother in broad daylight in one of New York’s most public places is worth condemning, of what use is discussion and empathy moving forward?
Exploring Society’s Reactions to the Decline
You can do all sort of mental gymnastics and speculate over the state of the woman who did who killed Piacenti. What motivated her, was this racial, etc.
But the more important takeaway is found in some of the reactions to her murder, which rhyme with some of the responses we saw with the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the murder of the United Healthcare CEO by Luigi Mangione, and the murder of Charlie Kirk to name a few (although you generally see the reactions across all of the events I just walked you through above).
There are two core pieces to this.
First, the responses and reactions of people who are shocked by what happened.
I have noticed something on my feeds this week. Corporate normies, New Yorkers, and social media influencers are particularly up in arms about this murder. It is receiving a higher amount of attention than other cases. Why?
Well for starters, it kind of hits home. Successful Ivy League educated women minding her own business, here with her family one moment, gone the next. For literally no reason at all.
It reminded me of a trend I noticed on Twitter/X years ago after BLM (and I shared it on here). I had posted something about avoiding NYC and other major shitholes around the time a woman was literally set on fire and burned to death on a subway and it got tremendous backlash from the normie corporate crowd on X with people saying things like:
“Conservatives are so scared of the city”
“That’s just the big city man, what are a pussy!”
It had simultaneously become a big meme/stereotype online.
This attitude (belittling the very real threats in major metropolis centers nowadays) is two things:
Genuinely dumb people who have zero situational awareness or the survival instincts of a do-do bird
People who KNOW cities have become less safe/unpredictable and are projecting their insecurity about that onto you in the form of hyperbolic sarcastic claims. They don’t like when you highlight the problem.
Look at Erin Piacenti. An excellent resume, good job, mother, and wife who was likely just walking to or from the office and she became a target. She wasn’t engaging in a protest in the streets, picking a fight with someone, or at a major political rally turning violent.
Iryna Zarutska was sitting on a train minding her own business when her throat was slit.
It can happen to anybody at any time.
There’s a reason why I don’t honk at people randomly, respond to homeless/vagrants, or engage in people picking fights, you truly never know what can happen these days. Some people have absolutely nothing to lose. There’s a reason I carry anywhere but my immediate neighborhood and am constantly scanning when my family is in public.
You cannot be too careful these days, and even then, you are simply doing all you can to avoid these types of events.
What I can’t stand is the people treating this like a one off event.
This shit has been happening for years all across the US and the world because we’ve grown soft. We stopped saying no. We’ve accepted more and more ridiculous political ploys, social initiatives, and excuses for this type of behavior.
Defunding police, defunding or shutting down facilities and centers for the mentally unwell, allowing local courts and legal systems to not punish the people comitting these crimes.
And then you have the support, mocking, and justification from the demonic goblins who find a way to encourage or celebrate this kind of wanton violence, and make no mistake they want you dead because you represent a threat to their ideology/politics or because they find a way to categorize you as an “other”.
The Rise in Progressive Extremism
One of the most shocking pieces of this event was the reaction of those who appeared to be celebrating and reveling in the death of Erin Piacenti.
In the hours after filmmaker Lexi Alexander who is best known for directing Green Street Hooligans and Punisher: War Zone, celebrated Piacenti’s death online. She shared a meme depicting the Bat Signal replaced with the face of Luigi Mangione, the man who murdered UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson.
Members of the DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) and the Pro Palestinian camp are out in droves mocking the death of Erin online.
You can have several theories on this behavior and why it is on the rise. Obviously there is an element of rage bait/edginess to it.
People think it’s cute or funny to take the controversial opinion that the poor women deserved getting murdered. I think there is a significant element of immaturity involved in many of the examples. The people commenting cruel and disgusting things about Piacenti (or Trump or Kirk or whoever) have nothing in their lives. They don’t have children or family or even healthy functional relationships in their life.
It’s also worth noting for all of you who work in corporate, that this vein of anti capitalism and anti corporate anger is growing quickly.
This point in particular (and the broader departure from healthy nationalist/ family/social dynamics) is worth highlighting given it is popping up all across society right now:
Antinatalist/extreme feminism sentiment online against having children to the point of lashing out at those who do
The remarkable social reactions to the Lindsay Clancy case in which a woman murdered her children. There are 3 women on the jury and 9 men, 2 of the women are dragging the case out
A 2-year-old child just died in a domestic homicide in Frankfort Illinois where the child's mother was hospitalized after killing the child and then hurting herself
Calls and support for violence against politicians, figureheads, and company CEOs, an anti corporate/capitalism theme expanding across the US as young people embrace socialism
The blending of global political issues and race/class (Free Palestine, Anti Trump, Anti law enforcement/ICE sentiment)
Mass immigration and changing local politics because of it
These progressive/socialist/anarchist goblins are everywhere now. They hate good things. They are the dysfunctional offspring of radical political movements that are inherently incompatible with a healthy functioning society and they are everywhere now.
They have significant inner pain and so they lash out and project that as a coping mechanism. It is a cry for attention.
The people mocking the death of Piacenti hate everything good and love their flags in their bios and screen names to show everyone how virtuous and progressive they are. They don’t care that she was a new mother. That her husband is now without a wife and her family without a daughter. They are brainless demon NPCs that relish in that extreme pain and injustice.
It is evil.
Simultaneously there is a LARPING aspect to this as well. When these lunatics commit these violent acts, commenters and supporters feel like THEY are somehow involved or that it vindicates their own demented belief systems. They think the violence is a warning to their ideological opponents and they feel big/strong when they condone it or support it online, as if they themselves were the ones perpetrating the violence.
Ironically they’d be the first to shit themselves if someone kicked their own door in.
The loss of humanity recently is really the jarring part for me.
This could of been any of our wives or girlfriends. Imagine, you are sitting at home or in your office working and you get a phone call informing you that your significant other has been stabbed in the stomach and killed by a psychotic 300 pound piece of shit.
Gone, just like that.
If you’ve been paying attention there’s an incredibly devious ploy at play all across Western countries. Based chads who read Arb Letter get it. Friends and family of yours may “get it”. But far too many people out there, still do not get it or worse, they intentionally choose to play dumb because they think it makes them better people.
The problem is this suicidal empathy weaponizes your good intent and innocence and turns you into a sheep, ready to be preyed upon by people who don’t give a shit:
Let in all immigrants in or you are a bad person!
Pay your taxes for welfare/snap/EBT, those people need it!
Those criminals are just mentally unwell, they’re still people!
Even though she stabbed someone they shouldn’t kill her!
Everyone deserves a second, third, fourth, and fifteenth chance!
He broke into your home and killed your family because he was hungry!
I don’t know about you, but the pendulum swung way too far in the lenient direction the last 20 years and we are long overdue for an extreme dial back in the amount of tolerance and empathy we need to be having.
There are actually people online trying to argue that the woman who stabbed Piacenti shouldn’t have been shot. They came with the classic argument of “why didn’t they disarm her or shoot her hands!” highlighting their complete ignorance on firearms, tactics, or situations of life and death.
But there’s another component at play in the absurd idea that she didn’t deserve being shot after stabbing too people. Of course she did lol.
What are we even talking about here?
Since when did an utter lack of consequences for behavior (in this case violent behavior) become so commonplace?
The answer sits at WHO the perpetrator is.
During BLM and Antifa’s riots across the US, there were probably nightly situations in which deadly force would have been appropriate to stop violent rioters and looters but of course local governments and agencies held off for the most part for fear of further igniting tensions or media backlash. Kyle Rittenhouse though?
The same lunatics defending the woman in Times Square would have cheered gleefully if Rittenhouse got curb stomped by a crowd or when Charlie Kirk bled out on a live stream. These people are sick and you need to realize that. They are online saying that Piacenti deserved it because she worked a corporate job and was White.
Imagine?
What Do You Do?
With all of the that, the question becomes “what can you really do” in this environment.
There’s many reasons I decided to leave New York City but the biggest catalyst was when my first son was on the way. NYC post covid was an entirely different world than it was when I was in my young 20’s from the 2015 to 2020 period.
I was jumped in the city, i knew countless others who were victims of crimes, and the general sense of lawlessness permeated through all corners. New York City is not unique in this change that has swept across most big blue cities in the US and abroad.
At the end of the day you need to have a practical conversation with yourself, your partner, wife, etc.
Do you want to live in areas where this type of behavior (Crime, lawlessness, mental illness, etc.) is allowed to go on entirely unchecked? Many times it’s not simply unchecked it is facilitated and allowed to continue. How many times have the perpetrators of these crimes been 10x or more former criminals?
They are known problems and nobody does a thing about them, they let them continue to terrorize good people and then when they are charged or arrested, they get to use the same progressive political excuses to avoid any meaningful consequences (race, socio economic status, mental illness etc.).
I’m not raising my kids in an environment like that and I don’t want to spend my time there either, regardless of how “low” you think the chances are YOU ever become a victim. Is it worth it?
Geography, to some extent, is still your best friend in times like the ones we find ourselves in. There’s a reason safe areas/towns/cities are more expensive to live in and housing demand is through the roof in these areas.
You are quite literally insulating yourself from bug people and mongoloid NPCs, who in many cases have been programmed by the media from birth to hate you.
Besides WHERE you choose to spend your time another major way to counter all of this is your mindset.
The world is a crazy fucking place right now and if you deny that or act like that’s “an exaggeration” all you are doing is choosing to live in la la land.
Additionally, and perhaps more importantly, you are doing yourself a disservice that could end up costing you or someone you love. It pays to have situational awareness, to stereotype, and to play it safe.
Those things can keep you alive.
The time for giving situations, strangers, and environments the benefit of the doubt is long gone. This isn’t the country your parents grew up in and the inmates are unfortunately running the asylum.
If we continue to tolerate the systems, groups, and people that excuse, permit, and capitalize on these types of events, it will become the norm and eventually it will impact all of us first hand.
All of this really begs the question.
Can we live alongside people that encourage and mock the taking of innocent life in the name of their political ideology?
I don’t think so.
I don’t talk about religion here much but and my faith is really a personal thing to me. But I can assure you it had strengthened immensely in the last 5 years simply because I have seen real evil in this world. If there is darkness there must be light and I know that this is a great spiritual battle we find ourselves in.
Hope the rest of the week is solid for you guys. If you want to help Erin’s daughter and husband a GoFundMe has been set up HERE.
Keep Erin and her family in your thoughts this week. Can’t imagine dealing with something like this.
You can find a brief financial/global news round up at the end of today’s article. We will be on Tuesday with a new markets deep dive with new stock picks and thoughts on the what September and October will hold for us.
Andy
Financial/Global News Headlines Before the Weekend
Rate hike odds have climbed substantially this week, with Polymarket odds now sitting at about 50% for a 25bps increase in September. You can view the odds here.
This shift has probably been driven largely by renewed inflation concerns, stubbornly high energy prices, and the increasingly hawkish tone from the Fed. Going to be an interesting two days of trading.
Trump is reportedly holding private discussions with senior aides about potentially declaring the Iran war over (WSJ)
The Robinhood Chain 24 hour DEX volume has hit $2.67 billion, which marks a new all-time high (Whale Insider/Arbdata)
AVGO 0.00%↑ Broadcom was up Wednesday in trading (softened now) with 86% revenue growth the past quarter, Morgan Stanley has boosted their target
Nvidia director Mark Stevens has filed to sell 5 million shares worth roughly $1,090,000,000 (Polymarket Money)
A shooting at a Minneapolis apartment building left two victims and the suspected gunman dead and five others wounded, including two police officers
Appreciate you and your commentary. Anarcho-tyranny is exactly right! The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing, so thank you for using your platform to do something. Don't back down. Never back down. Hold the line.
Truly is a wild world. Stay walking in the armor of God (Eph 6: 10-20; and especially v12). Keep up the great work