Paranoia strikes deep The strangulation homicide of Jordan Neely, Michael Jackson impersonator, on a New York City subway has prompted a flurry of commentary. Neely’s race and that of his killer is familiar. What’s out of the ordinary is that his assailant was not a cop and did not use a gun. Also familiar is the judgment by law enforcement officials (for now) that a homicide of a black man is not necessarily a murder. The assailant has not been charged. “Barack freaking Obama would not be allowed to walk away after choking a homeless white man to death on the subway,” rages Elie Mystal at The Nation. Poverty, homelessness and mental illness in the richest nation on earth are all accomplices, as are the bystanders who remained bystanders as they watched (reportedly) a former Marine choke the life out of Neely for behaving erratically. There is a forest here, not just trees. The string of Americans killed lately over mundane, nonthreatening actions, for being in the wrong place at the wrong time, should unsettle us all. But it is the outgrowth of paranoia that’s been cultivated. Since the 1980s and earlier, unreasoning fear of the “other” has been cultivated and marketed. There was the moral panic over rumors of ritual Satanic abuse at day care centers. There was the repressed memory syndrome fad. There was “stranger danger.” The response of parents fearful of their children being abducted was to have them photographed and fingerprinted at mall clinics designed more…