When Daniel Penny turned himself over to police on May 12, 2023, after the Manhattan district attorney’s office announced its decision to charge him with manslaughter, photographs of his perp walk showed Penny looming like a giant over the two New York Police Department detectives who escorted him down the steps of the 5th Precinct to his arraignment. Even in handcuffs, Penny was a foot taller than either of the cops and stood erect while they seemed to scurry. He looked like a Roman statue.

The more you looked at him, the more you realized he looked like a specific Roman statue: the Dying Gaul. Same curly hair, sharp nose, prominent chin, mustache, jawline, everything.

The Dying Gaul is famous as a representation of dignity in defeat. The curly-haired warrior has a mortal wound, but his face is serene. For a while it looked like Daniel Penny would come to symbolize the same thing. His people, the legacy Americans who still believe in old-fashioned virtues like law and order, were a defeated people no less than the barbarian Gauls. White Marines who physically subdue erratic vagrants belong to yesterday’s America, it was thought. Tomorrow’s America belongs to the Jordan Neelys of the world and their sponsors in the Democratic party. ….

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