"We have to be vicious just like they are. It's the only thing they understand."

Said President Trump, about the murder of Iryna Zarutska on the train in Charlotte. Trump presents the problem of violence as straightforward, easy to solve quickly if we simply have the will to go hardcore into law and order, with none of the liberal complexity.

Meanwhile, over at The Washington Post, there's "Trump blames Democrats for Charlotte stabbing. Records complicate the story. The case has sharpened partisan divisions about an intractable root of crime: how to treat the seriously mentally ill who pose risks of violence."

Is it really so complicated and intractable? WaPo urges readers to see "nuances" — basically the failure to deal with mental illness.

"The truth is that Iryna had no real choice. If she avoided the seat in front of the Black man, she might look like a racist."

"She had no reason to fear him, after all, because she was sympathetic to the plight of racism in America and even had the words 'Black Lives Matter' and 'I can’t breathe' scrawled on a chalkboard in her room."

Writes Sasha Stone, in "The Girl on the Train/She escaped war in Ukraine only to find herself in the middle of a different kind of war in the United States."

"There's so much criticism of media that hasn't picked up the story, yet it hasn't changed, perhaps because they're sticking to the original judgment that it's a local murder story..."

"... and not every murder gets to be national news. So the question is why some people (the right?) see elements that make it deserve national attention and others (the left?) think that it doesn't. A black man kills a white woman — that alone can't be enough. The woman is beautiful. The woman came from Ukraine. The violence was sudden and random (it could happen to you!)."

I write, prompting ChatGPT to respond to the NY Post column with the headline, "Horrid video of Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska’s slaughter on Charlotte train is met with deafening silence from Dem leaders, media."

ChatGPT's answer can be read here, where you will also see that prompt was my second prompt.

My first prompt was: "I'm seeing this news story and wondering if it's possible that the story is a hoax, with AI generated video. The video is so 'on the nose' to stir up basic fears. Is it being ignored because it's not true?"

The answer was enough to overcome my suspicion: "Surveillance footage was released by Charlotte police showing the stabbing of Iryna Zarutska, a 23-year-old Ukrainian refugee, aboard the Lynx Blue Line light rail in Charlotte on August 22, 2025. She was fatally stabbed by Decarlos Brown Jr., a 34-year-old homeless man with a criminal history. Brown was arrested at the scene and charged with first-degree murder."

ADDED: In case that link to ChatGPT isn't working, here's the text of how it answered the second prompt: