People have long lamented “bystander apathy,” as we make a motto of “See something, say something!” Yet it now appears the powers-that-be are demanding victim apathy.

Of course, couple this with defunding and handcuffing the police, and the population will be held hostage by criminals until people plead for security — and they may accept it even at the expense of liberty.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson reported on the victimizer-over-victim inversion of reality Thursday evening, warning that “self-defense is becoming illegal.” The commentator related a number of relatively recent cases in which apparently good people who defended themselves were treated as offenders — with perhaps the most shocking being the plight of a brave firefighter named Anthony Santi.

Introducing the topic, Carlson stated that it “used to be before liberals embraced authoritarianism that they would talk a lot about rights. Your right, my right. Everything was a right, a right to health care, Miranda rights. You couldn’t debate whether those were rights or not.”

But, he continued, “the most basic human right of all” is “the right of self-defense…. If you can’t defend yourself, you can’t defend your family and your property, you don’t have any rights at all. You’re a slave by definition.”

Carlson then illustrated our descent into such slavery. Starting with the Santi incident, which occurred around 2 p.m. on October 6 at a gas station in Missouri, he stated:

A 23-year-old felon called Ja’Von Taylor, who had a long criminal record of convictions — for armed robbery, for example — began threatening a female clerk, apparently because the gas station didn’t carry the kind of cigars that he wanted.

That’s when … Santi, who was inside, decided to step in. He told Ja’Von Taylor to leave the store. Well, in response to that, Taylor began threatening him and then ran toward his SUV outside. Santi followed him outside because he suspected that Ja’Von Taylor would retrieve a gun from the car, and that’s exactly what he did. Ja’Von Taylor pulled an illegal handgun with an extended magazine from his SUV.

Santi, not wanting to get shot, put Taylor in a headlock, and that’s when Ja’Von Taylor handed the gun to his girlfriend, and his girlfriend shot the unarmed fireman in the back, killing him.

…So, there’s no debate about what happened here. And yet the local social justice D.A., Jean Peters Baker, refused to press charges against the person who killed the firefighter. Now, why? Well, there may have been a political component, and we know that because online BLM activists immediately celebrated the killing on racial grounds. Ja’Von Taylor is black, Anthony Santi was white. That was enough for them. They’re glad he’s dead.

I checked some other sources on the Santi case, and Carlson’s portrayal appears essentially accurate. Taylor does face a federal firearms violation, but neither he nor his girlfriend (who authorities won’t name) will face murder or manslaughter charges. A KMBC 9 news segment on the incident is below.

Ironically, some legal experts claim this is a gray-area case because a jury might’ve concluded Taylor’s girlfriend acted in self-defense, legitimately believing her baby daddy’s life was in danger (she was hysterical). Never mind that Taylor was a felon who possessed the gun illegally, that he started trouble in the store, and that he escalated the situation by retrieving the weapon.

For Santi’s part, it appears he was just restraining Taylor (video here) and had good reason to believe the irrational felon might shoot him if released. Many can’t help but wonder about the local authorities’ response to this case, too:

Had the races been reversed, would the prosecutor still have declined to file murder charges?

Was Santi guilty — of being white, brave, and not a sheep, of not just “saying something” but actually doing something?

Carlson cited other allegedly guilty-of-self-defense cases, too. For example:

Carlson’s whole Thursday segment is below.

While this is all part and parcel of our moral decay, there’s also an underlying message: In “social justice’s” name, we won’t let the police protect you — and don’t you dare protect yourself. If you want security, you’d better embrace our police state. It’s all or nothing, subject.