By Mark W. Fowler

You would be forgiven for not knowing the following names: Jose Alba, Alvin Bragg, and Austin Simon. Let us now become acquainted with them. Alba was an anonymous bodega employee in New York City. Bragg is the district attorney in New York City. And Simon, now deceased, was a serially convicted criminal out on parole for assaulting a police officer. Simon, breaking parole for the last time while assaulting Alba, paid for his indiscretion with his life.

Alba is 61 years old with no criminal record who was working in the bodega. Simon’s girlfriend, nonplussed about her inability to buy her daughter potato chips with a maxed-out debit card, got into a confrontation with Alba. She went home to her significant other, Simon, and returned with him to the bodega to confront Alba. Simon went behind the counter, where he can be seen pushing Alba, manhandling him, and presumably threatening him. The tape is silent.

Alba attempted to leave but Simon restrained him. Alba, fearing for his life, stabbed Simon and killed him. Meanwhile the girlfriend stabbed Alba three times in the back.

Enter Alvin Bragg, the district attorney for New York City. At Bragg’s direction, Alba, for having the effrontery to defend himself, was charged with second-degree murder.

The girlfriend who started all this and who stabbed Alba wasn’t charged with anything.

Welcome to the upside-down world of justice according to progressives. Bragg may be said to be partially responsible for the increase in crime in New York. He favors the usual things progressives are enamored of: No cash bail; no prosecution for low-level property and drug offenses; and reduced armed robbery charges where a dangerous weapon is involved but not does pose a threat. (An interesting concept. What is the purpose of carrying a dangerous weapon to a robbery except to coerce the victim with the implied threat of its use?) Bragg earned his degree at Harvard Law School.

Enter Eric Adams. The former law enforcement officer and mayor of New York City personally brought this matter to light, publicly protesting the treatment of Alba, visiting him in jail, and calling for his release. After significant publicity, Alba’s bond was reduced from $250,000 to $50,000, an amount his employer could meet, and Alba is out on bond. He was forced to cancel a trip to the Dominican Republic, surrender his passport, and wear an ankle bracelet.

The female accomplice of Simon has not been charged. Apparently, assaulting the same man your boyfriend is abusing is not a crime in New York City.

Like George Gascón in Los Angeles, Chesa Boudin in San Francisco, and Kim Foxx in Chicago, Bragg brings a new imagining to the criminal justice system. I.e., perpetrators are poor, downtrodden victims simply trying to eke out a living in the face of a society that is unjust. In this society, those with jobs and property have ill-gotten gains stolen from the poor. Their employment and possessions represent white privilege displacing minority victims from their rightful enjoyment of life.

In this bizarro world, stealing up to $1,000 from Walgreens is simply informally expropriated restitution for years of oppression. Violence and destruction of property are the wages of sin of the established privileged class. If business must be burned to get the public’s attention, so be it. The pain inflicted upon the employees is an incidental cost. You have to break eggs to make omelets.

Ordinarily, the public is not allowed to influence officials in the administration of justice. This is why it is against the law to harass federal judges in an effort to influence their decisions. (Another disruption of the civil order that progressives deign not to punish.) But in this case, public outrage is appropriate and needed. Jose Alba is just one more lowly individual Alvin Bragg needs to crush to enforce order among the masses. Bragg is not about justice at all. He, like all other progressives, is about destroying society to “reimagine” a world they control.

Bizarro world. Good is bad. Bad is good. Don’t question — just shut up and obey.

Mark Fowler is a former attorney and board-certified physician. He can be reached at [email protected].