Daily Inspiration Quote by Bernhard Goetz

Surreal is the perfect word for someone trying to launder agency into atmosphere. Bernhard Goetz, an engineer turned national flashpoint after shooting four Black teenagers on a New York subway in 1984, reaches for a term that doesn’t describe facts so much as dissolve them. “The whole trial seemed surreal” doesn’t argue innocence; it suggests unreality. It’s a soft-focus move, turning a concrete sequence of choices into a dreamlike montage where responsibility feels misplaced, even absurd.

The intent is defensive and strategic: if the proceedings feel “surreal,” then the verdict, the outrage, the media attention, the racial politics all become distortions, not consequences. Goetz isn’t just saying the courtroom was strange; he’s positioning himself as a normal person swept into a bizarre, external spectacle. That’s a familiar American posture in high-profile cases: the individual recast as victim of the system’s overreaction, not its target.

The subtext leans hard on the cultural script of 1980s New York: fear of crime, subway anxiety, and a political climate ready to celebrate vigilantism as rough justice. “Surreal” quietly flattens the moral dimensions of the act and the social realities that made the case combustible. It invites sympathy without asking for reflection.

Context matters: the trial wasn’t merely about what happened in a train car; it was about who gets presumed threatened, who gets presumed dangerous, and how “self-defense” gets narrated through race and urban panic. Calling it surreal is an attempt to step outside that narrative - while benefiting from it.