FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
Lord, make me an instrument of your peace: where there is hatred, let me sow love; where there is injury, pardon; where there is doubt, faith; where there is despair, hope; where there is darkness, light; where there is sadness, joy. O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console, to be understood as to understand, to be loved as to love. For it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to eternal life. Amen.
User ID: 195
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
11hr ago
Golf also has the advantage of being random. I can run with /u/Walterodim a dozen times, he'll be faster than me every time, he'll only stay with me by holding back. There will never be a day when, just randomly, I'm faster than him for a bit.
Trump looks like vintage Tiger Woods compared to me, but if I joined the scramble group here, I'd probably make a couple good shots, maybe just lucky chips or long putts anyone has a lie percentage chance at. I'm terrible, but at least a couple times a round I'll hit a ball so well that I'm thrilled.
Where in say, weightlifting, I'm always going to deadlift less than my concrete contractor and more than my wife, in golf I'll sometimes get lucky and hit one better than a pro would, and sometimes duff it completely.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
11hr ago
Or because I didn't get traction on it the first time, so I try it again hoping to spark the discussion I want. I, like most commenters, remain fairly sure I have the most brilliant idea underneath.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
12hr ago
Certainly when I read it at 15 or 16, I never would have even considered the possibility of Trump fucking other women on the side as fitting within "loyalty" to his wife, and I don't think Reilly would have either, he was basically conservative in his moral views (most notably at the time reflected in his steroid coverage). Open relationships or "having an understanding" was for the Savage Love column in the back page of The Onion, not the back page of SI.
I don't think there's a fundamental difference at this point between Trump enjoying things rich people like and enjoying things in themselves. But if there is a distinction to be drawn, it's golf. He's been an avid golfer and builder of golf courses for most of his life at this point. The competition, the show off, the social game, all things that are Trumpian. Even his game itself reflects him: Drive for show, putt for dough; that's how he plays.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
13hr ago
I loved this book as a teenager. I loved Rick Reilly in general, I have deep nostalgia for those columns, although I look back on some of his stuff as hackneyed or simply incorrect. I can hardly take credit for just condensing a twenty page chapter into a few bites for the crowd.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
16hr ago
Eh. Bryson isn't really neutral. He's a longtime Trump guy. Close friends with the son, used to be sponsored by the Trump people. This is a step below the Brat edits for "grassroots credibility." This is campaign material, not neutral reporting.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
17hr ago
I've figured out the Derek Jeter parallel!
From 1996-2003, the Yankees won four world series and two other pennants. They had the highest payroll in the game, and were frequently criticized for buying championships. But, Yankees fans protested, Jeter and Posada and Williams and Pettite and Rivera were all farmhands, the Yankees had really developed their way to a championship. Then in 2009, the Yankees incontestably and openly bought a championship, signing big time free agents who lead the way. Still, the Core Four of it all, but it's tough for any fan not to admit some truth to those allegations.
Similarly, right wingers get accused of misogyny all the time. For every policy choice, even if supported by many women, probably for drinking Diet Mountain Dew. I'm used to dismissing it.And normally it's bullshit. But then you see a post like /u/erwgv3g34 above, and it is the real honest-to-goodness article, self-justifying its own hatred by the Law of Merited Impossibility. The wokie says: "Nobody is getting fired for not going to a mandatory Diversity training, that isn't happening; but the fact that you're so upset about this shows how important a Mandatory Diversity Training is, in fact you probably shouldn't be employed if you find that objectionable." This comment says: "Women are too stupid, cow-like herd animals, to understand politics. You can tell because when they try to do politics, they don't understand how stupid and cow-like they are." It's rare to see it in the wild, because typically online the demand for crazed misogyny outstrips the supply, but it's tough to deny on that one.
I'm just going to throw a bunch of quotes from the excellent Rick Reilly book Who's Your Caddy? in here. In the book, Sports Illustrated off-beat journalist Reilly set out to caddy for various people. He caddied at the Masters, he caddied for a blind guy, he caddied for Jon Daly, he caddied on the LPGA tour, and he caddied for Donald Trump. The book came out in 2007, so we're talking long before Trump Derangement Syndrome; long before anyone would have been offended by Trump's politics because no one at the time took Trump all that seriously. This isn't just pre-escalator, this is pre-birtherism because Barack Obama was still a longshot to run for President when they were on the course and nobody gave a shit where he was born, the Capitol Steps were still doing Hillary Clinton's I'm Gonna Run to the tune of Pink's I'm Coming Out because Hillary was the inevitable 2008 nominee for the Democrats. It was Her Turn. Democratic vs Republican interplay was Liz Lemon snipping at Jack Donaghy and Jack rolling his eyes at her. Reilly was just writing about this cooky rich celebrity he played golf with once.
I've condensed a lot of line breaks and paragraphs to make it easier in this format. Some emphasis added for money quotes.
The introduction to the chapter...
You do not interview Trump. You just try to be in the Doppler radar when his tornado blows by and sucks you in. You needn't even ask a question. Trump will take over from here. Your job is to simply try to keep your hat on and your Bic working. At the end of a 12-hour day, you will be spit out of a black stretch limo on a Manhattan street corner, unsure of what you've seen, your notes scattered, your mind severely Trumped. So you try to piece it together. Was it real? Any of it? All of it? So many lies. So many truths. So much bullshit. So much beauty. It all rolls into one colossal Trumpalooza.
While Reilly is around, Trump shoots a commercial for McDonald's:
MCDONALD'S IS HERE to film a commercial. All Trump has to do is eat a Big and Tasty and attest to its deliciousness. For this he gets $1 million. If it runs more than 3 months, he gets another million. But this is not what Trump is excited about. He's excited about the little yellow card McDonald's has given him. “With this little baby, I can eat McDonald's free the rest of my life!” he announces. “They say there are only nine in the world, Baby. Michael Jordan's got one, too. So I can be totally tapped out, fucking broke, living on the street, and still be able to eat!” Thank God. We won't have to throw a telethon.
Trump does not quite understand the concept of the book Reilly is writing...
PROBLEM IS, TRUMP wants you to play instead of caddy. He seems to want this more than anything else in the world. He's already got his caddy, Billy, ready to go—“Best caddy in the world!” he declares—and since the EuroBabe and Tiffany don't even play, Trump would have to play by himself and he just won't have that under any circumstances. You don't get the feeling Trump is a guy who requires a lot of personal quiet time. “But, see, the book isn't about playing, it's about caddying for—” “Did I tell you Bruce Willis is a member here? And Sylvester Stallone. And Rudy Giuliani. And . . .” So that settles that. “Any chance maybe you'd have a game tomorrow I could caddy for?” I ask. Trump stops and looks me square in the eye. “Believe me,” Trump says. “One day of me is enough.”
Reilly goes into the history of Trump's golf courses, hitting some highlights...
This story is absolutely true, though: When architect Jim Fazio, slightly less famous brother of architect Tom Fazio, was finished looking at the property and drawing up plans, he called Trump and said, “We can have 16 great holes.” “Whaddya mean, 16?” Trump says. Fazio explained that there wasn't enough land for the first two holes he wanted to build. “Why not?!” Trump bellowed. “Because people's houses are there,” Fazio said. Trump told Fazio to hold, picked up the phone, called somebody, and bought the houses. Fazio got his holes. You think Fazio doesn't know how to play his Trump?
My aunt asked me the other day, if Trump invited me to lunch would I say yes. And I said absolutely, and you're an idiot if you say no. I'm absolutely convinced that on a minor policy matter, something Trump has never really thought about or understood, anyone with a strong verbal IQ has at least a 50/50 shot at convincing Trump to take a stand on anything. I don't think I could change his position on Abortion, or Ukraine, but I could totally get Trump to try to federally ban that annoying voice at self checkout.
Trump also uses building his course as an opportunity to sneak advantages...
Building your own course must be more fun than being locked in a room with the Rockettes and a box of Lady Gillettes. For instance, Trump insisted the range be built between the 9th green and the 10th tee. See, when he's playing badly, he likes to go to the range and figure out what's wrong. It's quite illegal, but what are you gonna do? He's Da Boss.
A bunch of softball anecdotes I just thought were fun...
TRUMP REALLY DOES love golf. When asked to list the top 10 things that helped him climb his way back from $9.2 billion in debt in the 1990s—the largest financial comeback in history, according to the Guinness Book of World Records—Trump's No. 1 was: “Play golf.” “It helped me relax and concentrate,” he once wrote. “It took my mind off my troubles.” See, at that point in his life, he didn't get the free cheeseburgers.
“Trump let the LPGA host the ADT Championship there in November 2001. This is the tour wrapup for the top 30 women, with a $1 million purse. And, boy, did Trump put on the dog for them. And, boy, did the players put out the snarls for Trump. “It was awful,” says LPGA player Nancy Scranton. “It was tricked up. It was contrived, ridiculous, and stupid. He kept going around, pestering everybody: ‘Is this the toughest course you've ever played? Is it? Is it?' But, I have to admit, Mar-a-Lago was beautiful and Donald was a wonderful host.” Trump decreed that some of the mounds in front of lakes be mowed down to the height of cue balls so that short shots would all roll right back into the water. Trump was like a little boy melting ants with a magnifying glass. “I kept going around asking them, ‘When was the last time you scored this high?' And they kept saying, ‘When I was nine.' " During the first round, Trump walked right down the middle of the fairway with the players, who would sooner be followed by wolf-whistling construction workers than Trump. “You'd think he'd have better things to do,” grumbled Annika Sorenstam, the tour's best player. When Sorenstam tripled the first hole, Trump said, “Oops, looks like she just threw up on herself. You know, we could make this course more difficult if we wanted.”
Then there was the whole prison incident. According to written reports, inmates at the Palm Beach County Criminal Justice Complex, which is close to Trump International's third hole, got word that women pros were just across the way. So they started screaming things that might make hockey players blush, much less LPGA players. “That never happened!” Trump yells. “Never happened! That was put out by my enemies. The wall of the prison that faces the course doesn't even have windows!” Still, he put up a huge row of 200 palm trees to serve as a barrier. Cost him $1 million, which is a lot for something that never happened.
JUST A WORD on Trump's hair. There are those who do not like Trump's hair. My softball buddy, B-Square, asks, “The guy is worth billions, so all I can figure is that he must want to look like that!” And I admit, when I asked Trump to let me caddy for him, I was thinking maybe we would need a separate caddy for the hair. Up close, though, it is much less threatening and possibly real. It resembles red cotton candy. It seems to have been spun off a wheel and then fired. Maybe it's fiberglass. Remember making model cars when you were a kid, how the glue froze in cool, solid wisps? That is Trump's hair. I cannot imagine the teams of artists it must take to do his hair each day, but I know they must arrive by the busload. Somehow they've managed to make his hair look like the moment when you open a bottle of aspirin and you can't quite get the cotton ball out and it only comes partially out, all teased. That's Trump's hair.
And something Reilly got completely wrong in retrospect...
YOU EXPECT TRUMP to be a cad. You expect him to have a new woman every weekend. But this is four years now I've seen him at fights and Super Bowls and galas with the same woman—the zipper-busting Miss Melania. Here's a guy who owns a piece of the Miss Universe pageant and the Miss USA pageant—“I bought Miss Universe for $10 million,” he says, unsolicited. “I've already made $100 million in ad revenue on it”—and yet he stays with the same woman. Why isn't that in Guinness? True, staying faithful to Miss Melania is like staying true to your Ferrari Testarossa, but still, think of the opportunities!”
And now, finally, to the actual game of golf they played together...
TRUMP PLAYS GOLF fast. And well. We're on 11 and he still hasn't missed a fairway. OK, there's been a stray mulligan or two, but mostly he hits it low and far and straight. On 3, he drove it 310 yards, I kid you not. Three hundred and 10. Man is 56 years old. Doesn't matter how much hellajack you've got, you can't buy a golf game. He owns the joint so he parks the cart all the places he wants the rest of the world not to—edges of greens and backs of tee boxes. This makes for a very fast round. We will end up going 18 in three hours and 15 minutes and that includes stopping often to harangue the stonemason, the path paver, and the greenskeeper to redo the bricks, or retrim a tree, or repave a path that is not absolutely, immaculately Trumpalicious.
Reilly immediately admits that Trump is good, but he does take mulligans consistently. Which is no big deal. There's also something inherently Trumpian about parking the car where you aren't supposed to park the cart. If Barack Obama owned a golf course, he would follow the rules more closely than anyone, would agonize over making sure he never failed to repair a single divot. This is both a source of Trump's flaws, and a signal example of his basic humanity.
More on Trump's golf game and tendency to tell absolute whoppers...
DID YOU EVER have a friend in high school who would just tell you the most outrageous lies? Stuff like, “You know, my aunt is Farrah Fawcett.” And you and your buddies give him a wedgie because you know it will turn out like it always turns out, which is that his aunt once had a friend who k“new the lady who cut Farrah Fawcett's hair. Well, Trump is that kid, constantly making you write outrageous, stupid, impossible things he says into your notebook, accompanied by a scrawled CHECK THIS!!! But then—against all logic—most of them turn out to be true!
HERE'S ONE: TRUMP says he won the club championship at Trump International. Now he is a very good player. He ain't no 3, as he's been listed in business magazines, but he's a good 6, and at 7, I'd take him all day for a partner, loser sweeps the streets of Baghdad for a year. I'd even say he is the best-playing billionaire I know. However, I just don't see him winning a club championship. But damned if it didn't check out: In the first year of the club, he won the match-play championship. The guy who lost to him in the final said, “I thought I should let him win the first year. I didn't want him to raise my dues.” Stuff like that torques Trump's rump. If he wins, they let him. If he loses, he's a big blowhard. “Guys call me all the time, they want to come beat me at golf. So I'll bet some guy and he'll beat me and he'll go back to his club and brag to everybody about how he whipped Donald Trump's ass. What he doesn't mention is the five shots a side I gave him.”
On Trump the man...
YOU CAN SEE why his ex-wives still sort of like him. The man is flamboyant, creative, energetic, unpredictable, fun, and nuts. I mean, yes, everybody over the age of six sees how attention-needy he is, how full of himself he is, how if the conversation strays from him for 15 seconds, he lassoes it back around to himself. But you can also tell that at least half of him knows it and is chuckling right along with you. Yeah, he requires a lot of attention, but at least there's a lot to attend to. He's Big and Tasty—a complete whopper of a personality.
And the section on Trump's scoring fibs, tendency to give himself puts, chip ins, mulligans, best balls, and outright lies on his scorecard.
WHEN A MAN exaggerates, stretches, and twists the truth into origami every other 30 seconds, you're pretty much expecting him to cheat like a monkey in golf. So, yeah, Trump fudges. And he pencils. And he smudges. But at least he does it openly. Nothing worse than a sneak cheat. For instance, on the par-5 16th hole, I hit it close for a birdie 4 and he was still off the green, pin high in 4. So he says, “Great birdie! This is good, right?” and scoops it up with his wedge. First guy in history to give himself a chip-in. But I know a lot of big-time, seven-figure-a-year businessmen who do this. You think messing with the bottom line stops in the budget reports? It's like Atlanta Journal-Constitution sports columnist Steve Hummer once wrote: “According to a recent survey, 82 percent of corporate execs cheat at golf. It can also be extrapolated that 18 percent cheat on surveys.” What are you going to do, call the marshal? It's his course, his club, his world. And besides, he fixed my driver swing. “You're coming over the top instead of under with that driver“ he said. “Try it like this . . .” and he repaired my monster driver slice, just like that. What's funny is what Trump does vs. what Trump says. “Make sure you write that I play my first ball,” he says. “You don't get a second ball in this life.” And that's true, except for on 1 and 13 and 17. And he also says, “I don't like to take putts. That's not a true reflection of a man's score.” And that's true, too, except for the putts he took on every other hole, plus the occasional chip-in, and, of course, the one time he said, “I made a 5, but give me a 4. I've got to take at least one newspaper 4 today.” Again, at least he's out front with it. He shot 36-39–75. And thus you see how Trump's game is 80-proof. Not that he wasn't good enough to beat me. I shot 45-38–83. Trump acted like I had just shot 59 at Pine Valley. “I'm just so damn impressed!” he hollered. “You are the King! The way you hit it, you really ought to consider the Senior Tour!” He is saying this as I'm paying him the $10 I lost to him.
And wrapping up...
Loved Trump. Loved the lies. Loved the truths. Loved the bullshit. Loved the beauty. But, as I collapse into a hotel room that is finally, blissfully quiet, I decide Trump was absolutely truthful about one thing. One day is enough, Baby.
I recently bought a discount copy of Reilly's later book, all about Trump and golf, Commander in Cheat. It looks to be pure TDS, but my mother has loved Reilly since I was a kid and hated Trump since he stiffed a friend of the family on work at one of his AC casinos, so I thought it would make a fine beach read for her. Still, it's sad to see how Reilly wrote about Trump in 2007, and how he talks about him now. How did we all end up here? Why is it that quirky sports journalism pays so badly, with Sports Illustrated either dead or a shadow of itself, so that a guy like Reilly who was a legend is stuck doing third rate punditry for cash? Why is it that a jovial guy like Trump, whose life has been nothing but blessed, is so angry all the time? Why is our entire politics built around Trump, a guy who is mostly just himself? What decisions did we all make that got us from there to here?
I tend to take Reilly's 2007 assessment more seriously as journalism: Trump is an excellent golfer, a fun guy, and an inveterate but generally harmless liar. Larger than life, blustering, cartoonish and buffoonish, more human than most anyone.
The whole book is on LibGen, where I just downloaded it to make looking things up easier than going back to my parents' house and finding my childhood copy, I highly recommend it for a light summer read.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
1d ago
Does she excel? I think she's at best bang average in those softball interviews. She's getting hugely over hyped by Dems amazed at seeing basic competitive blocking and tackling.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
1d ago
Ah see I just remember the Bachelor party episode as one of the more cutting views of PMC open relationship/Hall pass stuff.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
1d ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Benjamin_Netanyahu?wprov=sfti1
I'm not going to pretend I have a deep understanding of Israeli politics, but his coalition has already threatened to break up despite the war, and prior to October there was a consistent drumbeat in the newspapers of stories on his corruption trials closing in. Maybe it's foreign overreactions, but it seems convenient to suddenly be saying that you don't switch horses midstream.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
1d ago
I wasn't having sex with anyone in 2004, but in media around that time it was treated as something of a new trend to fully remove pubic hair. There's a roughly contemporaneous episode of Sex and the City that involves Carrie goes to get waxed in LA (rather than her home in NYC) and is horrified that rather than a neat trim the waxer removes all her hair. And these were, reasonably, sluts.
Now I think even sexually staid women and even men do at least some pubic grooming.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
1d ago
Watched it a while back. I don't remember there being a threesome episode though?
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
1d ago
I agree. If any Republicans are actually worried about people suddenly recognizing Trump's profound weirdness and caring, I don't see why it would suddenly matter.
My wife and I are streaming old episodes of Entourage at night. And two things stand out to me. First of all that every joke terrible movie within the show, notably Aquaman and Medellin has actually been made, Medellin became Narcos in real life. And both were exactly as stupid and terrible as they were in the show. Entourage was itself an aggressively stupid bro-show, and we live in a world that show considers a comical level of stupidity.
Second, it's amazing how sexual mores changed in the time from 2004, to even when I was in undergrad, to today. The characters routinely pay for sex, something I would have found disgusting to even contemplate, let alone hear one of my bros talk about openly. On the other hand, there's a debate about period sex, which we found to be a normal activity, and after a long layoff his girlfriend fobs him off with a period as an excuse, which would never fly for us. There's a whole episode built around threesomes, which are still a little risque, but hardly a big deal today.
We are all, in some ways at least, living in a world dumber and more disgusting than the most disgusting bros of 2004. And we're a nice married couple who own a home and work professional jobs in the suburbs.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
Why do you think that the goals of either Netanyahu or the Republicans involve ending the war?
Netanyahu will almost certainly lose power, and quite possibly go to jail, as soon as the war is over. Republicans draw political advantage from supporting Israel, not from Israel being at peace. When Israel is at peace and doing well, there's not much public supporting of Israel to be done.
There's also a subset of Evangelicals who hold a prophetic belief that Israel's wars are a signal of the end times, and aren't really interested in "peace in the middle east" because that is against prophecy and therefore some mix of undesirable and categorically impossible anyway.
Republicans, and many Democrats, want to show allegiance and friendship to Israel. Part of the Wilsonian problem of American foreign policy has been that a liberal America has no friends, other than perhaps to some extent England and Australia. It can't have friends and have morality, friendship means nothing if it doesn't super-cede morality to at least some degree. If I treat you only according to ethics when you're right and when you're wrong, you're not my friend, you're just another node in the matrix. You're a friend when I'm by your side, right or wrong. If I'm there when you're wrong you can count on me. It's precisely because Netanyahu is unpopular, and the war has gone from punitive expedition to mowing the grass to genocidal farce, that supporting it has so much value for the Zionist congress critter. He can bend the knee so much farther when Israel is already in the gutter.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
That sucks bro. Being single sounds awful.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
Perhaps there's some parallel in Derek Jeter's life you could use as a metaphor.
I'm flattered you pay this much attention to my comments.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
Data point: one of my more MAGA baptist friends told me the other day that he found the whole anger about the switcheroo confusing and lame, because the conservatives were all screaming they had to switch from Biden and then the Democrats did and the Republicans were like NO FAIR.
But the Brat stuff will wear out. The excitement is overrated. I was guilty of saying it was over after the assassination, but I just don't think the fundamentals of the race have changed that much. Trump is in the lead, with about a 2/3 chance of winning the election in November. Tons of stuff will happen in between now and then, but that's what a 2/3 chance looks like.
I think Kamala was a good move for the Dems, but more to get the good vibes going for the undercard. Kamala is here to keep the loss to respectable limit. She's much more likely to pull off the Popular Vote and hold at least one house of congress. That will materially limit what Trump can accomplish, and help keep the #Resistance moving. But I don't think she's going to change the base odds of the race.
As for me personally, I don't hate Kamala, and technically my vote is back in play. I was pretty much certain to vote third party, in that I was more or less morally precluded from voting for either of Trump or Biden. She could persuade me to vote for her, but I doubt she will.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
One of them went and bought an AR “before prices go up.” Not that he hadn’t been thinking about it anyway. But we chat about shooting, so we talked over the details here, too.
Do we work together? I'd been lollygagging on that purchase for years and finally pulled the trigger.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
I love seeing the flip side of the Law of Merited Impossibly coin.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
I suppose pot isn't covered by the qualifier non-criminal anymore is it?
Probably has a large impact! As would tattoo policies. Synergistic with Blue collar demand: CDL drivers and other jobs also need to be clean, and as that field narrows the pay improves.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
The downstream impact of BLM has been that it's hard to find cops. Despite pay and benefits nobody wants a job where you might get murdered or charged with murder.
Responsible non-criminal Blue collar workers have better opportunities than ever, young college grads have been inculcated with a hatred of police.
Recruiting is at crisis levels.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
2d ago
Well, I guess we'll see what happens then. One set of facts about the world will turn out to be correct, but not for years.
FiveHourMarathon
c’è aria di frociaggine
3d ago
Going based on the above, I absolutely resent and reject the notion of @FiveHourMarathon below that those advocating for retaliation in this case are therefore not "principled libertarians"
...
Though I personally am not super attached dogmatically to libertarianism...
So you're not a libertarian, but you feel resentful that you've been labeled as less than a principled libertarian. No doubt you'll also resent not being called an observant Muslim, or an implication that you had a less-than-stellar academic record at the University of Padua.
So let's address one of your examples. I honestly lost a track of who deserved how much tat so I'm just gonna stick with the first one.
Do you know what the best way is to get a child to stop pinching you, thus ensuring no pinching for everybody? Pinch him back just as hard (if not slightly harder), so he understands how it feels (and the precarious dynamics of getting into a pinching fight). No pinchy child has ever thought, "Well I've been pinching this adult all day and he's kindly not retaliated every time even when he could have, so I guess I should just stop pinching him forever. Peace has been achieved for our time."
This assumes that your opponents are the children, while you picture yourself as the adult. This strikes me as wishful thinking. At best, these are two co-equal parties, neither of which has strict escalation dominance. At worst, this scenario is the reverse: a child, tired of being spanked, sees that just this once, his father has bent over to pick something up, and now he has the chance to spank his father and see how he feels getting spanked for a change! Do you think that any father, spanking a child he found to be acting out, has been hit back by the child and thought "Now I understand how it feels, I guess I should stop spanking him, peace has been achieved in our time."
Because this isn't a permanent turning of the tables, it is a momentary advantage to the right. For completely random reasons, for this moment, the right has a limited power to hit back. What scalps have they taken in the process? Not nearly enough to deter their enemies, but enough to lose the moral high ground in the eyes of people who think it is acceptable to make any kind of joke you please. I'm cancellable either way for a party with sufficient surveillance of my life: I've made nigger jokes and I've made jokes about politicians deserving death. Hell, I've made serious philosophical arguments about trans people and justifying the assassination of politicians, call the thought police! I may not be the perfect Libertarian, but I am going to note how people behave.
When the child hits his father, he won't cause his father to change his mind about spankings. He won't inflict enough pain on his father that his father will be deterred from hitting him in the future. What he will do is convince onlookers that his father was probably correct to hit him, even retroactively, because clearly a kid that would hit his parent is acting out and needs to be put in line.
I think the confusion comes from decimation being really really really bad as a punishment. It's intentionally losing 10% of your men, and it's a vicious psychological punishment on the rest. As a result it has this connotation of absolute disaster and came into common usage that way. Much moreso than "losing 10%." It doesn't really make much sense to use it to refer to 10% attrition generally, but rather to a situation in which 10% are lost and the rest are horribly traumatized by guilt.
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