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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 7, 2025

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Perhaps it's a class thing or it's just that me and everyone around me has somehow filtered out the crazy.

That's the one. Its a class thing AND you've also filtered out crazies.

I worked as a public defender specifically on a domestic violence docket for about six months. EVERY single horror story you can think of, both in terms of loved ones beating on each other (not just spouses, mind!) and false accusations ruining lives are true, and indeed are happening daily.

Yet... I know of literally nobody in my personal circle of immediate friends and family who has had to deal with that situation.

The level of dysfunction required for someone to actually physically beat someone they care about, or to falsely accuse someone of same, is actually QUITE high. But, there's the bottom, lets call it quartile of the population in terms of impulse control who will absolutely pass that threshold at times.

So if you're drawing most of your social circle from the top two quartiles, with some dipping into the third quartile, then by sheer selection effects, you probably won't know anybody who actually ended up arrested and in court for DV-related reasons.

And be happy for that, in Florida at least the Court system is NOT optimized for helping ensure domestic tranquility, it is there to throw down barriers and inflict punishments and it is very heavy-handed when applying both, so it is a very unpleasant system to interact with whether or not you're guilty of what you've been accused of.