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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   27412 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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Just give police discretion to knock heads around like they used to. A summary judgement followed by public lashing of a sort. Or put them into those public mocking where passers by can throw garbage at them while they’re locked into something. That would end the problem in most cases I would assume.

Just give police their nightsticks back. A poke in the back or a tap on the shins is enough to motivate most people to move along while discouraging the impulse to fight back.

I don’t think that fixes anything.

Well. Maybe it pushes the nonviolent homeless out of the choicest spots on the West Coast. But the fent users go through worse. Public mockery ain’t shit compared to whatever they’re already doing to their bodies. Opioids mean the normal rules of shame and discomfort just…get washed away.

This probably also increases the number of shootings of police. A medieval peasant had zero chance against one or two men-at-arms. A crackhead with access to Austria’s finest export? You never know. Police are already on edge when they confront these guys. There’s no way that raising the prospect of a beating makes them safer.

Maybe it pushes the nonviolent homeless out of the choicest spots on the West Coast.

That's most of what I'm asking for. The takeover of formerly nice public spaces is beyond unacceptable.

Manner Wafferl are dangerous indeed. Im not sure the average cops waistline can take it.

It is extremely clear to me that allowing low-level casual brutality against those the local beat cops deem repeat troublemakers is absolutely critical to keeping societal order.

It’s also merciful to its victims. Many a repeat shoplifter or drunk who likes starting fights might be saved from a lifetime in and out of jail by getting beaten up by the cops a few times as a teen.

Yup. And while we are granting wishes for things that are good but will never happen, Corporal punishment should also be brought back into schools

My school teachers are not trusted to make good judgments. They'd screw up corporal punishment. In a better world we'd have reliable teachers who could correctly determine who needs a paddling. We don't live in that world.

My school teachers are not trusted to make good judgments.

"X" are not trusted to make good judgments is why any variant of corporal punishment/extra bullying/more police brutality doesn't work in person. We intuitively want to do this because through the vast majority of our evolutionary past we lived in small bands with a smaller population than dunbar's number where the discretion of a few enfranchised elders and warriors was a fair, just, and effective way to police our behavior because they could know everyone under their authority as a fully realized person. But while that remains an effective approach even now, in many small agricultural communities, it's indisputably a bad model for policing a city.

Then why have school teachers if their judgement is that poor?

Agreed. All the teachers I know who ever indulged in corporal punishment were assholes, and not very bright assholes to boot. I could tell the majority were malicious.

(This is coming from a place where corporal punishment was nominally illegalized maybe 15 years back?)

The only people who I think ever gave me a spanking for my own good were my own parents.

Unlike almost every other person talking theoretically here, I actually did go to school with corporal punishment. I am not even old this was mid 2000s. I do remember that it was 1) quite good at establishing teacher’s authority 2) pacifying the troublemaker kids into learning a bit or at least not disturbing others and 3) extremely discriminatory. Girls virtually always got a pass, so did the boys with middle class or higher parents. I remember vividly the day when an inspector visiting the class noticed the wooden stick in the corner and remarked to our teacher that the ministry doesn’t approve of this anymore. It disappeared and never came back.

Yup, that absolute confirms my priors

All these ideas fall to the same issue. You can't trust the people with discretion. Do you really trust a high school (or middle or elementary school) principal to decide who is worthy of corporal punishment? Especially given the outside incentives? Beat cops may be better people than the criminals they arrest... but only by a little bit, and they'll be happy to beat up anyone they dislike, who gives them lip, or who gets in their way.

Anecdotally, corporal punishment in (rural) schools was ubiquitous through well after WWII. I'm not going to defend the practice, but there are plenty of family stories of it within living memory.

Family stories? The school I attended had corporal punishment into the late 80s. The teachers who practiced it are still living, and the last cohort of students to experience it are only in their 40s.

ETA: I had those same teachers in later years. They found some creative alternatives to the paddle and the rod once those were banned. I think I might have preferred a quick paddling to the more protracted punishments they used instead.

I'm not sure exactly when it disappeared, but that sounds about right. I know the laws still allowed it in some cases through at least 2000, but I never saw it myself. My parents have stories of it happening.

That’s fine, bring back the lash then. Have judges order public lashings. The effect will be similar, so long as delays in arrest - punishment aren’t too long

middle or elementary school) principal

Yes.

Then you are insufficiently familiar with the breed.

Counterpoint: No.

I'm concerned enough about what school administrators may be imparting to impressionable young children. I don't want them to also have the power to physically punish students for transgressions that will inevitably differ from teacher to teacher.

I have no inclination to hurt my children beyond maybe a light spanking; the thought that some freak might get off on inflicting serious pain on a child, let alone my own, is intolerable.

See, teachers can and do do some bad things. Using corporal punishment for no reason isn’t one of them. Corporal punishment is protected by law in my state and getting schools to use it is… difficult.

I think they are aware of that, and are saying that the juice is worth the squeeze.

And they're completely wrong, because they won't get the juice, only the squeeze. The cops aren't going to go back to beating up drunk/high vagrants of color if given the authority to beat people up; they'll beat soft and fun targets like teenagers, white collar guys, and generally anyone who gives them lip.

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