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I think I get where you're going, but the civilians won't and can't. And it's a bit meandering. There's a core of truth here, but the presentation obscures rather than illuminates, at least for those whose minds don't run on this software.
Not that I could do better, I've been working on the philosophy of violence and the limits of rules for some time, and I can't make it sound anything but crazy to normies. This is what films like The Matrix and Fight Club (or American Beauty) are all about, and why they were such hits. They spoke to the underlying and terrifying reality that it really just is all sex and violence at the bottom, with ten thousand years of social, economic and political structures sitting wobbly on the narrow balance point of mass public opinion.
Civilization isn't even skin deep. It can vanish in an instant, and does, for millions of people every day.
There are those who know this, and those who desperately need to keep convincing themselves that it isn't true, because that would mean it was their responsibility to take care of themselves, rather than their parents/teachers/professors/police/government. This is what Dostoyevsky is talking about with "everything is permitted". "God" is the symbol of social control superseding human agency. But there is no god, and we can do anything. Only by careful consideration and long experimentation can we constrain this basic reality into a productive human civilization.
Normies have a fundamentally broken view. They think that when violence occurs it's completely unacceptable unless the state is doing it, but that some of the worst people can be excused for it because they cannot do any better. It's the same view, writ large, behind the idea that if someone rudely pre-empts you, the only polite thing to do is graciously allow them to. As I said it's fundamentally broken, and it would fall apart utterly if we didn't have an insanely powerful state freezing everything in place, bad ideas and all.
Calling it the normie view pretty much implies that it is the view of the majority, but from what I can tell only a small fraction of the population of the US has such a view.
The vast majority of Americans have never been in a fight, ergo have no recourse to violence, ergo rely on the state to do their violence for them. Everyone's had a reason to fight, sometime or another.
But for most people it almost never makes sense to do so. If you lose you go to the hospital, if you win you go to jail. If you go to jail and you're one of the "rough men" you might not suffer much as a result. If you're not you may not just lose your freedom but your job, your future, your friends, even your spouse, because now you're a barbaric criminal.
For a simple assault charge plead down to disturbing the peace or some shit? The fact that you think so shows my point more clearly than I could have. I've been in many fights, in jail a dozen times, caught charges twice, and my record is underage drinking and "recieving stolen goods" for having an old sign for a months-old hockey game in my dorm room. And that's only because it was campus police, rather than real cops.
You don't generally get done for fighting. The other guy has to press charges, they have to find him, you'd have to tell them etc. Your paranoia of being a "barbaric criminal" and your whole life collapsing for scrapping is simply perfect. That, that is the mentality I'm talking about.
We're likely not similarly situated. My sister got busted for minor in possession of alcohol, lost a college internship (teaching) as a result, and was unable to get another until she managed to get the record sealed. And that's as pissant a charge as you can get beyond traffic tickets. Of my co-workers in my past few jobs, judging from the reactions if I tell the story I'm probably the only one who has been arrested for anything serious as an adult (I was not convicted, or I'd likely be long dead by my own hand). I know of people who weren't hired because it turned out they had a criminal record, though for what I don't know.
The other guy doesn't have to press charges. If you get in a barfight, you can get busted for drunk-and-disorderly if not assault, for instance. Or if the cops break up the fight they can and sometimes do charge all concerned.
One can always find a reason why a course of action is too risky.
True, but that does not mean the reason is never correct.
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