Violence Inherent In the System

Posted on by Sarah A. Hoyt

As some of you — all of you? know — we’ve recently acquired two female kittens — now four months old — which means we get to see young mammals up close and personal.

Okay, forget seeing — that would be easy — what we actually get to do is experience young mammals up close and personal at around six to seven am. You see, for reasons known only to the psychiatrist that kittens can’t have, as soon as there’s the slightest hint of light out, the two girls decide it’s time to have a series of fights on my feet.

These aren’t exactly to the death fights — both have “play face” on while they put each other on choke holds, or pretend to rip the other’s belly out. But they growl and squeak at each other. The squeaks get more urgent when Indy joins the fun, because the somewhere North of 16 lbs muscular new-adult (a year old in a couple of weeks) cat thinks he’s his sisters’ size and wants to play with them the same way.

I’ve now trained myself to reach down and put my hand between him and whichever girl he’s squishing without meaning to, without waking up. I wake up with both of them licking my hand, which is a very weird sensation.

But the point here is that limited and play violence seems to be part of being a young mammal. They chase each other and try physical intimidation/attack/defense methods on each other which, if they were you know, wild felis domesticus of the Serengeti (Far side, Poodles of the Serengeti) would be needed for their lives as adults, defending cubs from predators, and/or males bent on cubicide, or females bent on cubicide so the other’s cubs didn’t take resources from their own cubs.

Now, my elementary ( 1st through 4th grade in Portugal) school teacher, admittedly rather old, said mine was the weirdest class of girls she’d ever taught, in terms of the games we played at recess. This might have been my fault because a lot of the games were inspired by what I was reading (and told them about) at the time. So, there were a lot of play sword duels, and chasing each other around with bamboo cane “swords” from the field next door, and pushing each other down the ramp from the Earth berm by the wall to said field, as we played Musketeers or Robin Hood’s men or whatever.

I would often come home with bruises and cuts from recess activities.

Even so, my school (or side of the school. It was a 2-room school house) being all girls, I remember peering over the wall to the boys side, once, somewhere between first and fourth grade, and for the first time in my life till then, being heartily glad I wasn’t a boy.

The entire playground in my memory is complete chaos, a scene where — as opposed to OUR “violence” — violence could erupt at any moment. Two guys would be tossing a ball at each other, then suddenly one would jump the other and start trying to drive him into the dirt of the playground, punching and kicking. Or some kid would be quietly sitting in a corner, and either two boys jumped him, or he’d suddenly, for no reason I could figure out, run across the playground, grabbing a stick on the way, to beat the living daylights out of some kid who was, before, engaged in climbing a tree. Only all of this was happening at the same time, and there were five or six other boys just running around getting into fights.

Look, I’m sure there was an internal “logic” to the interactions that I missed as a little girl, or that it was like watching the last episode of a thriller series, without seeing the previous installments, but to my rather shocked eyes, it seemed like the world of boys my age at that time, in that place, was as chaotic as Circe’s and Muse’s interaction, where the one of them who just ran screaming to hide behind my knee, will suddenly jump on her sister and start biting her ears for no apparent reason.

At the time I looked at that playground I remember thinking “I wouldn’t survive as a boy.” But later, when my kids were in school, the violence was more like the violence on the girls’ side, when I was a kid. It was stylized, and shouting in each other’s face, and maybe pushing if no one was looking, except for the inevitable young psychopath, who would beat on the other kids behind play structures and where no one could see him, and whom we had to give older son permission to beat. (Younger son, about the size of this kid’s arm, had already beat him once, by clambering up his side holding on to his neck and punching him on the head screaming “no one beats on my brother but me.” Note at the time this brought no punishment because no one could believe the tiny pre-schooler who weighed maybe 25 lbs soaking wet was hitting the 3rd grader-but-my-height giant.) After months of his getting older son in places where the playground guards weren’t looking and beating him till he was bruised, and/or breaking his glasses, older son turned around and punched him a couple of times. And suddenly we’re in the office, and being told that we should not have told him that because “violence never solved anything.” To which the 4th grader answer “Tell it to the city fathers of Carthage.” (Proud momma moment, even though I don’t think any of the teachers knew what Carthage, IL had to do with it. Because that was about the level of thought in that room.)

I’ve been re-reading a lot of books I read for the first time when I was a teen. A lot of them are mysteries written at the beginning of the 20th century.

Someone probably 20 years ago in a con, talking about how writers’ research said how mysteries are the best way to research the “texture of real life” in a certain place and time. For instance, Miss Marple captures the texture of life in a small British village at the turn of the 20th century. Like, the post office is in the grocery store, type of thing.

If that’s true — and I think it is — being a man in the early 20th century was a lot more like my vision of being a boy in that playground than what we know of public interaction of males nowadays. 

Leave aside the fact that men are often private investigators you still get a feel for what is acceptable or even possible in society and what is not. And it was possible for some rando on the street to take violent exception to what he thinks you just told your girl. Or to your comment about someone else’s behavior. Or. And it was possible — or it fails as fiction, and also, this appears so often in fiction by so many different people, it’s unlikely to be impossible — for two men to punch each other over this sort of interaction without — unless it was in a private venue where this just wasn’t acceptable — anyone calling the police, or anyone suing anyone else. I mean, it might get you tossed out of the bar (in an attempt not to let it spread, is my guess) but it wouldn’t get you arrested.

There is a physicality to life that just isn’t present nowadays.

Because human evolution simply doesn’t happen in these few generations, the only thing causing this is different “controls.” I.e. these days you’re likely to get arrested for punching someone no matter how much they needed it. And you might get sued for defending some woman who is being abused in public. And–

So what is happening is the same thing that happened in the kids’ schools. Violence is still there but under ground, and hidden, and those who either can afford to be sued/arrested because they’re very rich, or very poor. And the violence is likely to be more intense and far more serious because you have to get it in while you can, before the authorities notice.

And here’s the thing. I don’t have answers, but I have questions:

  • Is it good or bad for society to lose the “first level” of policing on acceptable public behavior and outsource it to courts, police and social arbitration?
  • Is it good or bad for young male development that they are no longer allowed to have playground tussles? How does it work in terms of them being adult males capable of doing or responding to controlled violence?
  • How much does the “violence never solved anything” which we all know is a lie contribute to empowering the bullies at both the child and adult level?

I don’t know. As far as I can tell no one knows. Utopians just decided that men should no longer be at home with controlled violence, and therefore applied the “violence never solves anything’ rule from childhood on.

I mane, no one WISHES for violence, or at least no woman, but sometimes might it be the least evil alternative? 

To what extent does “no violence” work? What side effects does it have in society at large? And what effect on society?

And shouldn’t we know that, before implementing society-wide experiments?

232 thoughts on “Violence Inherent In the System”

      1. Or cat who is the only cat of the house brings a toy on the bed in the middle of the night or first hint of light in order to play with….or chases toy under bed and bounces against bottom of said bed….or…….

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        1. One? My Mix Kitty sometimes brings me a half-dozen or more. Drops them there for me to find. Very quietly.

          Rolling over on a plastic golf ball at zero-dark-thirty can be interesting.

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    3. Here’s a puzzle: Why does a cat always come into the bathroom to investigate when I’m taking a dump? Always one cat, not always the same one. What’s the deal? How do they decide whose turn it is?

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  2. Violence doesn’t solve anything…. Brought to you by the people who think electric cars, toilets that don’t flush, ladies can have penis, and spending more than you make for a generation are all good ideas.

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    3. “Violence doesn’t solve anything,” is a mantra that solves a lot– for the intellectually hubristic, mealy-mouthed, passive-aggressive bullies whose capacity for real violence rivals a garden slug’s. With odds favoring the slug. Not accidentally, they’re often also their teachers’ pets in the glue-factory schools our Public Education industry is comprised of.

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      1. Most of those I’ve seen are perfectly willing to be horribly violent, if the target can’t fight back and they think they won’t get caught.

        Largely overlaps with the “my violence is speech, your speech is violence” sorts.

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          1. Then absolutely agree.

            And it makes me realize– it doesn’t even have to be a “fair fight” by my view. It has to be a “fair fight” by the rules they’re under.
            Because the whole point is to cheat, because the advantage comes of fighting a restrained foe.

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      2. They always say that after violence has solved a problem — because they don’t care for the solution.

        One of my characters will be confronted by a Leftroid after she beats the hell out of a gang of punks:

        “What have you done?”

        “That should be obvious. They hit me, so I hit them.”

        “But— you’re some sort of super-cyborg! You sent six people to the hospital, and they hardly hurt you at all! That’s not fair!”

        “So it would be ‘fair’ if they hit me and I wasn’t able to fight back? If they sent me to the hospital?”

        “That— that’s not what I said!”

        “Maybe not in so many words, but that is where your complaint goes if extended to its logical conclusion. I find your attitude irrational. Mine, on the other hand, is perfectly straightforward. If they didn’t want me to hit them, they shouldn’t have hit me.”

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        1. “Don’t start none, won’t be none.”

          And they always seem to ignore the fact that they can decide when to start, but have no control over where it stops.

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  3. to your points:
    Is it good or bad for society to lose the “first level” of policing on acceptable public behavior and outsource it to courts, police and social arbitration?
    Bad. if no first level occurs, more is “Gotten away with” and the combo of disinterest in “low order” crimes being dealt with, and the other leftoid outlooks keeps raising the level of “low Order” to highly detrimental crimes being “harmless” and not prosecuted

    Is it good or bad for young male development that they are no longer allowed to have playground tussles? How does it work in terms of them being adult males capable of doing or responding to controlled violence?
    Quite bad, but it raises sheep (they hope) that TPTB hope will follow the flock meekly into whatever. It also enables the Mental Bullies into more action.
    How much does the “violence never solved anything” which we all know is a lie contribute to empowering the bullies at both the child and adult level?
    A LOT. Also why the mental bullies get so shocked when there are sudden physical responses to their vile actions, especially when they wander into a place where violence is used often to solve issues (like privileged rich assholes [cough – Eddie Vedder and pitcher Jack McDowell] spitting on a bouncer in a bar in the French Quarter, acting like he was going to get physical and finding a “Right Cross” in the face is a bouncer’s reply to choking and spitting [Vedder} and taking a swing at him [McDowell, who was KOed]) Being in NOLA at the time, most of the reports not from the bouncer and Vedder’s hangers-on are closer to the Bouncer’s version of the story, than Vedder’s, who still attacked a bouncer “for saying ‘you’re not my messiah’ too many times” if Eddie is to be believed)

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    1. I used to read the ‘Destroyer’ series of books in the military. It was what they had onboard. In one it had a mental bully, the evil mastermind had a chess obsession. So to kill the evil mastermind he convinced the evil mastermind he could beat him in an unwinnable chess scenario, the evil mastermind of course fell for it and sat down within arms reach over a chess board and demanded he be shown how the guy could win.
      “White Queen to bastards eye” was his response.
      You can’t win the game if you are dead.

      Money, Hot chicks, and the use of violence rules the world. Liberals hate this truth, it proves that they and everything they stand for is a lie. A lie designed to put them in power over those they can not beat physically, out spend, or get the good looking chicks because they are about as appealing as slime mold.

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      1. Trek version…

        Kirk: pondering 3d chess move, takes queen… WHAM! ” Queen to villain five.”

        Villain: “gurgle!.
        .. urk…” thud…

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  4. You cannot change 5 billion years of evolution with 5 thousand years of civilization.

    More like about forty thousand years of civilization, but we’ll go with what is accepted by the masses for the sake of argument.

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    1. In the span of human civilization, we have completely modified existing critters and plants into new versions that suit our wishes.

      Domestic cats, dogs, cattle, and horses.

      Wheat, corn, barley, rye, and rice.

      In many cases, the original species of the above are either extinct, or unrecognizable by the name.

      If we can change other species that fast, we can also be changed ourselves. Unless Someone has locked our DNA, we are as subject to modification as any other DNA-based critter.

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      1. We have modified ourselves with survival of the fittest breeding all along, what was once considered fittest has changed over time. We went from the strongest warrior, to one who can support the family economically. Pretty boys are still going to get the best looking females, so will the rich. It is also a proven fact that the pretty in society are given preferential treatment. The better looking of two candidates is more than likely to get the job. Male or female. So yes, we have been selective breeding all along, ourselves. But we are still the human animal, we are an animal. We are just the animal on top for now. Oh but we have husbandry you say, ants also cultivate other insects, aphids come to mind.

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        2. You haven’t been to Wal-Mart lately, have you. While the Fat and ugly and stupid do get shut out of breeding with the wealthy, beautiful intelligentsia, they are not shut out of breeding altogether by this. Indeed, according to the documentary Idiocracy, they may even out breed that class. The certainly outnumber them.

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      2. The life cycle of most crops is one year. The breeding age for cats and dogs is two years. Cattle and horses, 3 years.

        The minimum breeding age for humans is around 12 years. (I’m talking what’s biologically possible, not what’s good for the humans involved, or for a society)

        So, to get results similar to selective breeding of crops for 15,000 years, would take 180,000 years. Results similar to selectively breeding cats and dogs for 12,000 years would take 72,000 years.

        And that’s if we used the same methods of forced inbreeding, crossing and culling, which would be anathema to (most) modern folks. Voluntary selection by personal preferences would take a lot longer.

        Thus, we are genetically almost identical to our pre-civilized caveman ancestors 50,000 years ago.
        ———————————
        Concentrating power in the hands of a few leads inevitably to abuses, corruption and tyranny.

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        1. You want to see the results of semi-selective breeding in humans, you only have to look at the royal houses of Europe. Of course, they were selecting for power and wealth aggregation, not genetically healthier, prettier, hardier, stronger, faster, or smarter offspring. Or you can look at the Ashkenazi unintentionally selecting for smarter offspring, and getting a couple of genetic diseases linked in too.

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        2. Then there are the really small critters such as bacteria. Their generations are very short. Humans are not the “most evolved” things on the planet, by a long shot.

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      4. Modern humans are more domesticated in comparison with humans from 50K years ago. Whether it’s genetic, epigenetic, or cultural; we’re able to live together in large communities without instantly murdering each other. That’s a major step.

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          2. Archeology shows most of our distant kin show signs of serious violence, often repeated. “Brutish”, indeed.

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        2. Monkeys live in communities without instantly murdering each other. Small ones, granted, but the principle is there. We’ve just expanded on it recently.

          Savages may not be Noble, but they’re not psychopaths either. Bands, tribes and clans of humans have lived cooperatively for more than 200,000 years. We wouldn’t be here if they hadn’t.
          ———————————
          You can have a civilized society, or you can have mob rule. You can’t have both.

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          1. “Death penalty is uncivilized. Our early ancestors did not do that!” (I am sure I am quoting someone whining “violence is unnatural” don’t know who.)

            Not “wrong”, exactly. Expulsion from the group was the preferred method. Expulsion, then, was a death sentence, eventually. Even less drastic, shunning, was likely to end in death.

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            1. It isn’t all that long ago that human sacrifices were a common part of certain cultures’ religious practices.

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                1. Nah, lay the blame where it belongs– “freedom.” Specifically, freedom from responsibility, especially free sex but there’s some others, like papering over implied commitments because “it’s her choice” and “I never agreed.”

                  No shortage of folks who wouldn’t claim feminism, or claim it only as an enemy, who still want their ability to never have to deal with the result of the reproductive act.

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    2. Archaeological evidence strongly suggests that human behavior hasn’t changed much, if at all, in 20,000 years. Remember that conversation about flint quarries and the red pipestone trade the other day? Same thing in Europe.

      The weather certainly changed, but we don’t seem to have.

      To your point, the previous people in Europe were Neanderthals, ~40,000 years ago. They really were different, and seem to have grown into being us at some point.

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  5. An analogy, perhaps.

    One of the first things we must learn in my version of sword martial arts is control, first of the bokuto (the wooden training sword) and then of the iaito (a blunt metal sword). The intent is that one comes close to the target (e.g. neck, shoulder, wrist, shin, etc. or the blade edge for an iaito) but does not come in contact with it. This is not “pulling” the cut, but stopping the cut – my cuts should be full strength right up to where I stop. I have to learn control before I begin practicing paired drills.

    I was only ever in a single fight growing up, in which I threw my skateboard at the assailant and then ran home, so my perspective of “fights” are probably skewed. Yet two things come to my mind when I think of this.

    The first is that if we do not teach people that violence is real and how to respond to violence and do not let them (at some level) learn to respond to violence, the risk is then of over-reaction. There is no control. We see that now (one would argue every week, but perhaps that is because is is so shocking) in the over-reaction of students in school or individuals in fast food restaurants that go from being told to stop something or that they do not have fries to beating within seconds.

    The second is that when people feel they cannot defend themselves, whether by law or “commonly accepted practice), they either stand around and will not intervene (but will record for social media, of course) thus increasing the damage or over time simply lose interest in the larger society or civilization as a whole. If I cannot defend my person when I am attacked, how invested am I in the civilization or society that makes that possible?

    If a society denies the individual the ability to defend themselves, or intervene to defend the defenseless, I fear that is a society destined to fail.

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    1. “The first is that if we do not teach people that violence is real and how to respond to violence and do not let them (at some level) learn to respond to violence, the risk is then of over-reaction.”

      Psychologists call this “gunnysacking.” You “tolerate” a host of minor insults, threats, and indignities in your psychic gunnysack until the sack is full. And then the next indignity tells you it’s time to empty the sack on that jackass who decided his number was up. And we’ve all been putting stuff in the sack, at least since the WuFlu-lishness. I’m surprised there aren’t massacres in the streets and on the highways every single day; apparently most Americans demonstrate admirable restraint. Still, poking at folks with a stick ain’t a smart policy.

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    2. Liberty requires the management of controlled violence. To have Liberty that one may retain, to have a relative Peace, requires that enough folks acquire skill of and practice at and willingness to contolled violence, lest the brutes, bullies, and scoundrels apply Tyranny in Liberty’s place.

      Man up. Learn a combative skill. Practice.

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    3. Yeah . . . I agree with all of this. As a martial artist myself, I think that in our society we need to let more young men learn violence in a controlled way, so that they don’t accidentally kill someone with strength they didn’t know they had. Appropriate responses to levels of violence are hard to gauge without practice. I’m pretty sure my Sensei has saved several young men from prison simply by teaching them restraint.

      That being said, I’ve only ever been harassed by a man who was out of his head, and I got out of that without having to throw hands, though I was prepared to escalate ’cause he was alarmingly close. I avoid possibly violent situations where I can because I’m at an inherent disadvantage as a woman.

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      1. I wholeheartedly agree. I think it’s important for a woman especially to understand violence. Being in a sparring ring is good for you

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        1. My Sensei always says that one of the most valuable things martial arts can teach a woman is that you can take a hit and keep going. Oh, and where all the soft spots are. Violence is rarely the answer (especially for women) but when it is, it’s the only answer, so it’s good to know how to apply it appropriately.

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        2. I freaked out my opponents because if I got hit I instinctively started laughing. Most people in the classes didn’t want to spar with me because of that.

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            1. Beware if I start shaking and crying. It’s what happens when I’m trying not to berserk.
              At one point someone who should know better decided to make fun of me for crying and Dan had to get between us, and yell at the other person to stop trying to commit suicide.

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          2. My sensei said ‘there’s always somebody who can take your best strike and laugh. Have a plan for when that happens’. His was run, or find weapons.

            I was lucky, the one time it happened to me, I was the one laughing.

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      2. Exactly this – my daughter and I intend to send Wee Jamie, the wonder-grandson to martial arts classes as soon as he is four years old. We’d like to send him to another neighbor (a Marine, too) to runs a small private gym out of his garage, four doors up the street, just so the kid can have the experience of rough-housing with a male role model. There are things that he will simply have to learn, as a young male, which my daughter and I as females simply cannot teach him.

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        1. Wise.

          Find a good dojo, recommended by known associates. Require attendance and progress.

          A “youth counseling” / “family counseling” I was required to attend included Judo, and against larger sparring opponents. Was golden when confronted by larger bully. Epic reversal. Helped with some other issues too.

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      3. Law Dog and I were musing about a local sensei, and speculating about how many boys he helped grow into civilized men during his 50 year or so career. The answer is probably far higher than the number helped by social workers and others of that ilk.

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  6. In any society there is (generally accepted as male) physical violence, and there is (generally accepted as female) emotional violence.

    It seems to me that our current society deifies and encourages the second, letting it run out of control. Except for those whose physical violence is assumed to be an expression of emotional weakness, such as bullies.

    By fighting back against a bully, you are using physical violence on someone subconsciously assumed to be emotionally “weaker” and worthy of societal protection.

    I know I’ve run into this attitude of “Well, his parents are divorced, or “Well, she’s having a hard time right now” to excuse either physical or emotional bullying.

    The attitudes are so deeply ingrained that few people consider either the reasons behind it or the social implications.

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      1. I think the original observation had some value– the bullies have nothing they value to give themselves worth other than damaging others– but you don’t FIX that by going “hey, you’re wonderful!” Especially not when they’re really not!

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      2. When my youngest was in middle school he has a series of spine surgeries in another state. I accompanied him. To humor him while he was convalescing, I let him pick the programs he watched. He was a huge fan of the program Bully Beat Down where a Famous Mixed Martial Arts guy would give a bully who had been recommended by a viewer he was victimizing for the “honor”.

        I would never have watched such a thing left to my own devices, however, it turned out to be a fascinating glimpse into the male mind.

        Not one of the “Bullies” had an self esteem issues whatever. In every single case, they felt that as an Alpha Male it was their duty to beat some sort of toughness into the weak and helpless victims. Many looked on it as a sort of civic duty. This was in spite of their upbringing or family status. They were top dogs and they deserved to be top dogs and teach the lesser mongrels how to be tough.

        The interesting thing about this is the change of heart they all had once they, themselves, had received an epic beating. They literally had NO IDEA whatever what it was like to lose a fight. Once they had, suddenly, they realized that just not being the strongest or toughest wasn’t necessarily a character flaw.

        It was an eyeopener for sure. Until then I didn’t realize what my hubby said, “That guy needs a good beating” was an actual truism.

        But it seems like the modern age doesn’t realize that some people just need to be restrained whatever way it takes. Doesn’t matter how sad their life has been, if they can’t be civilized, then they need restraint, jail, prison, mental health hospital, whatever.

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        1. I’ve seen several episodes of that show and loved every single one of them. I’m not sure which part I liked better — the effortless smackdowns delivered to shitheads who mistakenly thought they were badassess or the times when the shitheads were juuust good enough to make the skilled pro actually care about beating the crap out of them. Some people really do just need a good beating.

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  7. Hmmph-my initial thought here was as a kid my experiences with being the target of violence were from males; as an adult (outside of military), if it was someone I knew it was from females (ex-wives x2), and someone I didn’t from males (usually black males in inner city). I successfully evaded the male attackers, but not the females.

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    2. Inner city black males are taught from birth that they are ‘Oppressed!’ and have the ‘right’ to ‘strike back’ at their ‘oppressors’.

      Here’s a clue — if they really were oppressed (vs. ‘Oppressed!’) they’d all be dangling from lamp-posts. As it is, most of their ‘striking back’ is turned against each other. Just the way the ‘Progressives’ like it.
      ———————————
      Only idiots believe they know how other people should live their lives. The stupider they are, the more blindly they believe it.

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  8. It is similar to drinking at colleges, because you “have” to be 21 there is a lot of behind doors drinking which easily gets out of hand because no one is there to set any limits to the behavior, think what you said about bar fights. When I grew up in NYC drinking age was 18 but most neighborhood bars would not check and let you drink as long as you observed the “rules”, i.e. you acted responsible about it. So yes I was drinking in bars at 15/16 yo. It was a rite of passage that you learned what is what to be a responsible adult. That is gone as teens ad older are treated as children, supervised all the time by helicopter parents.

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    2. At the U of Redacted, the campus bars insisted on Uni ID. That had the person’s birthday on it, but the age requirement (21 at that time) was ignored. (I had quit drinking by the time it was legal for me. At least for a few years. :) )

      This was primarily for beer and wine, with one of the bars that allowed hard liquor getting in minor trouble. They had to shut down for 30 days, and were allowed to pick the slowest days of the week to serve their “punishment”. No mention of bribery was ever mentioned in public…

      FWIW, this was in an era where some people felt that a Saturday’s entertainment was to attend an antiwar riot protest. We were guessing that TPTB figured drunk students wouldn’t throw rocks. Waggles hand. The first law of surviving such came naturally. I was never there.

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    3. It’s one reason why I told my kids I didn’t mind them have a drink as teenagers,
      as long as Mom or I were there to supervise and provide that control. But it also meant that I didn’t presume to that role for other people’s kids, so they weren’t allowed to drink on the premises without their parents there too.

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        1. Ditto, and I was drinking wine (well, about 1/3 wine, 2/3 water) with dinner when I was 12. Today that would get you arrested in many places, but pretty much only in the US; other countries are a bit more rational on this particular issue.

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          1. When the ship I was on was at Olongapo in the Philippines, the drinking age seemed to be ‘can reach high enough to put money on the bar’. :-P

            This was when Marco was still President For Life. Don’t know what it’s like now.

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          2. Most of the world 1/3 wine 2/3 water was the only safe way to drink water. Even in US it is a more recent development (less than 100 years).

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            1. Even then it’s not really safe; it takes a higher percentage than there is in almost any wine to sterilize bad water.

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      2. We didn’t do that. Primarily because neither of us are big drinkers. Never at home, except holidays, where family member brought wine. As far as teen drinking? Our son, and his cousins, had a hard lesson of what drinking causes, in the death of a playmate/relative (cousin once removed). She was 12. Doesn’t matter that legally PTB couldn’t prove the driver was drunk (or buzzed). (Hit and run. Was two weeks before driver was caught.)

        Did our son drink when he turned 21? Yes. Did he drive if he drank? No. How do we know for sure? Under age drinking we don’t except his word (honestly he doesn’t like alcohol much). But drinking and driving? A few times he was home earlier on Saturday morning than we expected him. His reason. There was a party for a newly commissioned AFROTC graduate. For reasons son didn’t have time to walk from his apartment to the event location, so he drove. But since he drank, he walked home. Which meant he had to be up to walk to the event location to get his car early Saturday morning (before 8 AM?). Son is 34. He is like me, if he is driving, he does not drink any alcohol, period. He doesn’t even bother with the “carry it around all night, get plants drunk, dump it” routines I used to do, at party gatherings (now we just BOB, soft drinks). He is also like me in that he does not like the taste of most alcohol, including beer.

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    4. Also back then those who broke the rules of behavior in a bar would be punished, if not by the other patrons, then by those who make regular visits to the bars for their regular “cut”/”neighborhood protection fund”, who had an interest in the bars remaining a civil environment that did not draw attention from government.

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  9. Justine Trudeau is an absolute pussy and wimp, and yet in Canada he is being a ruthless dictator. That is the kind of bully these modern “rules” encourage. Right now every Canadian has been pushed around enough by his horseshit government that they should all be allowed to punch him in the face multiple times.

    Liked by 2 people

      1. A company I used to work for did that as a fund raiser. Put up cardboard figures with the bosses faces on them.

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  10. “To which the 4th grader answer “Tell it to the city fathers of Carthage.””

    I would have busted out laughing.

    My smaller cat (Cosmos) usually wakes me with “old one-eye” staring me in the face. The larger one, Pixel, sticks her nose in my ear and rumbles.

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    1. I didn’t know he’d read Starship Troopers. Part of the problem is that three of us in that room — Dan and I and the kid — knew what Carthage was. I don’t think anyone else did.

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        1. Except they’d probably call the police on you if you mentioned Herr Hitler, never mind the context.

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          1. Oh, like nibbling a Poptart into the shape of a Glock? Or pointing your finger and saying “Bang!”? :-x

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    2. For those ignorant of classical history you could substitute Atlanta, Nanking, Dresden or Hiroshima.
      ———————————
      “Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. Breeds that forget this basic truth have always paid for it with their lives and their freedoms.”
      ― Robert A. Heinlein, Starship Troopers

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        1. That is what we told our son. Another version was “Walk away. If they won’t let you walk away, make them let you walk away.” Same. Other version is shorter. But longer version might play better to PTB. “Tried to walk away. He/She wouldn’t let me.”

          Liked by 1 person

        2. My mother, a little after she had enrolled me in TKD lessons, made me solemnly swear never to hit anyone in anger. After I dutifully promised, she smiled and told me that malice aforethought was just fine, so long as I wasn’t angry. (I was fifteen and she was worried about me starting to date… once it got out that I was taking martial arts, no one was interested in asking me out…. very strange.)

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  11. The law of unintended consequences reaches far. I remember in my youth reading a novel where one of the characters killed someone and was ostracized because of it, only to find out later when other characters were being charitable to another bad actor and the bad actor ended up causing much more death and destruction. I can’t remember the name or author of the story now, but it wasn’t exactly a new idea. Making hard decisions and taking decisive action now can save a whole lot of hurt and suffering later.

    And the “new” (within the last century I believe) practice of not letting kids fight things out because, “violence never solves anything,” ends up kicking the responsibility can down the road for someone else to deal with. The best thing that can happen to a young tough running his mouth is to get hit. It focuses the mind in a way nothing else can. Having more kids taken out behind the woodshed a few times can really cement in their minds that being a big fish in a little pond is way different than being out in the deep, wide, ocean.

    Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face – Mike Tyson

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    1. Distant memories surface. I was in grade school near Detroit in the late ’50s in a mostly blue collar neighborhood. Minor scuffling, and the principal allowed as to having a paddle on hand for attitude adjustment. (Male principal.)

      We moved to an upscale suburb elsewhere in the Midwest, and most of the population was quite upscale. Minor tussling was replaced by fewer but nastier fights. It was challenging being the Odd. (One of my fellow Odds in high school carried a small bottle of what he claimed was HF* for defense. Mercifully, AFAIK, he never used it.)

      ((*)) Could have been, though HF has never(?) been a consumer product.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. One of my High School comrades gave us a Fun With Picric Acid Day. Definitely homemade. We survived intact.

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        1. Ahh, the unstable derivative of TNT- picric is Tri-nitro-phenol.

          Perfectly safe and useful in solution. A bad idea in solid form.

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  12. There can be an understanding in the community when certain actions shouldn’t be punished. “He had it coming,” and similar attitudes.

    But…

    Those understandings are usually shaped by culture. And something that’s understood as “okay” (if unfortunate or unpleasant) in one culture might be bad in another. The only way to deal with this evenhandedly is to tamp down on all such instances.

    That’s the ideal, anyway.

    In practice, we’re seeing a bunch of nonsense. Genuine wrong doing is excused, while authorities attempt to punish legitimate self-defense.

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      1. Which is good so long as your boys understood the idea of a proportionate response. If someone slugs you, beating that person to death with a rebar might not be the most appropriate option (unless it’s the only way to get the other guy to stop).

        Having even a semi-decent father in the home will take care of a lot of that. Unfortunately, there are a lot of homes that don’t have even that.

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        1. I don’t have a problem with an Ender Wiggin solution. Although I do recall one time I had to choke a guy unconscious because he just wouldn’t stop.

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          1. Ender saw it as the specific solution to a specific problem. He believed that if he didn’t permanently deal with Bonzo, the latter would come back for another go. And be better prepared. So he went fairly harsh.

            And even then, iirc, it’s indicated in the book that Ender didn’t realize he’d actually killed Bonzo. He only thought he’d seriously injured the bully.

            Fortunately, evidence suggests that with most modern bullies, that’s not needed. Merely putting up a good fight will usually convince the bully to look for easier targets.

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            1. …which just kicks the can down the road to be someone else’s problem. If he’s beaten severely enough, assuming he’s not just a “mouth that roars” and actually hurts those weaker than him, he might think twice before his next attack and decide it’s not worth the risk of a repeat.

              Liked by 1 person

              1. That goes past self-defense, though. Self-defense is what is needed to protect yourself, and discourage your assailant. When you exceed that, you are subject to the laws governing assault, even in jurisdictions that haven’t been overrun by the usual woke nonsense.

                i.e. if someone attempts to mug you in public, you are allowed to try and shoot that individual in self-defense. But if the mugger turns tail and runs at the sight of your gun, you can and will be prosecuted if you open fire anyway. This is not a particularly new legal doctrine.

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                    1. I hardly disagree, but the scenario was one of immediate threat or physical assault. One doesn’t “put up a good fight” as the initiator, but as the victim. At least that’s how I interpreted it.

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                3. Which is another reason not to pull out a gun and threaten the mugger. If you’re in a situation where you need the gun at all, you just whip it out and shoot before the enemy can react. Wrestling for control of your own gun is not a desirable outcome. Ideally, the mugger’s first clue that you’re armed is your first shot.

                  Liked by 1 person

                  1. Quite true, actually. That’s one of the things Tim Larkin in his Targeted Focus Training? emphasizes as promoting your maximum survivability in a self-defense situation. If and when you have to go violent, don’t telegraph it or announce it beforehand, and go all out 100% until you are sure your assailant is not a threat anymore, and won’t be able to renew the attack. Never give your assailant an advantage.

                    Of course, he also emphasizes staying aware of your surroundings, and avoiding locations or situations that could become violent. It’s a truism that people who go looking for trouble, usually find it.

                    Liked by 1 person

                  2. There was a very realistic passage in Whiteboard, where the guy without a gun handily defeated the guy with the gun. The one with apparently thought it was magic and would keep him safe when he came within easy grabbing distance.

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          1. “Proportionate” in this case means “enough to get the other guy to back off.”

            And yes, sometimes that does require a dirt nap. But usually, it doesn’t.

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    2. My niece was on the school bus and the rule was that they had to stay in their seats. A bully was gleefully smashing another kid’s head against the wall. She tried to get the attention of the adult monitors, and when they ignored her she got out of her seat to stop it.

      Bully had to sit by the driver for a week. Niece got suspended for a week. The victim ended up in the hospital. The whole incident was documented by the bus cameras.

      This school has a 0 tolerance policy?

      Uh, huh. Right.

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      1. Because you don’t want to be too harsh.

        And the bully will end up in jail or dead– hopefully dead before he kills/maims someone else– when he gets out and into places that aren’t full of victims who will be punished for responding.

        See also, why folks get so angry when the “solution” to this is Make it so adults can’t fight back, either.

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  13. I’ve told about our son being suspended for giving a kid a fat lip because the kid was trash talking the few black kids at the school. What amuses me is the principal on that occasion was male. A year or so later, when he and his buddies were contemplating beating up a bully, the principal was a woman. And she told our son (having somehow got the rumor about the proposed whuppin), “You know, we have a zero-tolerance policy here at Local High School, so if this happened on the school grounds we would have to take notice. But if it happened across the street in the convenience store parking lot….”
    As I told him, “You know, you just got permission to beat the snot out of this kid.”
    Luckily for all concerned, the bully also found out and decided tormenting the “special needs,” kid wasn’t much fun after all.

    Liked by 1 person

  14. I read: “Tell it to the city fathers of Carthage.” and I laughed right out loud. I think Mike Tyson said it – everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face. Those poor administrators were way out of their league.

    So – I think it is a simple fact that the human animal is violent by nature and spent many centuries managing social and personal issues with actual violence or the threat thereof. In the last few years an individual is able to be “mouthy” or fake violent by social media and has no consequence. The lack of accountability encourages this bad behavior and (incorrectly) makes it seem to be OK and risk free. Once “real life” comes into play – words and deeds have consequences and the response will happen quickly.

    We don’t have kittens but do have a ten pound dog who is sure she is in charge of the schedule. There are several times I have been in a sound sleep only to wake up to a lick on my nose and a dog face about an inch from mine… Ah pets, gotta love ’em!

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  15. I’m reminded of something I read about cats some time back, cat fights rarely result in serious injury to either cat regardless of what it sounds like. The reason given is because they learn when they’re younger that “that squalling is OK to keep going, this screaming means they give up / lost / are being hurt and to back off.”

    Arguably? Apply the same guideline to humans. Letting kids play “rough” and they learn how far is too far, take that away (helicopter parenting, “one strike” rules in schools and punish BOTH parties, the expectation that the school / police / law / government will handle the problem) and all of sudden you’ve got only two responses to a situation. Ignore it / do nothing about it expecting the aforementioned “someone elses’ problem” solution to happen, or full violent response (pound the offender until they can’t do anything further.)

    I went to a Catholic school, there were still the occasional fights (I got into one, once, with another kid,) yet never serious injury. We boys played a rough-and-tumble version of soccer of our own design, Kill Boy Soccer. Yep, you could body check, push other players, etc. Yet, no one every had to go to the office for injuries. We had learned in the earlier grades where the line was, both for ourselves and for the school.

    As for my one fight? The other kid (same grade) was something of a bully, at least towards me, finally pushed me once to many times, and turned into enough of a shoving match to attract the playground monitors attention. OK, and my calling him a “mother f’er” at the top of my lungs might’ve had something to do with it. Well, IIRC, he got booted from the school, I got a bit of a talking to from the Principal Nun, and that I recall, my parents were never informed.

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      1. Somewhere in elementary school I went running around the playground after the boys who’d messed up our hopscotch, screaming, “How dare you pick on defenseless girls!”

        Liked by 1 person

      2. I had more fights because I was the new kid always and smaller than anyone my age. And younger than average for my grade. Talk about a target.

        Liked by 1 person

      3. I did that with the biggest, meanest sob in the school when he was beating on a kid literally half his size. He left to avoid the adults, but showed up 15 minutes later in my homeroom to threaten me again for ‘interfering’. Just looked him in the eye and told him that he could try, but even if he beat the snot out of me, it would be the last time he’d ever set foot in that school again. He left, kicking over several desks on the way out. Never had a problem with him again. Of course that was 50 years ago.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. The “two responses” point you make ties into something Sarah has been saying for a while. She points to the Idiots In Charge as believing violence is a dial that they can turn up and down in fine gradations to suit their needs, while saying that for those opposed to the IICs it’s an on/off switch, currently off but you don’t want to be anywhere nearby when the finger pressure gets a little too strong and it flips.

      The irony is remarkable. The Idiots In Charge have promulgated policies (at least upon those who aren’t themselves) of punishing those low levels of violence. If there’s a reaction against the IICs, as many of us foresee, fear, or crave (or varying overlaps of all three), it’s going to be sudden and severe. That severity against the IICs will be a direct product of their own policy of making people behave and be nice (according to their definitions). They could have had opponents who believed in restraint and gradation of reaction, but they have worked hard to make sure that would not happen.

      This assumes the switch is flipped. Maybe it won’t be, and those In Charge will turn out not to have been Idiots after all.

      You may debate among yourselves which is the worse scenario. I’ll step aside, having gotten myself a little depressed about the whole thing.

      Republica restituendae
      et
      Hamas delenda est.

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  16. It doesn’t work.

    It all goes underground – male and female – and it’s vicious. And you couple that with a local community deciding “X is a legit target because too smart” and you end up with potential homicides of minors, by minors, and every adult is just So Shocked. While they were all deliberately ignoring or covering it up.

    And then those kids become adults just as covertly vicious and cruel, and you’re still not allowed to defend yourself, and…. what Toirdhealbheach Beucail said. If society won’t let you protect yourself, what the bleep do you owe society?

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      1. Oh yeah. Nature Red in Tooth and Claw takes a look at Human history and backs off, then flees, screaming “The horror! The horror!” as she goes.

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  17. I have been in only three fights in my life. One ended with my walking away after a verbal retort. With the girl. The other two ended when I suddenly noticed my opponent rolling away on the ground, several feet away, and one outweighed me by 100 pounds. Reports are (I had no memory) that I simply picked him up over my head and tossed him. So, score one for civilization and two for the vicious animal we keep bottled up. Don’t make him angry.

    I relate to another’s quote from his father. Mine always said, “I don’t ever want to hear that you started a fight, but if you are in one, I want to hear that you finished it.” Also, “Never hit a lady, but if she hits you, she is no lady.” Further still, “it takes two sides to make a peace but only one to make a war.” And then, “civilized nations resolve differences by negotiation, but war is uncivilized and therefore there are no rules.”

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  18. “Is it good or bad for society to lose the “first level” of policing on acceptable public behavior and outsource it to courts, police and social arbitration?”

    Unionized. Public. Employees. And therefore, by definition, bad.

    In all truth, the unwillingness of men to step up and do something to preserve social norms is nothing more or less than the proof that we do not live in a free country. We live in a police state.

    In the old days (which I do recall, because I was there) if a man was beating a woman in public, bystanders would intervene. By the time I was a grown man, that had changed. “Not worth it to get arrested. She probably asked for it anyway.”

    And now of course we are all standing aside to let looters empty Walmart, because WE KNOW that if we hockey-stick the looter, WE will go to jail first.

    Getting ready for the next step, which will be going to jail for talking about it on the interwebz. Because they don’t know how to do anything else but tighten the screw. They’ll keep tightening it until the vise breaks. Given the huge crowds of pissed off Normies in Poland, Holland and Germany, it may not be long.

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    2. The proper response to law enforcement trying to arrest you for hockey-sticking looters, rather that actually stopping the looters, is to tell said law enforcers to get lost; and if that fails, to plant said law enforcers 6 feet under. Hence the reason why the anti-gunners desperately want to disarm the nation.
      Unfortunately, very few people have the moral courage to do that anymore. And far too many unscrupulous, and frankly, criminal, lawyers actively promote lawlessness by deliberately targeting those who do step up.

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    3. My employer had Crisis Prevention Institute’s (CPI) Nonviolent Crisis Intervention training that I missed due to long-term absence. I was horrified when colleagues told me that physical intervention is a last resort – and perhaps a “fire-able offense” – even when the aggressor uses force ON US.

      Having experienced violence myself, I know that anyone who hurts me is going to get a kick or a stab or perhaps even a bite in the face before my brain kicks in. I hope that none of our “clients” ever do. I don’t want to be hurt, and I don’t want to hurt anyone.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. We have “Avoid Deny Defend” policy, which is hilarious because “Defend” has ridiculous improvised weapons, with much better ones right to hand. So of course everyone is always discussing which would be the most convincing weapon.

        OTOH, we’ve been assigned the video so often that I’ve taken it in both English and Spanish, and learned some interesting vocab for “crotch” that wasn’t in the English version.

        Liked by 1 person

        2. Walmart does not allow their employees to carry.

          So anyway here is the warehouse where you’ll be working, over here by each truck door is a heavy steel pipe, and here by the bailers are heavy steel rods.

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      2. At my last place of employment, we had a Reaction to an Active Shooter seminar. At the end of the class, we were asked what the proper response to an AS was. When it came my turn to give an opinion, I replied, “Two to the chest, one to the head”. Though I got some chuckles out of classmates, that was not the answer they were looking for. As instructed, we were to hide, hoping theSOB passedus by

        Liked by 1 person

        1. Aargh! And not even WP(DE)’s fault.

          And if he comes after you anyway, throw a garbage can at him . . .

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          1. I worked in a theater department once. The Official Word was to throw stuff like shoes at the shooter.

            Which led to much merriment about how we had closets-ful of ammunition.

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            1. I still like whoever came up with the fire extinguisher defense. Blast in face so they can’t see or breathe. And honestly, that’s also a good bludgeoning instrument—raise over head, smash down on arms. They wouldn’t be able to hold on to gun at that point. Then you would use to render assailant unconscious.

              I mean, as long as we’re talking improvised weaponry. Note that I have never been in a hostile antagonist situation; I’ve only been in less fraught emergency situations, like wildfire.

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              1. Question. What is BSA’s current take? I know the debates from 15 years ago.

                (Don’t Ask. Don’t Tell. Deal with the fallout when survive. Even if one is legally required to carry off duty.)

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                1. I honestly don’t know the official take. There certainly isn’t any national training on the subject (probably because of the patchwork of local laws.) And since I am not personally CCW, I haven’t come up against any restrictions.

                  I will say that we have several adults who are essential personnel involved with my kids’ troops. Beyond that, I do not actually know anything aside from the idea that they WILL defend people as necessary and deal with fallout later.

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    4. Yeah we can all feel that rubber band stretching. Personally i believe it will look like the shirt story “What I Saw at the Coup.”

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      1. When things build up like this, I’m sure there are bad feelings under the surface just boiling away.

        I will say one thing. In Mississauga/Brampton you see the odd Palestinian flag on a car. You do not see them anywhere else in Ontario just now. There is a reason for that, and the reason is not a government one.

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  19. I had to learn to control my violence because my usual method of dealing with physical bullies was to go on the attack.
    Not quite berserker, but “a downed enemy is no longer a threat” and I got at least one suspension because I bit a guy. (It was the fifth grade, and going after me on the back of the head set off all of the “sneak attack, no mercy” instincts).
    Not going towards violence as I grew up was mostly because it made Mom sad and that was always one of my touchstones. Did it make Mom sad?, therefore don’t do it.
    (My other touchstone was Don’t do anything that would require Dad to…resolve things.. I’m almost old enough to be a grandfather and I’m convinced that I am safer in prison for quite a few things rather than letting Dad bail me out and be creative.)
    Learned to avoid where I might have to throw down, but never lost the instinct to “in the absence of orders, attack” when dealing with things. Probably didn’t help in a lot of jobs, because often the guy defending himself so hard is trying to sell you a line. I knew that I didn’t have any friends in those places, so the only person that could defend myself is myself.
    (That, and one supervisor decided that my ignoring his angry ranting was Not Allowed, so he decided to give me a shove. I slammed him on his ass and was ready to throw down right there. And he thought that because he was Pinoy Mafia, I wasn’t going to do that. Got fired about two months later, rumor had it that he was running several…less-than-legal courier jobs on company time.)
    I hate violence. It’s the ultimate democracy and I tend to lose in those circumstances.
    But don’t mistake my hatred of it for lack of will. Or a willingness to go for the jugular first.

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  20. The playground tussles were not normal, not overall. Because you don’t usually HAVE a group that is a bunch of plus-or-minus five year kids with a token few adults in isolation, IE, a “playground.” There was the roughhousing, but differently, and with different breaks. (Kitten vs kitten is different than kitten vs Indy, and Indy is still a kitten in his brain.)

    They’re the result of centralized schooling divorced from culture.

    Early run of Daycare Raised Kids, basically.

    In trying to shake out how to deal with “were teaching how to do math, forgot to teach how to human properly,” culture got lazy and went with what was easiest on the teachers. (Gosh, just like how the education got stinky bad.)

    So, yes, this ruined the feedback mechanism because with more adults, it’s harder for kids to get away with stupid stuff.

    And it’s somewhat hidden, because some of us did interact with folks outside of our classes/school.

    Liked by 1 person

      1. And boys often became friends after a “fair fight”. Yes, applying school to everyone is rare, but schools have existed for hundreds of years. Tussles were permitted within bounds.
        You are that the zero violence IS ‘less work for teacher” which is lazy and unsustainable.

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        1. I can’t remember if it’s Mary or SuburbanBanshee that linked to some of the stuff they had to do to deal with the apprentices who were Being Young Men– basically, took a lot more adult supervision than we ever have at modern schools.

          Girls need it, too, just– well, it’s not physical violence. So it’s much harder to see when the Queen Bee type is smacked down, or when the Nanny Og/Granny Weatherwax type authorities are guiding folks in “how you sort things out without breaking the culture.”

          Liked by 1 person

          1. Yes, girls require MORE involvement and a much closer look. Otherwise you don’t see it. And the feminist “girls are perfect, naturally and so much more caring and peaceful” bullshit is making everything worse.

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    2. Foxfier, what I remember of my childhood (4-13) in Memphis was that there weren’t any adults standing around; they were available, but in the house up to two blocks away. Mixed age to an extent, mixed sex to an extent, all white, though.

      Generally speaking, we handled it between ourselves. About the only exception was a boy named Scott Fraser, whose mama was the early model of “helicopter parent”. If Scott didn’t get his way, especially if he lost a fight, mama was on the scene within 15 minutes to try and tell us to do it his way. This was not an approach that won friends.

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      2. Now contrast that to there being only one chain of command, instead of “every kid has their own parents, and no parent has the ability to enforce against the other kids, they have to try to persuade.”

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        1. Yep. The only time it didn’t work out, Scott and I got in a fight, he went home with a bloody nose, and she came over to fuss. As expected, except she broke protocol by trying to grab me and pin my arms while telling Scott to “hit him.” I broke loose before he could and they both went home, then she called my mom.

          My mom, being a former school teacher, talked to everyone, who backed me up, including that yes, I’d elbowed her after she grabbed me. I still got a lecture about not hitting adults without provocation, but that ended the affair, because Mrs Fraser had no business grabbing me outside of combat.

          The important thing is that a) there were rules that even extended to the adults, and b) the legal system was still such that she would have been laughed out of court if she pursued it.

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          1. My mother would’ve been informing the woman that she’d been involved in conspiracy to commit grevious bodily harm against a minor (or whatever the local version is), and would judge that when she grabbed you for the purpose of enabling assault on your person, combat was already engaged.

            Generally, even now, the legal system backs up the obviously justified.
            News is “oddly” fixated on either cases where injustice reigns, or leaves out important, relevant bits.

            Which folks are learning– look at the father who didn’t go along with his daughter being assaulted in school and helping cover it up. They escalated and tried to use the law to abuse him, and that made them in worse trouble.

            They’ve had decades of being able to, basically, use social manipulation in order to hack the culture. It’s not working so well, anymore, and doubling down also doesn’t work very well. The biggest downside is that the folks who started this, and profited the most, are mostly dead long gone by.

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            1. Which proves what Sarah just said: people didn’t go to court in the 60s / 70s. There was a custom that said we handle it at an unofficial neighborhood level, because “you’re not the boss of me” and “without a cop / court order, I don’t have to work it out” weren’t the common attitudes.

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              1. With one person-of-authority who was violating the rules.

                When there happened to not yet be dire harm done.

                And “do not play with him” was an option.

                And that’s just off the top of my head for major variables.

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  21. I had brothers, no sisters. Most of my closest friends are also only-girls with two or more brothers. A lot of fights among my brothers and the area boys were spur-of-the-moment reactions to jokes or tussling that got out of hand, and it rarely led to injuries. (On the other hand, they had teeth knocked out, concussions, and swollen-shut eyes that required medical intervention in friendly games and racing bikes and snowmobiles.)

    The bad part of having no sisters (and mothers who grew up mostly among brothers) is that “fighting like a girl” aka verbal attacks were hard to figure out. My college roommate told me about saying something innocuous to a snotty 8-year-old (like “Wait your turn, chica”) and hours later having Big Sister & Friends come after her like a pack of proto-Karens. Even though it happened years earlier, my roommate was still bewildered by why they did that to her.

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Three of us girls. No brothers. I still don’t get the girl culture. Full disclosure. Between the 3 of us we have 4 bachelors, and two graduate, degrees. All the bachelor degrees are STEM degrees (Forestry, Chemistry, Computers, and Engineering). Maybe we didn’t have a typical girls upbringing? IDK. Sisters navigate the female click better than I do/did.

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    2. Establishing and enforcing social norms.

      Just the “social norms” being “established and enforced” are toxic-tribal.

      That’s where an adult is supposed to step in and Say Something.

      (My mother does this against full grown karens of both sexes, stands back and makes loud comments that point out someone is being a jerk.)

      Liked by 1 person

  22. Junior high, small midwestern city (pop. 25,000), mid 1960s. There were at least three male teachers (Math, Science, Music) who were known to slam seventh and eighth grade boys into the lockers to get their attention. All three were well liked teachers who treated most students with kindness and generosity. The kids in question all thoroughly deserved correction and as far as I know did not repeat the offending behaviors. I think in one case it involved grabbing an eighth grade girl’s breast in the middle of the hallway. No police were required. No sex offender lists were created. Those teachers were probably all military veterans.

    Fast forward 25-35 years. My step daughter and daughter were in school. The percentage of male junior high teachers had dropped substantially, and those teachers were no longer allowed to maintain discipline. Any student behavior problems were referred to the principal’s office or to the police. Most kids were still well behaved, but the ones who were not were becoming more of a problem. As near as I can tell, it has gotten worse since then. Both less discipline and less learning.

    Liked by 1 person

  23. Biden’s FAA (Ya I know he is a brain dead puppet) Seeks individuals with Severe Intellectual Disabilities for it’s DIE Initiative.

    Can’t wait until they hire the blind guy who hates people to be a Air Traffic Controller. I would suggest you all stop flying and taking any mass transportation for the foreseeable future. Sucks to be in business during Biden.

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    1. In one of Kurt Schlicter’s “Peoples’ Republic” novels there was a bit in an airline’s publicity magazine about how they were so open-minded about disabilities, they were congratulating themselves on having hired a blind female pilot… IIRC, the character reading this wondered if her seeing eye dog sat in the co-pilot’s seat…

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        1. Waggles hand. I have all of them (am in the process of reading the 8th), but his MC is definitely a shoot-first, ask questions later type (though with the people involved, it’s understandable). His character (and one guesses the author) really likes good firearms. Really likes.

          I like the dark humor and snark (certain politicians get well-roasted in passing), and there’s a nod to current events as they would have evolved to circa 2030. IMHO, try the first novel (People’s Republic) and go from there.

          I have his non-series book The Attack next in my TBR stack. It deals with a 10/7 type attack in the USA. This is not part of the People’s Republic series

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      2. Reminds me of a joke:

        Plane lands. Intercom announcement: “Our scheduled layover here is over an hour. You may leave the aircraft, walk around the airport, get something to eat, just be back on board by [time].”

        Pilot decides he’s going to go kick back in the pilots lounge. A blind man is sitting in the front row. Pilot asks, “Do you want to leave the plane?” Blind man: “Naw, I’m good, but I think my dog could use a walk.”

        So everybody sees the pilot leave the plane wearing mirrored aviator sunglasses and walking a blind man’s dog…

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        1. I’ve seen that picture titled: “Best Halloween prank ever!”

          I have a service dog. Drive into parking spot. Get out of driver’s seat. Get the dog out of the backseat. She is small (15#’s small, 12″ high). She does have a harness with a handle on it, because it makes easier for me to lift her in and out of her dog bed where she is clipped to the seat belt by the harness. I don’t know how many times I’ve heard “is she a seeing eye dog?” I. Just. Drove. In. The harness is not a mobility handle. Not the only not blind handler who run into this same situation. Makes more sense for handlers who have mobility animals (mobility isn’t just for blind handlers). But a 15#, doesn’t reach my knees dog? Really? The only appropriate response is “she’s my backseat driver”.

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          1. And yet, I know a bit about how seeing eye dogs are trained, and in a number of cases I have met them in stores and such with their trainers.

            It’s a reasonable question. Not with a dog that small, granted, but vaguely possible I suppose.

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            1. I do have her trained to lead, but without preasure on the leash. “Find” and “lead” commands. Note, lead command replaces “follow” command. I want her in front of me, not behind, if single file is required.

              reasonable question. Not with a dog that small, granted, but vaguely possible I suppose.
              ……………….

              Yes, not an unreasonable question. Unless the handler just drove in and got out of the driver seat. 100% unreasonable question on any animal shorter than a Labrador, even small Labradors are too small to be a mobility dog (which seeing eye dogs are a subcategory). There are size and weight to handler standards. Small dogs are great for all non-mobility tasks (their noses work fine, they can retrieve small items). Mobility service animals, are obvious by their mobility harness and specialized handles.

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                1. I specified trainer, not handler.
                  …………………….

                  Then dog will likely have “in training” marked patches, somewhere.

                  Been awhile since I’ve seen program puppies in not-pet-friendly locations. Puppy raising programs start pups early on public access training (as soon as reliable potty trained). Still early prospect VS SD-in-training (SDiT). It’s actually easier to train in non-pet-friendly locations because on major missing distraction over pet friendly locations. Feel for those who don’t have Oregon’s SDiT public access rules, i.e. SDiT = SD. ADA does not address SDiT, leaving that designation to the states. OTOH those starting public access training with other pet distractions, like pet allowed locations, do better over time.

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                  1. I raised a couple of those (Guide Dogs for the Blind out in Boring) and ages ago when I did it (last millenium – ye gods and little fishes) we had a green velcro … jacket … that said guide dog in training in white letters. I haven’t seen one in a bit, but they still have those, just much smaller now.

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                    1. Now I don’t think they mark them specifically. Unlike when blind guide dogs were pretty much the only service dog type now a dog who “fails” the blind guide dog program, the dog is highly likely to be able to serve a sighted individual given the programs specialized decades of temperament, and physical medical for mobility, breeding programs. The dog will be passed on to other programs for specialized task matching, before being washed out of service dog service.

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  24. FWIW, it’s 18 here and we’re getting show bands and sleet bands. NO intention of setting foot outside today.
    And wondering how all the “migrants, ” from tropical countries are taking it.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. My guess is they’re going to have trouble not letting them head back South.
      Look, I come from a Mediterranean climate, and THIS? This is for the birds. (But not the quail. They’re too dumb for this.)

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      1. Some “migrant” has already been quoted on X saying, “This is nothing like I expected!”

        Meanwhile, I wonder how Jiminalaska is taking our whinging.

        Liked by 1 person

      2. Heck, I come from a Mountain West climate, and I also say this is for the birds. (Birds are nothing but beady-eyed little psychopaths, and they deserve any bad weather they get.) Been dealing with cold, crappy winters for 50+ years now, and I’m tired of it.

        Or, even if the winter is still cold as a witch’s heart, I’d at least like to get back to the high mountain desert where there’s SUN in the winter, instead of nonstop clouds. The Pacific NW winters would also be minimally acceptable for not being so cold, at least, despite the clouds…but you couldn’t pay me enough to live west of the Cascades nowadays, with the progtards in charge. (Well, you could…but you’d also be paying me “eff this, I’m out” money if you did.)

        Liked by 1 person

    2. How do you get sleet at 18F? That’s a special kind of misery.

      About 19F here in Dumbtario tonight, no snow to speak of but better than last night, it was about 8F.

      Must have been super fun for all the street-dwelling types.

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      1. It’s the South. We may be a bit more likely to have ice storms than snow. All I can say is the surface of the snow is covered in clear globes of ice.
        Supposed to go sub-zero tomorrow night and not get above freezing until Thursday. When it’s forecast to rain on whatever hasn’t sublimated. Then back to sub-freezing for the weekend.
        Oh, goody. (Sarcasm off).

        Liked by 2 people

        1. We didn’t get snow. But we didn’t get clear ice/sleet either. Little tiny, barely visible, round ice hail pellets. Could hear it hitting the cars, ground, roof, windows, and skylights, until about 1/4″ piled up. And, oh joy, forecast is for more freezing rain, Tuesday morning, which means more ice on top of the current 1″+ we currently have. Not suppose to warm up until Wednesday. Son’s work is closed again Tuesday.

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              1. No, just freezing precip. Today the sky is blue, thr snow is eye-burningly white, and crunchy. And it looks as if the snow on the roads (Plows? On the Alabama border?) Is quietly turning to ice.

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        1. Yep. “Rain falling through a layer of colder air close to the ground.” Is what got us 4 1/2 feet of snow in the southern Willamette Valley, Eugene, and points south (grandparents 8 mm film of their place Drain). Cold dome that a Pacific warm front slid over, stalled, and rained through the cold layer, resulting in a lot of white fluffy stuff. If the weather forecasters are just as wrong now as they were then (warm front suppose to push out the cold layer, back then, and now, eventually), we are looking at a repeat. It is coming down ice pellets, again, not big fluffy snow, but still.

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  25. I had to do three business trips to Bavaria, ranging from Dec 2001 to Sep 2002. I saw TSA being rolled out and security theater becoming the rule of the day getting worse each trip. That was primarily in the US and France; the Munich security people were more laid back and willing to listen. [“That’s a CPAP compressor.” Mimes holding a mask to my nose. Security person nods and waves me through. I still should have bought a Hofbräuhaus München Steinkrug.]

    By the last trip, I decided to skip flying in the future. When my stepfather passed away a few years later with no warning, it made more sense to pack up the truck and drive the 2000 miles back east rather than mess with flying. (It didn’t help that Flyover Falls usually has no airline service; the last attempt shut down after a couple of years.)

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      1. Yeah, that would be an issue. (Do passenger ships do the trans-Atlantic journey any more? Barring that, do you have any really good friends with a large yacht? Could either alternative be done without cubic yards of cash? :) )

        When my Stepdad passed away, it was no question. I had to go, and three overnight stays later, I was there. (Back when gas was $2.30 a gallon. Sigh.) When Mom was slipping away in 2022, it was pretty clear I wasn’t up to the trip. BIL has related horror stories of trying to get CPAP equipment through a flight, especially unbroken, and my body has given a hard no for long road trips.

        (There were rather different family circumstances at play, influencing each decision. Whee!)

        I hope you can do it.

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        1. Regarding CPAP which is considered medical equipment. Most airlines allow personal carry on luggage, and separate medical carry on. Can only have medical in the medical carry on. I will run into this when/if (no plans) I fly with my service dog. I can have a second carry on with her stuff (food) and any other medical supplies (mouth piece, medications), in it. But no personal items, including hygiene items, can be in the medical carry on. (Me figuring out how to get luggage carry on, the backpack that I can carry Pepper in, and her kennel, all as carry on. Easy. Pack the backpack with her food, and my medical. Put backpack in the airline certified soft kennel. Put laptop in personal carry on.)

          I am flying mid February, we are choosing to leave Pepper home. Sigh. Hubby has to be the service person for the week (not new, how we worked before we once I meet up with him (EUG – PHX, direct, 3 hour layover cheaper flight is ill advised without Pepper). Will have a new medical alert wallet & card to hang from my purse, and a JIC protein bar for the flight. Hopefully be able to pickup flavored bottle water, and coffee, after through TSA (EUG and 7 AM flight, so iffy).

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          1. Sounds like a theme for the fundraiser to me. If we word it right, I bet we could get all the bots on Vile 770 to help….

            “Send Sarah back where she came from!”

            Nothing has to mention she shall return….. 😎

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              1. No. But know what happens in cruise ships.

                Point. The value goes down when the swimming experience isn’t done in the ship’s pool.

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        4. Do passenger ships do the trans-Atlantic journey any more?

          Yep – Cunard, Queen Mary 2. In 2018 we did NY to Southampton, and six weeks later, Southampton back to NYC.

          Balcony railing wasn’t pipe and plexiglass – it was 1-inch steel plate. Now, that’s an Ocean Liner.

          Loved both trips. Would Recommend, if you don’t mind no stops or excursions between boarding and disembarking.

          Liked by 1 person

    2. I had the “pleasure” of flying back from Vienna the day after the Shoe Bomber’s attempt. Vienna’s security was a bit of a mess, and Frankfurt … a zoo, an absolute zoo as they tried to implement the new US demands without the people or equipment. I did, however, get the mild Schadenfreude of watching FraPort security go after an idiot who decided to remove a barrier and jump the line. He was an American, and stupid. I know he missed his flight. Don’t know if he ended up missing anything else (funds, teeth, …)

      Now? I really, really try not to fly.

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      1. Two of the trips required changing planes in Frankfurt, but I didn’t have to go through the security fun. Munich seemed to have been reasonably civilized, though it might be a Bavarian thing. SFO after the shoe bomber was seriously annoying, and when we had to change planes in Paris (DeGaulle), we got to watch the French version of TSA hassling grannies and ignoring the likely suspects.

        Airport cuisine in action: A French BLT includes what appears to be uncooked bacon. I was flashing on an old All Creatures where James Herriot was given a slab of “bacon” and he tried giving it to the farmer’s border collie. Who refused it. (The lettuce and tomato were almost up to mediocre.)

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        1. Mom has flown frequently (more than me, note – my first flight since 2005 is next month) over the last 15 years since dad died (March 25, will be 15 years). She has a US TSA number but not an international one. She gets a chuckle. 1) TSA number means one doesn’t have to take off their shoes. 2) If you are 75 or older, don’t have to remove shoes. She’s both. She’s gotten asked to take off her shoes. She’s 89. She does look younger than the people she travels with, some of which aren’t 75, yet. She just shows them her passport (even domestic flights, doesn’t have “that” drivers license. Why? She has her passport.) If they still insist she calls for a supervisor. Not helped, now that she has to wear an foot/ankle brace (no metal, but still). Her friends are a hoot. When they travel together they ask her to request a wheel chair, as the oldest. Generally waiting for her. The attended takes one look, shake their head, and call for people mover. Not sure EUG has one. The wheelchair isn’t because mom needs one. Just if one of the group has a wheelchair then the connecting plane will be held for the group. Flying out of Eugene, odds are high there will be a connecting flight.

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          1. My latest flight was PDX-O’Hare-Dublin, and then DUB-Heathrow-Seattle-PDX.

            My wife has a steel water bottle, has a 550 strap with a compass and (had) a little firestarter, one of the microsized flint rod deals.

            They confiscated it in SEATAC. Pulled my whiskeys from midleton out of the SEALED BAG to scan for “something”. The fifth time through three different nations’ security apparatus. FFS.

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            2. Not surprised an international flight had a connection flight even out of PDX, but two (return trip). Wow. Out of EUG at least one connections, other than direct to west coast large hubs like Phoenix, is a given (even then there were only two options, two, out of 8 or so). Flying east connections are pray your flight isn’t late, and run. Flying back west, it is get off the connecting airport plane, wander over to the next gate, go find snack/meal, browse the stores available without going past security, wander back. Seriously, it is hours. My connections back from 2005 was a dang roller coaster, I swear. DC – Chicago – Dallas – Portland – Eugene, with a minimum of an hour wait between connections.

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  26. “And what effect on society? And shouldn’t we know that, before implementing society-wide experiments?”

    That ship sailed long before Saint Fauci of Wuhan was born. Insert sad look here.

    Liked by 1 person

  27. Coincidentally I just read a substack or two about this book:

    Sarah’s male playground seems pretty much in agreement with that book (or at least the male part). The fact that we seem to be curbing that element of male development is probably not good.

    Liked by 1 person

  28. So many responses! I was going to say that reading like “Starship Troopers” and “Ender’s Game” should be required for adolescent boys as they progress through the teen years. IMHO, boys should be sparring. We had so much fun in our “wrestling league” (which probably looked like random crazy violence out of context) and we all became pretty good at a weird form of MMA that was part Judo, part Greco-Roman wrestling, part WWF and part street-fighting. I still LOVE hitting the heavy bag, but, regrettably, my Planet Fitness doesn’t have one. You also learn the limits of your spirit in such encounters. ALL of my lessons in fighting were learned by demonstration at my expense first – including when to de-escalate or retreat. When you thought there was a real risk of getting punched in the face, you thought twice about saying things.

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