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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   22553 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 28, 2024

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For the person on their 12th conviction? I don't know what else can be done.

Every society in human history before about the year 1900 understood that the death penalty was a perfectly salutary way to get rid of individuals who have conclusively demonstrated, numerous times over an extended duration, that they’re unwilling and/or incapable of participating non-parasitically in society. I have no idea why nearly the entire world forgot this more or less simultaneously.

conclusively demonstrated, numerous times over an extended duration, that they’re unwilling and/or incapable of participating non-parasitically in society

To play devils advocate this would describe the red tribe to people who will very likley end up in charge of the US in the long term.

As I’ve made clear before, I don’t believe that there is such thing as “the red tribe”, nor do I believe that there is any meaningful number of progressives in positions of power who believe in executing people for expressing conservative opinions.

I don’t believe that there is such thing as “the red tribe”

While it's definitely true that there is no cohesive red tribe with common elders and kings, the various groups of normally-republican-voting Americans who side with each other for me and my brother against my cousin reasons are enough of a thing with enough commonalities to merit having a name.

I don’t think there’s anywhere near enough commonality between these various groups, nor enough history of voting together, to constitute anything remotely like a “tribe”. There have been significant political realignments over the last fifty years, including ones even within my lifetime. Entire demographic groups, income brackets, and occupations which used to reliably vote for one party now vote for another. Working-class laborers in the Midwest used to be a very reliable Democratic voting bloc, but the Republicans started peeling them off less than 20 years ago. To me, this sort of thing does not make a “tribe”. Tribes have a long history. What we’re talking about today are just people who watch the same cable news programs and follow the same content creators on Twitter.

Yes, I will agree with you that 'tribe' is a stupid description, although many of the component groups can be fairly described that way. But it is a thing that exists, and has common shibboleths and cultural convergences.

But it is a thing that exists, and has common shibboleths and cultural convergences.

So, I think that this is true to some extent now under Trump, because he has provided a specific rallying point for these groups to converge around/against. However, I don’t think it was true at all when Scott actually wrote the essay in question.

nor do I believe that there is any meaningful number of progressives in positions of power who believe in executing people for expressing conservative opinions.

True but if once we got to the point where we decided as a society "we should start just liquidating inconvenient people again" it might not be entirely clear where that stopped or who would be designated disposable under that paradigm. I am just as I said playing devils advocate here, I think if we got to the point where we were just executing either thieves or conservatives society would have gone pretty far off the rails albeit in radically different directions in those two cases.

Draco and the bloody code and the regulator-moderator war were exceptions, most historical societies did not execute petty criminals, although corporal punishment, fines, and public humiliation were common and enslavement slightly less so.

Christianity.

The Second Great Awakening was a hell of a drug.

The timing for that doesn’t work out at all. The Second Great Awakening burnt out by the 1830s–40s, several generations before most states eliminated or severely restricted the death penalty. Also, Christians support the death penalty at higher rates than non-Christians, at least in the United States.

The surge in the 70s depends on Supreme Court jurisprudence which probably couldn’t have occurred before the New Deal. But I think capital punishment advocacy does date back to the 1800s. States like Michigan banned it early with explicitly Christian arguments.

Today’s split probably has more to do with partisan habits than with religion.

IIRC the death penalty still retains majority approval in many countries around the world, even those where it has been abolished. It’s not a case of “the entire world” forgetting, so much as it is the Western ruling classes forgetting. This, I suspect, can be ascribed to the ruling class living in ever more of a low-crime, high-trust bubble as compared to the common rabble.

So, yes, the death penalty does have majority public support in many if not most advanced countries. However, in how many of those countries do you believe the statement “the death penalty should be used on individuals who have shoplifted 45 times, but who have not otherwise committed any violent crimes” would enjoy majority support? My sense is that the answer is probably zero. People in European-derived societies appear to have become incredibly squeamish about executing non-violent but otherwise persistent and un-rehabilitatable criminal offenders.

The death penalty for sex crimes and drug dealers probably has majority support in the U.S., although shoplifting specifically I doubt it.

There's a knock on effect of execution for murder or attempted murder on how expensive and awful prisons are. Gangs thrive in prison because the guards are not able to maintain a monopoly on violence, which is partly because many prisoners have nothing left to lose.

Edit: forgot to make the full connection to the current topic, which is that policing minor offenders like shoplifting would still get a lot easier with the consistent application of the death penalty even if they aren't the ones getting executed.

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