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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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I know that this sounds barbaric, but perhaps we could use something like flogging for these kids. Yes, it would have an unfortunate resemblance to slavery. Yes, it might leave marks, but figuring out how to beat someone or cause them pain without scarring them isn’t a terribly hard thing to do.

It also sounds like it might be a good idea to do this to adults for a first-time misdemeanor offense, maybe some minor felonies. Maybe expunge the whole thing from the record after a few years of good conduct.

I think farm labor would be perfect. Take the unruley city kid and have them manually transplant Vidalia onions for 3 months. If they try to start something I doubt the visa-farm laborers would take a second to beat them to the ground. could even pay them $15/hr subsidized by the government to be paid upon completion of sentence. Any tantrum or loss of crops from the individual can be taken out of their pay.

The problem is that bored young antisocial men have no outlets for constructive behavior in the ghetto. Get them working and put them in a situation where they're isolated from what allows them to misbehave.

That could work - it's basically a short term at hard labor. This being said, there are perverse incentives galore: this shit's profitable. Now you've got not only budding thugs and gangsters but also some poor sap that got busted for shoplifting caught up in this dragnet. As long as they're not working them too hard, giving them enough food and water...as long as it's not some kind of troubled-teen hellhole like Holes with less water and more beatings, it sounds like a good idea. Ideally, the government (and the farmers) would barely break even on the scheme.

I wonder what happened to the petty criminals of our grandfathers' time, who were given the choice between jail and the Army...provided they didn't see combat, were they better off?

I mean sure, that's a thing that seems worth trying, but it'll never happen. Instead politicians will continue pretending the thirteen year old assaulter will get a stern lecture from his parents like it's 1955 until he kills someone, and cops will continue getting frustrated until sombra negra comes to the US, and that'll be significantly worse to the progressive mindset than a few floggings but it's too late to change anything.

I mean. In 1955, in a lot of cities? A White cop could basically get away with murdering that Black 13-year-old. A dropped gun, a statement that the kid had pulled it, and nobody really asks any questions. I'll grant that some of this might have been cops covering up a tragic, honest mistake, of the "I confused a wallet for a pistol" variety, but a hell of a lot was just shooting fleeing people in the back or shooting them for contempt of cop.

Nice, liberal people want their violence hidden; if it just so happens that 13-year-old juvenile delinquents are sometimes never seen or heard from again, and there is a strong suspicion that it is the local police department doing it...people can unfortunately look the other way. And that's a damn shame: frustrated cops as judge, jury, and executioner.

Like. Someone is going to want to do something about this problem. The prison-industrial complex is expensive; unlike slavery, a prisoner can't make enough off of making license plates (or whatever it is they have them doing) to pay for what it costs to keep him locked up. Bullets are unfortunately cheap.

Someone mentioned farm labor, and that seems like it wouldn't be a bad idea either. Certainly not if they're with migrant farm workers (instead of other juvenile delinquents). Three months picking strawberries because you carjacked some dude at 13 might get you to straighten up.

EDIT: To be clear, I do not think that extrajudicial killings of criminals are at all a good idea. Nice, liberal people don't like violence, but if it must happen they want it well-hidden; they'd be very much against said extrajudicial killings but could look the other way most of the time, I think. Most of us would've been good Germans. I'll stand by what I think cops could've gotten away with in 1955.

sombra negra

I would have hoped I was in the timeline were we get Batman or The Shadow as our vigilantes.

If El Salvordoran death squads are all thats available it's likely another example of Central Americans taking the jobs of American vigilantes.