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But the problem is it shouldn't get to the level of "we need a third party to intervene", under a civilised world we should be "oops sorry didn't know it was your space" when he got a polite note (and the initial note should be polite, not aggressive or spouting insults), not "fuck you bitch" unless penalties are imposed.
Good God, the older I get, the more I understand original Obi-Wan Kenobi. And this clip is all that is wrong with current mores. Civility is not pretentiousness, it's living like we are not chimpanzees flinging shit at rival troupes.
If you want to keep your civilized world, you need to at least occasionally deal with those acting in an uncivilized manner. Having them is inevitable, because assholes are everywhere. Whether dealing with them is the modal experience depends on incentives -- if there are strong incentives against acting uncivilized, the assholes will either cool it or get forced out. If instead the "civilized people" decide "don't sweat the small stuff and it's all small stuff" is the proper way to act, the assholes will run roughshod over them.
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To have a civilized world, however sanctions must be enforced. Sub-criminal behaviour should be matched by sub-judicial sanctions. Put a video up of how scared you were, use the camera footage of him keying your car or pounding aggressively on your door, put it on Twitter and tik-tok and the like. In the old days, he would have been sanctioned by the village giving him the cold shoulder, now in a more atomized society social media shaming is the go to. In other words, he should be cancelled. Maybe the management company will evict him when the story goes viral, or he will lose his job. Therefore disincentivizing his behaviour.
Depends if the perpetrator is a member of a left favoured group or not. If he is I think you run an even greater risk that you will be the one who ends up cancelled instead for "perpetuating oppressor dynamics/punching down" etc. etc.
Sure, there are other social dynamics as well, but the idea is still sound. And indeed as Jonathan Majors showed a woman making an accusation against a man can still bear fruit.
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Of course we shouldn't, but expecting everyone to be courteous all the time is ridiculous. I also shouldn't have to lock my car, or remove valuables from plain sight, or any number of other things that I do because they are unfortunately necessary. The question here is one of remedy, the implication being that receiving justice is so involved that it's often not worth it for relatively minor inconveniences. Which can be true, since this isn't one of those cases. It's a shame that she has to call the property management company to get somebody to do something about it, but it's a phone call. The initial concern wasn't that the thing was happening but that it was too minor for the police to get involved.
The old Hobbesian/Trad-Right take would be that the sort of people who believe that "expecting everyone to be courteous all the time is ridiculous" create the environment where you need to remove valuables from plain sight because how you approach the little things informs how you approach the big things.
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Why? I was born in a house without running water, and my mother taught me not to eat in the streets as that was common and bad manners. Then something changed in society, we dumped all the old rules, and today this is what we've got: 'please don't park in my space' engenders a guy trying to kick your door down.
And all the assumptions that he must be a working-class/underclass thug? Not warranted. Middle-class people can be mannerless sons of bitches too. Don't put it all on the poor, the college boys and girls who grew up to make the new rules are the ones who brought this situation about.
If we lower our expectations to "of course asking people to behave with common courtesy in public all the time is ridiculous", then this is what we get.
I think we might be talking past each other here. I don't mean ridiculous in the sense that it's unreasonable on an individual level, I mean ridiculous in the sense that, on a societal level, expecting a world where there are no assholes is hopelessly naive. It's like the whole defund the police thing; I personally don't like the idea that it's necessary to dedicate so many of my tax dollars to funding an apparatus to protect society from the very worst possible sort of person. But I don't think that defunding the police is a reasonable position on the basis that it's not ridiculous to expect people to behave all the time. Or like the idea during MeToo that instead of teaching women basic precautions we should just teach men no to rape. A nice sentiment, but easier said than done. As a practical matter, it isn't realistic for me to live my life with the expectation that everyone will always be acting courteous and in good faith, because no matter what we try to do, there are always going to be assholes out there.
I certainly don't expect a society with no assholes, but right now I think we've slid all the way into "how dare you accuse me of being an asshole, I'm a minority/a victim/rules are for suckers/other stupid reason for why I shouldn't have to abide by social norms" acceptance of bad behaviour.
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