I heard an argument from a psychologist once that changed my mind from pro spanking (I was spanked reasonably) to meh spanking.
The point of parenting is to help your children grow into the next stage of life and eventually adulthood. Spanking teaches you the opposite of what you need to take into future personal relationships or the workplace. At no other point in the child’s life will physical violence of any kind be an okay solution to a problem or an appropriate punishment. Your spouse can’t spank you nor you them - you’ll have to negotiate agreements. Your boss can’t smack you and move on - you’ll have to be retrained, docked pay, earn their trust back, or maybe even be fired. Every conflict or disappointing performance for the rest of the child’s life will require a myriad of negotiations and solutions NONE of which will include physical force. So what are you teaching them?
Let me pose a counterargument for the sport of it: The psychologist isn't going back far enough. Before the stage at which you can learn to model the consequences of behavior, you need to master a far more simple task: basic self-control. You need to be able to resist an urge for any reason at all (whether that be your mom hitting you, or your boss firing you). Without that foundation, it doesn't matter whether one intellectually "understands" the consequences of bad behavior. Mill understood it this way: before you can master yourself, you must first learn to obey. Only *after* one learns to do this can they then learn to take over those reigns and learn "self mastery"--turn that sense of obedience inwards onto urges you would rather resist so that you can reach your goals. This is the basic philosophy of the military, and ideal man that that system hopes to create might be emblematized by the SEAL-- someone who knows obedience well but cannot be dismissed as a mere follower. They are powerful because they have achieved inhuman self-mastery.
Further, it takes a long time before children can learn why bad things are bad--a 3 year old simply cannot understand why not eating all the candy they wish the second they wish it is a good thing, or why throwing toys at other kids will make them unpopular.
I know people who’ve taught at military colleges, and retraining soldiers who’ve had it drummed into them to just obey orders to become officers who make their own decisions and give orders to others is a difficult problem for them. Learning an obedience reflex is more of a block to independent thought than a stepping stone to it. As for self-control, it’s related to the Big 5 trait conscientiousness, which like all the big 5 traits has a big genetic component. I’m not convinced there’s much of anything parents can do to increase their offspring’s self-control, especially once the basics of providing a stable, loving home life are covered. It’s a pretty strong claim in my book to argue that not only can parents do something, but spanking specifically is the way.
I think it’s possible to drum it in to people to be obedient, especially if it’s limited to specific times and contexts (my commander gives me an order, I execute immediately). It’s a much bigger task to inculcate greater self-control in someone in a way that will persist across the lifespan and across different aspects of life.
That is so not what you learn in the military. The whole first couple of years of training is ALL about self control and self mastery. I can make myself organized and function in a way that is not natural to me. I can do physical things I never thought I could. Yes, you learn to do what you’re told, but you also learn how to overcome your fears, doubts, weaknesses, and excuses and push on. You learn self confidence that lasts a lifetime BECAUSE you learn self mastery.
Interesting - do you think your training increased your self-control in non-work related areas of life too? And did the effect persist over years?
One caveat to note is that conscientiousness often increases in one’s early to mid 20s, especially for men. If you were in the military during that period of life, it’s possible you’re crediting your training for an effect that would have happened anyway. But of course you’re the best interpreter of your own experience.
I don’t deny that spanking can make a child obey the parent, at least for a time. Just like military training can make soldiers obey their commanders. I’m just not convinced either approach encourages long-term self-control, self-efficacy, or self-mastery.
I get that argument too. I don’t really have strong feelings about it either way except that I don’t buy any of the children’s autonomy etc arguments. Parents should have the final say short of prosecutable abuse. The idea that we teach children that sometimes a loved one will hit you for your own good and then we spend the rest of their lives teaching them to never allow anyone to hit them... it just sticks out to me as the very best argument I’ve heard.
I’m a vet too so I completely get your military example, I do love discipline!
I think if there were good evidence spanking encourages self-discipline, the Collinses, who give the impression of having read every child development study under the sun, would have invoked it in their defense rather than resorting to obvious codswallop about tigers.
Picture 5-year-old me at the dinner table. A frigid environment, not a word being said, as usual. I reach out for one of the dishes of food, and knock over my water glass. The glass isn't broken, everything else is basically fine, and yet, my father unleashes an absolute tirade on me for daring such carelessness. He makes a motion as if to smack me and doesn't. I flinch. Out of ignorance, I figure that knocking glasses over is simply a really bad thing.
But then, a mere couple of weeks later, another quiet evening at the dinner table, and what should happen but my father reaching across the table, and wouldn't you know it, he knocks over his water glass. And after the shortest of silences, I aptly think to say something to the effect of "What now?". And you know why his reply is? Does he apologize for his earlier outburst? Does he flagellate himself for committing the unspeakable sin of knocking a glass over? No, despite those being the only two possible outcomes my kindergarten-age brain could conceive of in this obvious parallel. He just starts slowly mopping the water up, waits a minute, looks at me, and says "shut up".
I was never afraid of him again. That is what authority means to me: nothing. That is the origin of leftist thought. Much like the postmodernists would say, this interaction had nothing to do with objective reality or consistent rules, it was simply about who had the most power. Only later would I learn enough psychology to conclude that perhaps he had a bad day at work and was taking it out on me or something. But while I observe that as fact, I don't take it as being normative. My belief is that it doesn't matter what the power difference is in this or any other scenario. There is an objective reality, and it only matters who is closer to being right. Either spilling a glass of water is a felony, or it isn't.
I certainly have been spanked, and I'm using that term separately from child abuse. My bones are all intact. But I reject the term "corporal punishment". Punishment implies a crime, implies an truth-seeking investigation and due process and the rule of law. I would agree that kids can be little shits, but I would never trust a parent to be the adjudicator of right and wrong to the point of being able to enforce "corporal punishment". Maybe the kid actually did something bad, but even if that's true, if I see a parent hitting a kid I don't assume any sort of "justice" is behind it. I see other more plausible psychological explanations for people to indulge their baser, violent urges.
It's a bitch move to hit someone weaker than you. It's true when a man hits a woman, it's true when a parent hits a child, it's true when a human hits a dog. I have nothing but contempt for it, I make little distinction between any of these scenarios, and I want everyone who does this arrested and criminally charged.
It’s wrong to hit your children, but it’s unforgivable to hit them in front of a journalist you know will write it up in a major publication. For the rest of his life, there’s a good chance Torsten Savage Barbaricus Hercules Supremicus von Ubermensch Collins will have to see that story every time he googles his very identifiable name.
I am genuinely, thoroughly baffled by the weird ambivalence re: Trump/politics generally that I’m hearing from you guys (and outright Trump support coming from other “heterodox” people, whatever that even means at this point). So let me try and make my case; apologies for going long here but there’s a lot of stuff going on!
Here’s a guy who is an open, proud career criminal and fraudster, not at all shy about threatening violence or other types of intimidation in order to get his way, who is clearly running for two primary reasons: to soothe his wounded ego from his loss in 2020 (which he hasn’t conceded, and never will), and to avoid prosecution on various federal and state crimes, some of which he is *obviously* guilty of (and has all but admitted to in substance, like in the documents case in Florida). Is that someone you want running the world’s largest economy and military?
I started out extremely skeptical of Bragg’s case, but as I heard the evidence, it became clear that yeah, actually Trump committed these crimes. So for the first time in his long criminal career, he’s experiencing some mild consequences. I’m struggling to feel any kind of pity or sympathy for him, especially since he has no respect for the proceedings, no remorse, no nothing. Even went so far as to go after the judge’s daughter, fer chrissakes. He just has no regard for the rule of law in general, none whatsoever.
Hell, if you want a contrast, the Biden Justice Dept. is prosecuting his only surviving son, ffs! (And on grounds that I would think a lot of right-of-center/libertarian people would reject: basically lying about his drug use on a gun-permit form.) And not only that, but Biden has hardly said a word about it other than “I love my son” or words to that effect. Just try and tell me with a straight face that you could imagine Trump allowing such a prosecution of one of his adult children. We all know he wouldn’t; he would corruptly meddle with the Justice Dept., because he is profoundly corrupt (remember the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Ave.?) and feels no shame about it at all.
But set all that aside! The following is more important, IMO: Do you—whoever you are, if anyone is reading this—really support his policy agenda? Across-the-board tariff of 10% on all imports, raising prices and increasing inflation? Pulling out of NATO, or at least severely crippling its credibility (would he actually defend Poland, Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, if it came to that)? Cutting taxes yet again (which is also inflationary), mostly on rich people? Mass deportations, seemingly without due process, the way he and his minions talk about it? Nominating even more right-wing judges—who will almost certainly be of lesser quality than last time—thus making the balance of the judiciary even more lopsided? I could go on and on, but the fact is the guy has an actual policy agenda, and it’s not good. Maybe Title IX will get better again the way it did last time, but even that will be easily reversed by the next Democratic president (and as someone who votes for Democrats, I am annoyed and offended by this). So is it really worth all the other insane shit we’ll all have to deal with? Just think this through: is your (totally justified) annoyance with the excesses of stupid lefties really so severe and important that you’d be willing to give Trump another four years as president? And btw, how would that help? Seems to me it would make it worse.
But not only is Trump objectively bad, and contrary to all the claptrap you hear on various podcasts and wherever else, Joe Biden actually has a record that he can be pretty proud of—far from perfect, obviously, but when has there been a perfect president? He’s run a grownup administration that doesn’t dominate every second of the news cycle, doesn’t feel like a constant emergency, doesn’t make you wonder if he’ll wake up at 4:30am in such a psychotic mood that he thinks “hey maybe I oughta send some insane tweets at Kim Jong Un and see if I can stoke a nuclear confrontation”. I’d be happy to defend his record at length too, if anyone actually wants to read that, but I’m already testing people’s patience expecting anyone to read all of this.
Ok, I’ll stop now; this is far too long. But seriously people, if the Republicans had nominated anyone else (except, y’know, Bannon or someone insane like that), I wouldn’t be writing screeds like this. Trump is a unique menace, and just because the people who are always saying that on MSNBC or wherever are insufferable—and I agree: they are!—doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to vote for him just to stick it to those people. It just isn’t worth it.
It's not quite the same situation but in the UK as we gear up for our election, I know a lot of people who aren't going to vote. And that probably includes me. I just can't bring myself to vote for any of the main parties. In the local elections I voted for independent and regional party candidates, but the apathy at national level is stark.
Just a heads up - YouTube constantly unsubscribes people from certain channels, this one included. I’ve had to subscribe many times, so just make sure you’re subscribed even if you think you already are
Very impressive honesty about the Trump verdict. Seeing the ugly side of the ideology you were raised to support and defend is no easy pill to swallow. I'll disagree a bit about sentencing. I think they'll go all the way. They'll perp walk him and put him in jail. If the polls still rise, it's Jeffrey Epstein time. This is bigger than the Democratic Party. It's worldwide. It's also not completely accurate to call it Leftism (at least in the sense of what Leftism dreams of providing). It is though where Leftism ends up: elites controlling the masses in increasingly obvious and harsh ways.
If Trump gets a custodial sentence it will be 110% his own damned fault: throughout the trial he just could *not* stfu, taking potshots at the judge, at the judge’s *daughter* ffs, just displaying complete and utter contempt for the court in every possible way. No display of remorse. No acceptance of responsibility. Because of course not; he’s a complete sociopath (at best).
Typically here in New York, if you’re convicted of an E felony and have no prior convictions and no record of violence, you’ll get probation. And that’s probably still what Trump will get. But his behavior throughout this case is the sort of thing that can get a judge mad enough to give you an actual custodial sentence. Or, and personally this is what I hope for, some community service would be a nice middle ground here: can you even imagine Donald Trump, the world’s least community-minded person, being compelled to actually help someone other than himself? At this age (and being the sort of person he is), he’s not going to actually *learn* anything, but it would be a fitting sentence, I think.
… and all the “good ol’ boys” in the south who lynched blacks back in the day were sentenced not guilty. A judge and jury of their peers said so. Must be so. There’s no such thing as using the courts to your ideological advantage.
I hardly know where to begin to respond to a comment like that. I’m from Alabama, ok, so I grew up with a very intimate understanding of the sort of jury-nullifying evil you’re talking about. The fact that you’d even compare the two makes me wonder if it’s worth responding here, but on the off chance that someone else reads this and cares, here are a couple of differences:
In those cases, you had the most oppressed people in the country (Southern black people, mostly men), who didn’t even have their full constitutional rights because of the Jim Crow regime, being put through kangaroo courts by the people who always held the whip hand in Southern society. And that’s in cases where they even bothered having trials, which is different from full-on lynchings; in the latter case(s), you’d just have mob justice first, and then a bullshit “trial” where the murderers were let off because they were white and the lynched person was black.
In the Trump case in Manhattan, every count was backed up with documentary evidence—and there were other pieces of evidence they didn’t even bother charging him on, as elaborated in the prosecution’s closing statement—and the defendant was not a poor, oppressed black person; it was a multi-multimillionaire former President of the United States who has made a career out of bullshitting and defrauding people.
Furthermore, this verdict is subject to appeal, and Trump is indeed appealing it. He will have ample opportunity to make his case if he thinks he was wronged here. Lynched black people in the Jim Crow South had no such luck, as you undoubtedly already know. Can’t appeal when you’ve already been hanged from a tree.
Oh, and in this case, politicians were lining up outside the courthouse to defend the defendant’s honor (or whatever they were doing out there), and half the electorate reflexively opposed the prosecution. No such luck for black people in the South 100 years ago.
I could go on, but I think you get my point: That’s a spectacularly frivolous, historically illiterate comparison.
The point being that some courthouses throughout history have their verdict in hand before the start due to their ideological leanings. Rodney King vs. LAPD being another. People vs. OJ Simpson being another. You're right that whomever has the political power has the advantage . Trump had no political power in that courtroom. Money doesn't always equal power. He was tried in an area where he got 5% of the vote.
I hope you've looked at both left and right media concerning this trial. It very much looks like: We've got to stop Trump! Let's go over every thing he's ever done. Well, that bookkeeping mis-entry has expired. Oh, I got an idea! Let's attach it to some other crime! What other crime? We don't even have to say and neither does the jury. As long as we have 12 Trump haters on the jury, we just have to make a little smoke and it'll give them the excuse they need. No that won't work, he'll be able to appeal it easy. Yes but think about the next six months; our press will call him a "convicted felon" non-stop every day until the election. For that alone, it's worth it.
If you're honest with yourself, you know that's the basic outline of what happened. That's using the court system to your ideological, in this case, political advantage. That's what they did in the USSR and 3rd world banana republics... and in the old south.
You guys really don't know electoral politics very well. It sounds like you're just surfing the discourse, like some kind of inverse Pauline Kael.
If you actually want to know how voters are reacting, I suggest listening to the Focus Group podcast.
And this notion that "Democrats just want to get him" -- are you aware of what Trump tried to do to Clinton, Comey and Andrew McCabe when he was in office?
Finally, 40 of Trump's senior advisors and cabinet members, including his VP, have said they will not vote for him in 2024. These aren't Democrats talking. These are the people who worked with him closely. Doesn't that tell you something about the man?
Which is a worse form of child abuse, hitting your two-year old in a restaurant in front of a Guardian journalist, or naming your daughter “Titan Invictus”? I’m honestly torn.
The Trump conviction won’t matter at all to the Trump supporters. They’ll just vote…harder?? I think there’s at least enough understanding out there thought that nearly everyone knows this was a political stunt, whether they support it or not. This same charge could likely be brought to a large chunk of Washington in one form or another. There’s also the fact that the democrats, by virtue of the timing of when they decided to bring charges, are implicitly admitting that they wouldn’t have cared if he wasn’t running again. We’ll see what happens though.
I fully don’t understand the controversy over spanking. I was born in ‘91. I was spanked, also on more than one occasion slapped across the face by my mom. Believe me, it was necessary/deserved. I consider her to have done an excellent job raising all of us kids.
My siblings and I are of varying opinions on this. Some of us spank, some don’t. The only one who even raises an eyebrow at it is the English professor(by far the most left leaning of all of us). In my family it’s well within the range of normal punishment/teaching of consequences.
Abuse is a word that has lost a lot of its meaning I think. It’s tossed around far too lightly for my taste.
I don't really get the controversy either. I'm an 80s baby, one of four children, we could be...a handful. And when we got really out of line, a slap on the back of the hand or a couple of slaps to the backs of the legs were not unheard of. None of us are worse off for it, and like you, I also consider my parents to have done an excellent job of raising us all. I never got a slap across the face though, I was mostly the goody two shoes. But my older sister who was the wild child did. And she laughs about it now.
So, I’m an oddball. I said things to my parents like, “if it’s the truth, then I don’t care if you believe me” when I was less than 10. That had to be very frustrating.
I’m not a troublemaker though. I wasn’t a wild child. I didn’t drink or party or even get kicked out of class very often. I am
Very independent minded though and I don’t think anyone could have actually made me care enough about school to get straight A’s-which almost all of my siblings did. When I got slapped, it was the few times I’ve ever said anything truly mean about my siblings-to my mom’s face. I think she was right to snap me back to reality in those times. I was beyond angry at what was happening to me in those moments, but it was not an excuse to hide bad behavior behind a lack of emotional control.
I really loved the spanking conversation. As a child of Sicilian immigrants, spanking was just part of growing up, it wasn't at all abusive and my brother and I are both absolutely fine. I do find peoples opinions on this topic extremely weird when they cannot separate a spanking from a beating, they are nothing alike and shouldn't even be brought up in the same sentence.
I used to be very anti-spanking, but now I'm just kind of meh-spanking. Other parenting techniques like time outs and grounding (grounding from screens is the new grounding) do work, but require more time and effort to enforce. On occasion, I've observed that my kids are misbehaving in a way that a spanking would probably very efficiently resolve.
On the other hand, the only time I really have the impulse to spank them is when I'm really mad. Once in awhile they do something to really tick me off, and that's when I most would like to use spanking for discipline. I think it's one of those things that is harmless in small doses when parents are loving, decent parents, and harmful in excess. I do find that because I have restricted myself to not spanking, I tended to spend more time thinking about the root causes of their behavior, and trying to address them. In the early years especially, a *lot* of behavior problems are because of other things like like not getting enough sleep, not eating well, not enough attention, too much screen time, etc.
I know that we hear a lot that kids now get way too much attention, but I'm not convinced. I think that when there was always a stay at home parent, kids probably many more little, ordinary interactions with their parents, especially their moms that they don't get now. That probably makes a difference.
I'm not a fan of spanking, but not disciplining is also really harmful, and we see a lot of that now. Parents don't want to or don't have the time to enforce these other consequences, so they don't do anything. Kids don't behave because no one really makes them behave. That's at least as bad.
Check out the YouTube clips on “Chancla or no chancla” where Chicano comedians interview various Mexican moms about which behaviors merit la chancla (flip flop spanking).
It's weird how some people are trying to pretend what Trump did isn't illegal, or that they don't even know what the crime is.
You know who knows what the crime is? The lawyers for David Pecker and Dylan Howard at the National Enquirer!
When the lawyers found out that Pecker and Howard were running a catch & kill operation, they told them it was illegal and that they could go to jail for it. It was after that warning that Pecker told Trump they could not pay off Stormy Daniels on his behalf, and that's when Trump and Michael Cohen cooked up their scheme.
After Trump won Pecker's editor Dylan Howard texted that he hoped Trump would give them a pardons.
To underscore the point, Pecker was given limited immunity in order to provide evidence. This happened long before Bragg was the DA.
You do not get immunity to testify in the absence of crimes.
On Trump and Russia - Ukraine for once I think Sarah is totally wrong. Trump loves dictator bullies. And I think it is to US centric to think that Putin would really make his actions totally dependent on that the US does. Biden is as opposed to Putin as possible and it did not stop Putin despite him knowing that.
Sorry, I thought I answered this in your other comment! I have not tried Risewell, but the ingredient in question is nano hydroxyapatite, which might be harmful in certain concentrations and particle shapes. I would email them and ask.
OK so Risewell has 2 types of toothpaste that contain the nano and micro versions. Luckily the kids version I bought (the cake batter taste, not the "pro") only contains micro. So I can just stop ordering this and go about my life.
I heard an argument from a psychologist once that changed my mind from pro spanking (I was spanked reasonably) to meh spanking.
The point of parenting is to help your children grow into the next stage of life and eventually adulthood. Spanking teaches you the opposite of what you need to take into future personal relationships or the workplace. At no other point in the child’s life will physical violence of any kind be an okay solution to a problem or an appropriate punishment. Your spouse can’t spank you nor you them - you’ll have to negotiate agreements. Your boss can’t smack you and move on - you’ll have to be retrained, docked pay, earn their trust back, or maybe even be fired. Every conflict or disappointing performance for the rest of the child’s life will require a myriad of negotiations and solutions NONE of which will include physical force. So what are you teaching them?
I was pretty convinced.
Let me pose a counterargument for the sport of it: The psychologist isn't going back far enough. Before the stage at which you can learn to model the consequences of behavior, you need to master a far more simple task: basic self-control. You need to be able to resist an urge for any reason at all (whether that be your mom hitting you, or your boss firing you). Without that foundation, it doesn't matter whether one intellectually "understands" the consequences of bad behavior. Mill understood it this way: before you can master yourself, you must first learn to obey. Only *after* one learns to do this can they then learn to take over those reigns and learn "self mastery"--turn that sense of obedience inwards onto urges you would rather resist so that you can reach your goals. This is the basic philosophy of the military, and ideal man that that system hopes to create might be emblematized by the SEAL-- someone who knows obedience well but cannot be dismissed as a mere follower. They are powerful because they have achieved inhuman self-mastery.
Further, it takes a long time before children can learn why bad things are bad--a 3 year old simply cannot understand why not eating all the candy they wish the second they wish it is a good thing, or why throwing toys at other kids will make them unpopular.
I know people who’ve taught at military colleges, and retraining soldiers who’ve had it drummed into them to just obey orders to become officers who make their own decisions and give orders to others is a difficult problem for them. Learning an obedience reflex is more of a block to independent thought than a stepping stone to it. As for self-control, it’s related to the Big 5 trait conscientiousness, which like all the big 5 traits has a big genetic component. I’m not convinced there’s much of anything parents can do to increase their offspring’s self-control, especially once the basics of providing a stable, loving home life are covered. It’s a pretty strong claim in my book to argue that not only can parents do something, but spanking specifically is the way.
Aren't you contradicting yourself? The military guys can be "molded" to do one thing vs another, but children cannot?
I think it’s possible to drum it in to people to be obedient, especially if it’s limited to specific times and contexts (my commander gives me an order, I execute immediately). It’s a much bigger task to inculcate greater self-control in someone in a way that will persist across the lifespan and across different aspects of life.
That is so not what you learn in the military. The whole first couple of years of training is ALL about self control and self mastery. I can make myself organized and function in a way that is not natural to me. I can do physical things I never thought I could. Yes, you learn to do what you’re told, but you also learn how to overcome your fears, doubts, weaknesses, and excuses and push on. You learn self confidence that lasts a lifetime BECAUSE you learn self mastery.
Interesting - do you think your training increased your self-control in non-work related areas of life too? And did the effect persist over years?
One caveat to note is that conscientiousness often increases in one’s early to mid 20s, especially for men. If you were in the military during that period of life, it’s possible you’re crediting your training for an effect that would have happened anyway. But of course you’re the best interpreter of your own experience.
I don’t deny that spanking can make a child obey the parent, at least for a time. Just like military training can make soldiers obey their commanders. I’m just not convinced either approach encourages long-term self-control, self-efficacy, or self-mastery.
I get that argument too. I don’t really have strong feelings about it either way except that I don’t buy any of the children’s autonomy etc arguments. Parents should have the final say short of prosecutable abuse. The idea that we teach children that sometimes a loved one will hit you for your own good and then we spend the rest of their lives teaching them to never allow anyone to hit them... it just sticks out to me as the very best argument I’ve heard.
I’m a vet too so I completely get your military example, I do love discipline!
I think if there were good evidence spanking encourages self-discipline, the Collinses, who give the impression of having read every child development study under the sun, would have invoked it in their defense rather than resorting to obvious codswallop about tigers.
Also, I agree with you both re the Trump case and verdict. This does not bode well.
Well okay, you want an origin story:
Picture 5-year-old me at the dinner table. A frigid environment, not a word being said, as usual. I reach out for one of the dishes of food, and knock over my water glass. The glass isn't broken, everything else is basically fine, and yet, my father unleashes an absolute tirade on me for daring such carelessness. He makes a motion as if to smack me and doesn't. I flinch. Out of ignorance, I figure that knocking glasses over is simply a really bad thing.
But then, a mere couple of weeks later, another quiet evening at the dinner table, and what should happen but my father reaching across the table, and wouldn't you know it, he knocks over his water glass. And after the shortest of silences, I aptly think to say something to the effect of "What now?". And you know why his reply is? Does he apologize for his earlier outburst? Does he flagellate himself for committing the unspeakable sin of knocking a glass over? No, despite those being the only two possible outcomes my kindergarten-age brain could conceive of in this obvious parallel. He just starts slowly mopping the water up, waits a minute, looks at me, and says "shut up".
I was never afraid of him again. That is what authority means to me: nothing. That is the origin of leftist thought. Much like the postmodernists would say, this interaction had nothing to do with objective reality or consistent rules, it was simply about who had the most power. Only later would I learn enough psychology to conclude that perhaps he had a bad day at work and was taking it out on me or something. But while I observe that as fact, I don't take it as being normative. My belief is that it doesn't matter what the power difference is in this or any other scenario. There is an objective reality, and it only matters who is closer to being right. Either spilling a glass of water is a felony, or it isn't.
I certainly have been spanked, and I'm using that term separately from child abuse. My bones are all intact. But I reject the term "corporal punishment". Punishment implies a crime, implies an truth-seeking investigation and due process and the rule of law. I would agree that kids can be little shits, but I would never trust a parent to be the adjudicator of right and wrong to the point of being able to enforce "corporal punishment". Maybe the kid actually did something bad, but even if that's true, if I see a parent hitting a kid I don't assume any sort of "justice" is behind it. I see other more plausible psychological explanations for people to indulge their baser, violent urges.
It's a bitch move to hit someone weaker than you. It's true when a man hits a woman, it's true when a parent hits a child, it's true when a human hits a dog. I have nothing but contempt for it, I make little distinction between any of these scenarios, and I want everyone who does this arrested and criminally charged.
It’s wrong to hit your children, but it’s unforgivable to hit them in front of a journalist you know will write it up in a major publication. For the rest of his life, there’s a good chance Torsten Savage Barbaricus Hercules Supremicus von Ubermensch Collins will have to see that story every time he googles his very identifiable name.
I am genuinely, thoroughly baffled by the weird ambivalence re: Trump/politics generally that I’m hearing from you guys (and outright Trump support coming from other “heterodox” people, whatever that even means at this point). So let me try and make my case; apologies for going long here but there’s a lot of stuff going on!
Here’s a guy who is an open, proud career criminal and fraudster, not at all shy about threatening violence or other types of intimidation in order to get his way, who is clearly running for two primary reasons: to soothe his wounded ego from his loss in 2020 (which he hasn’t conceded, and never will), and to avoid prosecution on various federal and state crimes, some of which he is *obviously* guilty of (and has all but admitted to in substance, like in the documents case in Florida). Is that someone you want running the world’s largest economy and military?
I started out extremely skeptical of Bragg’s case, but as I heard the evidence, it became clear that yeah, actually Trump committed these crimes. So for the first time in his long criminal career, he’s experiencing some mild consequences. I’m struggling to feel any kind of pity or sympathy for him, especially since he has no respect for the proceedings, no remorse, no nothing. Even went so far as to go after the judge’s daughter, fer chrissakes. He just has no regard for the rule of law in general, none whatsoever.
Hell, if you want a contrast, the Biden Justice Dept. is prosecuting his only surviving son, ffs! (And on grounds that I would think a lot of right-of-center/libertarian people would reject: basically lying about his drug use on a gun-permit form.) And not only that, but Biden has hardly said a word about it other than “I love my son” or words to that effect. Just try and tell me with a straight face that you could imagine Trump allowing such a prosecution of one of his adult children. We all know he wouldn’t; he would corruptly meddle with the Justice Dept., because he is profoundly corrupt (remember the Trump Hotel on Pennsylvania Ave.?) and feels no shame about it at all.
But set all that aside! The following is more important, IMO: Do you—whoever you are, if anyone is reading this—really support his policy agenda? Across-the-board tariff of 10% on all imports, raising prices and increasing inflation? Pulling out of NATO, or at least severely crippling its credibility (would he actually defend Poland, Estonia, Latvia, or Lithuania, if it came to that)? Cutting taxes yet again (which is also inflationary), mostly on rich people? Mass deportations, seemingly without due process, the way he and his minions talk about it? Nominating even more right-wing judges—who will almost certainly be of lesser quality than last time—thus making the balance of the judiciary even more lopsided? I could go on and on, but the fact is the guy has an actual policy agenda, and it’s not good. Maybe Title IX will get better again the way it did last time, but even that will be easily reversed by the next Democratic president (and as someone who votes for Democrats, I am annoyed and offended by this). So is it really worth all the other insane shit we’ll all have to deal with? Just think this through: is your (totally justified) annoyance with the excesses of stupid lefties really so severe and important that you’d be willing to give Trump another four years as president? And btw, how would that help? Seems to me it would make it worse.
But not only is Trump objectively bad, and contrary to all the claptrap you hear on various podcasts and wherever else, Joe Biden actually has a record that he can be pretty proud of—far from perfect, obviously, but when has there been a perfect president? He’s run a grownup administration that doesn’t dominate every second of the news cycle, doesn’t feel like a constant emergency, doesn’t make you wonder if he’ll wake up at 4:30am in such a psychotic mood that he thinks “hey maybe I oughta send some insane tweets at Kim Jong Un and see if I can stoke a nuclear confrontation”. I’d be happy to defend his record at length too, if anyone actually wants to read that, but I’m already testing people’s patience expecting anyone to read all of this.
Ok, I’ll stop now; this is far too long. But seriously people, if the Republicans had nominated anyone else (except, y’know, Bannon or someone insane like that), I wouldn’t be writing screeds like this. Trump is a unique menace, and just because the people who are always saying that on MSNBC or wherever are insufferable—and I agree: they are!—doesn’t mean it’s a good idea to vote for him just to stick it to those people. It just isn’t worth it.
Expect more of this ‘I don’t think I’ll vote’ from the heterodox intelligentsia over the coming months.
I think the table is well set for a large heterodox absenteeism declaration.
It's not quite the same situation but in the UK as we gear up for our election, I know a lot of people who aren't going to vote. And that probably includes me. I just can't bring myself to vote for any of the main parties. In the local elections I voted for independent and regional party candidates, but the apathy at national level is stark.
Just a heads up - YouTube constantly unsubscribes people from certain channels, this one included. I’ve had to subscribe many times, so just make sure you’re subscribed even if you think you already are
Thanks! I was unsubscribed, I hadn’t realized since I just listen to the podcasts mostly.
And I just had to subscribe again lol
Very impressive honesty about the Trump verdict. Seeing the ugly side of the ideology you were raised to support and defend is no easy pill to swallow. I'll disagree a bit about sentencing. I think they'll go all the way. They'll perp walk him and put him in jail. If the polls still rise, it's Jeffrey Epstein time. This is bigger than the Democratic Party. It's worldwide. It's also not completely accurate to call it Leftism (at least in the sense of what Leftism dreams of providing). It is though where Leftism ends up: elites controlling the masses in increasingly obvious and harsh ways.
If Trump gets a custodial sentence it will be 110% his own damned fault: throughout the trial he just could *not* stfu, taking potshots at the judge, at the judge’s *daughter* ffs, just displaying complete and utter contempt for the court in every possible way. No display of remorse. No acceptance of responsibility. Because of course not; he’s a complete sociopath (at best).
Typically here in New York, if you’re convicted of an E felony and have no prior convictions and no record of violence, you’ll get probation. And that’s probably still what Trump will get. But his behavior throughout this case is the sort of thing that can get a judge mad enough to give you an actual custodial sentence. Or, and personally this is what I hope for, some community service would be a nice middle ground here: can you even imagine Donald Trump, the world’s least community-minded person, being compelled to actually help someone other than himself? At this age (and being the sort of person he is), he’s not going to actually *learn* anything, but it would be a fitting sentence, I think.
… and all the “good ol’ boys” in the south who lynched blacks back in the day were sentenced not guilty. A judge and jury of their peers said so. Must be so. There’s no such thing as using the courts to your ideological advantage.
I hardly know where to begin to respond to a comment like that. I’m from Alabama, ok, so I grew up with a very intimate understanding of the sort of jury-nullifying evil you’re talking about. The fact that you’d even compare the two makes me wonder if it’s worth responding here, but on the off chance that someone else reads this and cares, here are a couple of differences:
In those cases, you had the most oppressed people in the country (Southern black people, mostly men), who didn’t even have their full constitutional rights because of the Jim Crow regime, being put through kangaroo courts by the people who always held the whip hand in Southern society. And that’s in cases where they even bothered having trials, which is different from full-on lynchings; in the latter case(s), you’d just have mob justice first, and then a bullshit “trial” where the murderers were let off because they were white and the lynched person was black.
In the Trump case in Manhattan, every count was backed up with documentary evidence—and there were other pieces of evidence they didn’t even bother charging him on, as elaborated in the prosecution’s closing statement—and the defendant was not a poor, oppressed black person; it was a multi-multimillionaire former President of the United States who has made a career out of bullshitting and defrauding people.
Furthermore, this verdict is subject to appeal, and Trump is indeed appealing it. He will have ample opportunity to make his case if he thinks he was wronged here. Lynched black people in the Jim Crow South had no such luck, as you undoubtedly already know. Can’t appeal when you’ve already been hanged from a tree.
Oh, and in this case, politicians were lining up outside the courthouse to defend the defendant’s honor (or whatever they were doing out there), and half the electorate reflexively opposed the prosecution. No such luck for black people in the South 100 years ago.
I could go on, but I think you get my point: That’s a spectacularly frivolous, historically illiterate comparison.
The point being that some courthouses throughout history have their verdict in hand before the start due to their ideological leanings. Rodney King vs. LAPD being another. People vs. OJ Simpson being another. You're right that whomever has the political power has the advantage . Trump had no political power in that courtroom. Money doesn't always equal power. He was tried in an area where he got 5% of the vote.
I hope you've looked at both left and right media concerning this trial. It very much looks like: We've got to stop Trump! Let's go over every thing he's ever done. Well, that bookkeeping mis-entry has expired. Oh, I got an idea! Let's attach it to some other crime! What other crime? We don't even have to say and neither does the jury. As long as we have 12 Trump haters on the jury, we just have to make a little smoke and it'll give them the excuse they need. No that won't work, he'll be able to appeal it easy. Yes but think about the next six months; our press will call him a "convicted felon" non-stop every day until the election. For that alone, it's worth it.
If you're honest with yourself, you know that's the basic outline of what happened. That's using the court system to your ideological, in this case, political advantage. That's what they did in the USSR and 3rd world banana republics... and in the old south.
You guys really don't know electoral politics very well. It sounds like you're just surfing the discourse, like some kind of inverse Pauline Kael.
If you actually want to know how voters are reacting, I suggest listening to the Focus Group podcast.
And this notion that "Democrats just want to get him" -- are you aware of what Trump tried to do to Clinton, Comey and Andrew McCabe when he was in office?
Finally, 40 of Trump's senior advisors and cabinet members, including his VP, have said they will not vote for him in 2024. These aren't Democrats talking. These are the people who worked with him closely. Doesn't that tell you something about the man?
Which is a worse form of child abuse, hitting your two-year old in a restaurant in front of a Guardian journalist, or naming your daughter “Titan Invictus”? I’m honestly torn.
The Trump conviction won’t matter at all to the Trump supporters. They’ll just vote…harder?? I think there’s at least enough understanding out there thought that nearly everyone knows this was a political stunt, whether they support it or not. This same charge could likely be brought to a large chunk of Washington in one form or another. There’s also the fact that the democrats, by virtue of the timing of when they decided to bring charges, are implicitly admitting that they wouldn’t have cared if he wasn’t running again. We’ll see what happens though.
I fully don’t understand the controversy over spanking. I was born in ‘91. I was spanked, also on more than one occasion slapped across the face by my mom. Believe me, it was necessary/deserved. I consider her to have done an excellent job raising all of us kids.
My siblings and I are of varying opinions on this. Some of us spank, some don’t. The only one who even raises an eyebrow at it is the English professor(by far the most left leaning of all of us). In my family it’s well within the range of normal punishment/teaching of consequences.
Abuse is a word that has lost a lot of its meaning I think. It’s tossed around far too lightly for my taste.
I don't really get the controversy either. I'm an 80s baby, one of four children, we could be...a handful. And when we got really out of line, a slap on the back of the hand or a couple of slaps to the backs of the legs were not unheard of. None of us are worse off for it, and like you, I also consider my parents to have done an excellent job of raising us all. I never got a slap across the face though, I was mostly the goody two shoes. But my older sister who was the wild child did. And she laughs about it now.
So, I’m an oddball. I said things to my parents like, “if it’s the truth, then I don’t care if you believe me” when I was less than 10. That had to be very frustrating.
I’m not a troublemaker though. I wasn’t a wild child. I didn’t drink or party or even get kicked out of class very often. I am
Very independent minded though and I don’t think anyone could have actually made me care enough about school to get straight A’s-which almost all of my siblings did. When I got slapped, it was the few times I’ve ever said anything truly mean about my siblings-to my mom’s face. I think she was right to snap me back to reality in those times. I was beyond angry at what was happening to me in those moments, but it was not an excuse to hide bad behavior behind a lack of emotional control.
I really loved the spanking conversation. As a child of Sicilian immigrants, spanking was just part of growing up, it wasn't at all abusive and my brother and I are both absolutely fine. I do find peoples opinions on this topic extremely weird when they cannot separate a spanking from a beating, they are nothing alike and shouldn't even be brought up in the same sentence.
I used to be very anti-spanking, but now I'm just kind of meh-spanking. Other parenting techniques like time outs and grounding (grounding from screens is the new grounding) do work, but require more time and effort to enforce. On occasion, I've observed that my kids are misbehaving in a way that a spanking would probably very efficiently resolve.
On the other hand, the only time I really have the impulse to spank them is when I'm really mad. Once in awhile they do something to really tick me off, and that's when I most would like to use spanking for discipline. I think it's one of those things that is harmless in small doses when parents are loving, decent parents, and harmful in excess. I do find that because I have restricted myself to not spanking, I tended to spend more time thinking about the root causes of their behavior, and trying to address them. In the early years especially, a *lot* of behavior problems are because of other things like like not getting enough sleep, not eating well, not enough attention, too much screen time, etc.
I know that we hear a lot that kids now get way too much attention, but I'm not convinced. I think that when there was always a stay at home parent, kids probably many more little, ordinary interactions with their parents, especially their moms that they don't get now. That probably makes a difference.
I'm not a fan of spanking, but not disciplining is also really harmful, and we see a lot of that now. Parents don't want to or don't have the time to enforce these other consequences, so they don't do anything. Kids don't behave because no one really makes them behave. That's at least as bad.
Check out the YouTube clips on “Chancla or no chancla” where Chicano comedians interview various Mexican moms about which behaviors merit la chancla (flip flop spanking).
those vids were funny!!
(plus it reassured me that I'm right to get so pissed off when my kids turn on the AC while their bedroom windows are open)
It's weird how some people are trying to pretend what Trump did isn't illegal, or that they don't even know what the crime is.
You know who knows what the crime is? The lawyers for David Pecker and Dylan Howard at the National Enquirer!
When the lawyers found out that Pecker and Howard were running a catch & kill operation, they told them it was illegal and that they could go to jail for it. It was after that warning that Pecker told Trump they could not pay off Stormy Daniels on his behalf, and that's when Trump and Michael Cohen cooked up their scheme.
After Trump won Pecker's editor Dylan Howard texted that he hoped Trump would give them a pardons.
To underscore the point, Pecker was given limited immunity in order to provide evidence. This happened long before Bragg was the DA.
You do not get immunity to testify in the absence of crimes.
First
second!
I really enjoy listening to both of you.
On Trump and Russia - Ukraine for once I think Sarah is totally wrong. Trump loves dictator bullies. And I think it is to US centric to think that Putin would really make his actions totally dependent on that the US does. Biden is as opposed to Putin as possible and it did not stop Putin despite him knowing that.
Sarah- what's the toothpaste that you said was bad?
Sorry, I thought I answered this in your other comment! I have not tried Risewell, but the ingredient in question is nano hydroxyapatite, which might be harmful in certain concentrations and particle shapes. I would email them and ask.
https://health.ec.europa.eu/document/download/1377b7bf-0672-4749-8f6a-0a001fb50ed0_en?filename=sccs_o_269.pdf
OK so Risewell has 2 types of toothpaste that contain the nano and micro versions. Luckily the kids version I bought (the cake batter taste, not the "pro") only contains micro. So I can just stop ordering this and go about my life.
Thank you!!