There have been a few things this week that have me thinking about the need a lot of people feel to control other peoples actions.
Steven D wrote an impeccable diary on Tasers a few days back. Turned out that Tasing is mostly used to enforce obedience.
Then there was a Time piece, The First Real-Time Study of Parents Spanking Their Kids. It cut through all the rubbish & found that people whack their kids primarily to enforce obedience.
If you want the connection in technicolor, Jesse Kersey. To go to the police version:
According to the police incident report, Hooper first saw the boy, later identified as Kersey, riding his bike the wrong way down on Andrews Street.
When Kersey spotted the police cruiser, he started riding on the sidewalk.
When Hooper yelled for Kersey to stop, the boy took off up St. Paul Avenue, dumping his bike in front of his house.
And pretty soon over 20 cops were beating on the kid & his mother. The family version is even worse.
Time does a lot of articles on spanking. Since it's bleeding obvious that beating kids is a bad thing on just about every level, they have to come out against it. Thus, even Time can be part of the Liberal Media Conspiracy against the American Way.
Many things these days are obviously wrong & unsustainable. It's tough to accept at a gut level that we're hitting the wall of overpopulation & resource depletion. It's much tougher to abandon the whole hierarchical view of things, where there's someone to tell you what to do & someone you can push around.
Most people can ignore things & focus on their own lives. Others try to attach themselves to power. When you see your neighbors proclaiming some of the badges of the Movement - Kenyan mooslim socialist! Global cooling! Drill Yellowstone! - realize that they are aware that it isn't real. They don't, however, care.
Is there a point here? Yes, indeedy.
The authoritarian mindset runs deep. It can be broken, but only from within. Plant seeds of doubt, water them with humor, and give them room to grow.
And if you live in Ohio, remember Trotwood vs Selz but don't forget that cops going nuts around bikes is the norm.