Corolinth wrote:
You know how you've advocated that every now and then someone needs to get beaten to demonstrate the point that certain behavior is unacceptable? You've most recently expressed that idea to me regarding foreign policy. I believe your specific analogy was that obnoxious kid in school who likes to antagonize the big kid who will get in trouble if hits back.
Countries are not people. The same rules of behavior do not apply between nation-states as to the citizens within a nation-state. Furthermore, the fact that we don't allow people to take the law into their own hands does not mean we live in a utopia where that never happens. Acknowledging the reality does not mean abandoning the principle.
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Well this is another one of those cases. Negative consequences don't exist to punish government entities that overstep their bounds.
We have courts to provide those consequences - and indeed, to determine whether bounds have been overstepped in the first place. That protection exists for the authorities because it exists for you; we do not leave it up to the OHP trooper to ultimately decide if you have done wrong or not and we similarly do not let a bunch of malcontents determine when an authority figure has done so. I should also point out that it's very hard to punish an "entity" of any kind, government or not, that's not an actual person. Your perception that "consequences don't exist" really means "Consequences that viscerally satisfy me" don't exist.
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We haven't dumped a tax collector into a barrel of boiling tar, covered him with feathers, and then hung him from a tree by his feet in over two hundred years. I mean, what's the worst that happens to these agencies? They have to return whatever money they have remaining? After having kept it for an indeterminate length of time, earning interest on it, and depriving the victim of that same interest?
I am pretty sure the tax system does not consist of a bunch of money sitting around in a big pile somewhere, and I am absolutely certain it is not just sitting around earning interest. Furthermore, let me assure you that once you start pulling triggers on tarring and feathering in an angry mob, the authorities will be more than happy to return the favor, and in spades. I'll definitely put my money on organization, training, and preparation over a bunch of angry lunatics. Even when the authorities softball it, as we saw with several riots in the past year, the most the loons can accomplish is to burn a few buildings and police cars. Or hang out at a ranch in Montana doing donuts until the FBI catches you.
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I believe there is a happy medium where we can be civilized human beings, and skin corrupt bureaucrats alive.
Let me put it like this. If you want to gather up Mus, Elmo, Darksiege, and a few other Gladers and go have a knife fight with a comparable number of OHP troopers, I'll see what I can do to arrange that. Also, my money is on the OHP troopers, and you don't get to pick me as one of the Gladers. Assuming, of course, you're not just internet-shit-talking.
We live in a society where you can make a good living designing electric motors. Part of the price for living in that society instead of one where you're defending your grass hut with an AK-47 is that you have to let someone else decide if the bureaucrats are corrupt or not, and sometimes you're just going to be told no, they aren't, even when you disagree with it.
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