@courtcan

I'm old enough to remember when that sort of behavior was an extremely rare occurrence. In a lot of ways, I blame the surveillance state.

Now don't get me wrong. I'm not encouraging the tactics that used to keep those kinds of assholes in check. It's not my job to enforce civility. But some people did enforce civility in the bad old days of no cameras. I spent a year working as a courier and one of our drivers kept a bucket of D batteries in his van. If somebody was being a flagrant asshole on the highway, he took out their windshield.

Now I know that can kill somebody, both by penetrating the windshield and by causing an accident. I would never do something like that, not even as a wild, lawless teenage vandal. But some people would. Some people don't care. My first boss gave me some good advice--don't fuck with truckers or bikers. Couriers are similar to truckers.

These days, that incident would be on camera, and the guy with the batteries would get hauled off to prison.

I also see surveillance society encouraging(?) creating(?)...we deal with a lot more mass shooters now because nobody has any smaller outlet for what is justifiable rage at the state of things. There is no halfway step a person can take--once they break bad, they know their life is over anyway so they structure the snappage to cause maximum harm on the way out.

Hell, I think the unavailability of more minor outlets is why the plague rats get off running around and making people sick. It's a way to deniably cause harm.

There always was a better way.