Last year in Portland making me realize that the imperative of spanking children was never to “teach them the lesson” of any particular issue but the meta-lesson that when a stronger force captured you to administer pain at its leisure that meant you had lost, the matter was resolved on the victor’s terms, erstwhile allies would accept this, and any further resistance was useless if not shameful

Which, this internalized, allows you to structure the world they grow up into through merely symbolic and formal sanction far short of complete immobilization/crippling/submission through violence.

I grew up around Philly where the ‘67 Newark riots left an impression, they had the water-cannon tanks and the police cavalry to do charges on massed lines (for intimidation, police horses aren’t trained to trample). But the idea was you would restore order and things would be over, you wouldn’t try to make the suppression of your riot cause for another riot

(Well even if you did there was no Twitter, you could do some mimeographed communique I guess. Also, they had a tradition of using live ammo on looters, that probably suppressed things too)

People all “all spanking teaches kids is that the strong get their way through violence!” Like, yes! That is a civilizationally load-bearing lesson!