Dinsdale, do you agree that vandals should be murdered and maimed? Are you reading this thread, or just looking for things you think you can score points off me with? My current reaction is to the proclamation by a couple of posters that they would proudly kill taggers, or chop off their fingers. Are you seriously demanding that I elaborate on the alien mindset that leads me to think it would be wrong to murder a vandal?
Anyone else reminded of the last time people on this board advocated killing people for property crimes? Funny then too, words like “thugs” “animals” “gangs” were used then as well.
It seems to me that the legal system as it is has made a fairly reasonable compromise in the direction of a “workable solution.” Tagging is illegal in most jurisdictions and when people are caught doing it, they are prosecuted under vandalism/defacement of property statutes and punished accordingly. Some jurisdiction, as has been mentioned, require property owners to clean up. That seems a pretty reasonable reaction to the problem in question. Small problem, measured reaction. You could take more steps to confront the problem – nighttime patrols until the incidents of tagging abate, perhaps?
What does seem disproportional to me is a boiled-blood rage and thirst for blood of the taggers. Face it, they’re just stupid kids playing an ultimately relatively harmless prank. Yes, if they get caught, punish them and try to educate them on why it’s bad. But this talk of killing and lopping of body parts, and even the level of rage that leads up to such heated talk. That’s way out of proportion.
Oh, and Dinsdale, seriously, lay off it. You seem to be developing some kind of preoccupation with my politics without knowing what they are, and jumping to all kinds of conclusions that apparently put a bug up your butt. If I promise that I don’t want to burn your car or liberate your entertainment system for the people, will you try not to view everything I say and do through some kind of weird red lens?
You know, I’ve often felt that any inconvenience to me, or damage to my property should result in the swift death of any offending parties. But then I take my meds, and that feeling goes away.
No, but I am also familiar with the concept of hyperbole.
And while I would not actually kill or maim some shit who knowlingly vandalized my property - or public property, or certain private property - I can well imagine such unpleasant thoughts entering my mind. The vandalizer either doesn’t consider or doesn’t care about the discomfort, displeasure, and pain they are causing the people they affect. It does not strike me as abhorrent that the vandalizer’s victims might express an emotional desire to impose some type of discomfort upon the vandal.
I think an element of the expressions of violence in this post represents the understandable frustration over the helplessness of being at the mercy of someone who cloaks themselves under the protection of dark, anonymity, and ineffective legal process. I see nothing honorable or worthy of respect in the tagger, and I consider his victims innocent of anything other than property ownership and maintenance, or desiring undefaced public spaces.
To borrow a lovely metaphor - perhaps the advocates of retributive violence simply create their works of art using different media than your dear tagger. I’m sure they have coherent well-thought out philosophies behind their positions they simply can’t be troubled to expound upon…
And yes, I do care more about many aspects of my property - and public property - than the health and welfare of those who would knowingly deface it.
Am I the only one that thought Shagnasty and silenus were speaking in hyperbole? It didn’t occur to me that they were actually proposing the mutillation and or execution of vandals, and I’m finding it hard to believe that anyone would take it that way. If I’ve misunderstood, than I apologize and agree that that is extreme. But there is a really big difference between “kill the bastards” and " it’s just kids being kids, no big deal". (I fall somewhere in the middle, but if push came to shove, I vote for a smackdown 
)
Awwww… does this mean that I can’t beat this 13 year old tagger with my bat anymore? [/sarcasm]
I, for one, am glad that we have police to enforce our laws, whether it’s locking up taggers or locking up raging vigilantes.
What can I say? I really, really, really hate taggers and all that they do. 
First Offense: $500 fine and 100 hours of community service spent cleaning up all the tagging. Wearing pink jumpsuits and bright yellow Easter bonnets.
Second Offense: Index fingers.
Third Offense: Send them, swordless, to Palestine.
These guys aren’t engaging in hyperbole. They are quite serious…at least, one of them is. The finger guy did agree with his “murder them” statement, though, and they certainly do seem to think there’d be zero problem with their little psychotic fantasies being made into law.
Fine. I agree that it’s okay for people whose property is damaged to feel mad. But that’s not what we’re talking about. I’m not objecting to their feelings or thoughts. I’m objecting to the argument ‘it would be right to kill a vandal’.
Jeeeesus, you really turn this into an epic battle between Good and Evil in your mind, don’t you? I don’t think that a single act is all I ever need to know to define a human being, and certainly not to declare he’s unfit to live.
You really like making up personalities and statements for people based on little else than your own vague impressions, don’t you? My ‘dear’ tagger? Some people have expressed love of taggers in this thread, but I’m not one of them. What I’ve done is say it doesn’t make me mad, and for some reason that just drives you fucking insane, apparently.
If you care more about your property than human life, then perhaps you’re the animal, not the taggers. Caring about your stuff more than people who hurt you is fine. Saying that therefore it would be right to kill them is very much not fine. You’re not saying that, I know, and you’re trying to tell me these bloodthirsty numbskulls aren’t either, but unless they come back and say ‘Of course I don’t think it would be right to enact my murderous rage’, I think my reaction is in line with their statements.
Oh, and Dinsdale, AGAIN with this bug up your ass. You asked me a question and I declined to answer it, and now you’re going to run around after me going ‘neener neener’ for the rest of my life?
I would have never said I didn’t want to get into it if YOU HADN’T FUCKING ASKED ME; you decided you read something behind my words that, by the way, seems to be pretty inaccurate, and now you’re mad I won’t play along by letting you argue with the imaginary person you’ve replaced me with. So again, please, lay the fuck off.
Well, your coy performance leaves me little alternative. You rush in here as the first respondent to the OP, accuse all other respondents of being insane, yet fail to elaborate upon your position other than to say, “It’s not what you think it is.”
How do you describe such behavior? Disingenuous? Passive-aggressive?
What the fuck are you talking about?
I was the first respondant. I said ‘Huh, this doesn’t bother me’. That’s all. That’s it. People asked me to elaborate on why, and I said I don’t know, and I don’t understand why it does bother them so much, especially when there are other things that seem like they would be similarly bothersome to them but aren’t. At some point, you decided I’m a Red Commie Bastard and showed up demanding to know what my ‘coherent philosophy’ was. I said I didn’t want to get into it, and now you’re calling it a ‘coy performance’. WTFuckingfuck, man?
When I said people were insane, I was referring at that moment in time to the people saying murdering vandals would be okay. But you have this big hardon for me now, I guess, and you’re taking that out of context so you can stroke it harder.
Essentially, you’re sulking because I wouldn’t answer your question, which was frankly weird to begin with, and certainly nothing I’m obligated to answer. There was no ‘performance’. If you hadn’t insisted that I explain something YOU MADE UP IN YOUR HEAD, the fact that I don’t like to discuss my politics in particular around here would have never come up, in this or any other thread.
I know I keep doing this, but whatever.
Dinsdale, it really seems to me like from the first moment you engaged me, you wanted to argue about property rights and all that with me. That’s what you want, really bad, to yell at me for thinking things you don’t even know if I actually think. And I won’t let you, so you’re yelling at me for that. Go start a thread if you want to poke Commies with sticks, dude. I am not the red you’re looking for.
I dislike tagging not for aesthetic reasons, but becuase it showed someones complete lack of respect for someone else’s property.
If you are one of those who say “I see it, but it really doesn’t bother me” I wonder how you would feel if someone tagged the side of your car with a key?
Or is your response the same “It’s just a car, a material thing. So someone tagged my car with their key, so what? It’s no uglier than the Ford logo thats on my bumper. I just don’t get upset about it.”
I’ve never owned a car, so I can’t speak to my feelings about it getting damaged. But it’s not like I’m saying I wander through life as if lifted on a cloud, above all these mere possessions. I like my stuff. I just don’t like it so incredibly much that I think anyone who fucks with it should die, or even is a worthless human being. I can see getting annoyed, and I even said that before, that if I was inconvenienced I’m sure I’d be annoyed. But not angry, no; that’s just me. I know it’s weird.
And definitely not murderously rageful, and frankly, I don’t think that part is weird. God, I hope it’s not. I guess I don’t depersonalize strangers. I’m aware all the time that they’re human beings with people who love them, with good and bad traits, with various histories and perspectives. I know that I have done things in my life I’m ashamed of, and that I wouldn’t want my entire humanity to be judged based on those single events. I know that sometimes, good people do bad things, just as bad people can do good things.
This shit seems incredibly simple to me, just basic civilized stuff, and all this “hang 'em high and let the vultures eat their lousy eyes” stuff flies in the face of it. Yeah, it hurts when somebody does something shitty to you. Sometimes, the people who do shitty things are just shitty people, and always will be. I am extremely aware of the existence of human evil. Maybe, come to think of it, it’s because I’ve experienced some of that real evil up close and personal, starting around age three – maybe I just can’t work up the bile over juvenile deliquents perpetrating petty crimes that ultimately do no extreme permanent damage to anybody’s psyche or body.
I also find my life is more pleasant if I let go of violent emotions to the best of my ability, and keep my stuff, which I do love, in its proper place in my priorities. Dinsdale, I hate to disappoint you. You wanted to find a closet Commie, but I’m afraid I’m just a garden-variety hippy-dippy loon.
PS: Of course, I AM also a leftie loon, but that’s beside the point.
I recently had my property tagged, and I was really surprised by the absolute rage it sent me into. I started imagining catching the little pigfucker that did it until my wife tapped me and said, “what’s going on?” and I snapped out of it.
We own an old house, 1920’s vintage, in good shape, and we’ve recently been doing a lot of work on keeping it up and improving the yard, including doing massive ivy removal to uncover a beautiful old brick wall on the edge of the property. We like this. It’s in a nice, quiet neighborhood that’s mostly well-kept. And now some fucker has tagged it, and I had to go out there with a fucking wire brush and scrub it off, leaving a fucking clean spot in the middle of a wall that’s been getting a nicely-weathered character for 80-odd years. And guess what? You can still see the graffiti. It’s going to be impossible to get it off completely without sandblasting or something, and now there is this awful blemish on what’s otherwise a very nice looking wall. So if you don’t see “what the big deal is”, and you think people mad about having their property damaged in this way are overreacting, then you can go fuck yourself.
If you can’t read threads, you can go fuck yourself.
If my statements don’t apply to you, then you probably should not be offended by them.