Stealing cookies, punishment, deterrents and election laws
Posted By RichC on January 12, 2021
The Storming United States Capitol 1/6/2021 and White House plus multiple cities protests 2020
In recent years, NPR has not been my source for balanced reporting and commentary, but I still occasionally pick up a morsel or two that resonates. This time it was shared by a politically liberal/progressive friend on her daily Life Logs – once The Voyage of Windbird (although suspect her focus is on the most recent events in Washington DC?)
“I loved an analogy that I heard on NPR today. It was basically that if you have a kid that sticks his hand in the cookie jar and steals a cookie, and is not immediately punished for that, the next thing you know his sister and his brother will be doing the same thing.”
— Judy Handley, 2021 Life Logs, Day 10
As events around “peaceful protests” devolved into riots and violence this past year, there was often praise and support for the raucous behavior, or at minimum suggesting that it was understandable. From the tearing down of statues that particular mobs decided they didn’t like, to attacking Federal buildings, or
even in-your-face personal attacks of people eating out or just walking on the streets. Looting and the burning store and private businesses was declared “mostly peaceful protests,” even when they took over cities … declaring them “autonomous zones” … Democratic politicians did little to stop them. The put you out of business threats for people who held conservative political views or shaming certain businesses in order to coheres them into siding with their cause was the theme for 2020. Celebrities and some political leaders even set up bail funds for those arrested during protesting that devolved into rioting that involved burning, looting and attacks on police … yet few in the mainstream media were overly critical of the incitement that turned to violence.
As for “incitement” … something we hear often when the left talks about President Trump … remember, everyone “must” support BLM and their Marxist ideology, even as their most vocal march 
and chant “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” or “What do we want? Dead Cops!” According to these kinds of protesters, that included groups like Antifa who advocate violence in city after city, we need to dismantled and defunded or “re-imagine” law enforcement.
So I agree (and always have) with the commonsense approach of swift “cookie jar” punishment as a deterrent and as a way to prevent a “sister and brother” from doing the same thing. When civility, respect for others and societal laws are not followed, expect others to duplicate unacceptable behavior … and “in my world,” this applies to the ignoring of election laws put into place by state legislatures as defined in the US Constitution, but that’s for another post.
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