So, Ted Cruz and his family were surrounded in a Washington, DC restaurant and left.

Much hand wringing ensues about civility.

It’s bullshit.

If you could have only one rule for creating a good society it would be the following:

Elites must experience the consequences of their behaviour.

The simplest reason the US is a shitshow and getting worse is that, for important people, it’s been getting better since about 1980, while it’s been getting worse for everyone else since about that time.

Because it only gets better for people who matter, they keep doing more of what they are doing.

Why wouldn’t they?

Forcing people who make life worse for everyone else to at least suffer public approbation is a baby step in the right direction.

Of course, it’s not enough, and people are morons. Barack Obama made life worse for most Americans in many, many ways and he wouldn’t be shamed. (But then, he did make New York bankers’ lives better….)

Shame people who make your lives worse. When you riot, don’t riot in your neighborhood, go to theirs, then riot. And so on.

People like Cruz and Obama are responsible for a ton of deaths. Generally incremental deaths, deaths due to policies which impoverish and immiserate people, but deaths nonetheless. They are responsible for even more suffering.

Being unable to eat a meal at a restaurant is pretty minor in comparison. It’s not enough.

But don’t think public shaming like this does nothing. People forget that Obama was anti-gay marriage at first. He changed his mind because gay activists got in his face and the faces of his family. They crashed public fundraisers, they made a fuss, they made his life, and the life of people he cared, about unpleasant. They backed it up with a donor strike.

And they won.

Obama caved and became pro-gay marriage, and fools and idiots pretend he always was. But he changed only because of personal and political considerations. Obama is no more moral than most politicians; he does what serves him best.

If you want politicians and rich people to do what you want, apply pressure. Make them hurt. They don’t respond to appeals to their better nature because, even if they had one, it doesn’t apply to ordinary people because they don’t identify with ordinary people. Politicians understand that, in most cases, their personal interests are directly opposed to the interests of ordinary people.

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