Get Off My Lawn, Part VIII

This is a short one:

A Portland city commissioner has proposed restrictions on the sale of cans of spray paint. Buyers would have to produce ID, and stores would have to keep track. And on the slippery slope toward the 21st century police state, we slide down another notch.

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What towns need are not new regulations on the sale of spray paint. What towns need is the gumption to get tough with one or two taggers who are caught, as an example to all the others. How tough? As tough as need be to stop this particular wrong. More nighttime neighborhood patrols, more arrests, and longer jail terms — that might do the trick.

1. In the first paragraph, Hering apparently deplores the slippery slope towards the police state. In the third paragraph he encourages bringing the hammer down on taggers. I'm confused....wait! I get it! Hasso thinks he's libertarian! This explains a lot. However, it doesn't explain the annoying disparity on display here.

2. This editorial isn't really surprising. Power - violence on the part of the State - is what Hasso seems to understand and countenance. I would prefer to see someone ask these questions: Why do people create graffiti in the first place? Is graffiti art? Can we delineate cases where graffiti causes damage (when it's on works of art, historical buildings, etc.) and when it doesn't (on the back of a dumpster or on an abandoned building or on the side of a train car)? Metaphorically taking a kid out back and beating their ass with a paddle isn't going to solve anything. I really wish Hering would realize that the rest of the world is not like him.

3. Of course, the proposal by the Portland City Commissioner is stupid. He's thinking with his cock been well socialized by U.S. culture into thinking, just like Hering, that state-sponsored violence is actually a solution and not a problem.