Honestly, the great crisis of our society is the unwillingness of institutions to inflict consequences.

Impeach the president, fire the sex pests, expel cheating students, excommunicate an unrepentant heretic, prosecute the war criminals.

Believe in your institution enough to enforce its rules.

March 31, 2026 - 13:45 UTC

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Everything desperately needs the healing light of Consequences.
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yup, 100%. I'm trying to give us a way to do exactly that.
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on the rich. If you are poor (And a minority especially), society is just waiting eagerly to ruin your life for any misstep
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Yeah, and punish private contractors for failing to meet their obligations. If you overpromise and underdeliver, then you should stump up the difference
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Now, the Church has very largely given up doing excommunication save for open schism.

But, by God, he's getting closer here, because Leo is Not At Home to this sort of stuff.
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And excommunicating laity is nearly impossible for that same reason.
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is schism vance's plan? he clearly doesn't like catholic values, did he do this to shard off the kooks and essayists
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Zero enforcement.

Punishment is only for the innocent, poor, impoverished.
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THE CRISIS OF SELF-RESPECT
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"Believe in your institution enough to enforce its rules." 💯+1
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The noteworthy problem is that so many rules have been ignored for so long that the people in charge are almost certainly guilty of one or more violations themselves, and thus very unwilling to start throwing stones. No clue how to fix this...
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If I'm not mistaken the loophole to not be a heretic is to not be baptized. Too late for this guy
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the problem is that the Constitution chose the presidential system and made the 25th and impeachment the only way to remove the president. Almost no other countries in the world have this problem. The US Constitution is fundamentally crap.
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I wonder if this doesn’t have it backwards (or perhaps sideways). The reason they fear punishing people for breaking their rules is that people have lost faith in institutions (often for good reason) leaving them vulnerable. We need to rebuild institutions worthy of trust, which is a tall order.
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Excommunication for false belief? Not the way it works any more, unless you're a Priest. For laity like Vance, it's actions that lead to automatic excommunication, not opinions. And it's better that way.
(Yep, I'm excommunicated. Formally leaving the church is, logically, automatic excommunication).
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Funnily enough, Peter Thiel is a horrible enough person for a Franciscan to want him burned at the stake: www.themonastery.org/blog/why-some-catholics-want-peter-thiel-burned-at-the-stake
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Sadly, the Catholic Church I grew up in also was not big on consequences for their own priests which is a good part of why I am no longer a practicing Catholic
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But, say something negative about Charlie Kirk...
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I think the people who've lost their jobs, degrees, and lives protesting or saying the 'wrong' thing would disagree that there's a blanket unwillingness to inflict consequences.

Who does or doesn't suffer consequences might need a little thought.
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Disbarment for the dirtbags, anybody who violates an oath out of a job and shunned from society, etc.
Folks thinking 'it's ok for me to do this because everybody else is getting away with it' or 'I have to do this because they're doing it and getting away with it' is the core problem.
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This is literally the core finding of people studying how to clean up corruption in developing nations, which is linked to all sorts of positive outcomes. Graft comes from seeing other people get away with it. Public punishment is important!
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Legislating qualified immunity to something sane should be the number one priority for a new administration.
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Impound the cars with the fake temporary tags
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Obama was wrong to not prosecute former Bush Administration officials for enhanced interrogation and other war crimes. Should never have let them get away with that horseshit.
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Get rid of generals that go along with war crimes, prosecute them even.
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Student Loans, Foreclosures and Garnishments just stare at Legal System like a stupid younger sibling and recite in unison

"SKILL ISSUE"
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Borders, gently takes SCOTUS by the hand "This is a camp for suspects, see?"

SCOTUS picks up a bug and puts it in its mouth
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Unfortunately, we have one institution that's getting in the way of all of that: the institution of white "Christian" supremacy. It's trying to reassert itself in the aftermath of having a black president. We gotta put it down before these other institutions work again.
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💯

I’m totally with you, I’ve been saying the same thing (at least the consequences part) for the past year.

bsky.app/profile/knilb.bsky.social/post/3lzhu3n3uac25
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they absolutely should drop an excommunication like a week before the book comes out
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But, as a historian, can you offer us some historical perspective on the matter? Were institutions more willing to inflict consequences 20, 50, 100, 200, 500, 1000 and 2000 years ago? Or is this some kind of timeless problem?
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Not on the powerful. Look at Reconstruction, or the now-forgotten plot of the 1992 movie SCENT OF A WOMAN.
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They'll happily fire people who stand up against that sort of thing
In school it was always the victims of bullying who had to leave
In work it's much the same
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The contradiction of contemporary western society seems to be that we all love to believe in things we don’t defend, and to defend things we don’t believe in.
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Institutions aren't autonomous machines, they're staffed with people.

Those leading our institutions, those who serve power, don't want consequences.

To them, the point of power is to be free of consequences. Consequences is what happens to those that are subject to their power.
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The cheating students are the ones who are paying to be there. The ones who are there on scholarships don't cheat, because they take the whole thing seriously.
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I think there’s a perfectly reasonable Protestant reaction like “I don’t personally respect papal authority but that guy is supposed to and if the pope isn’t going to use that authority, what is it even for?!”
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Consequences only exist for the lower rungs of society, once you have access to the club you seemingly cannot get kicked out
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This is the natural consequence of an insane amount of money in politics. One, the system attracts the worst people now, not actually civic-minded people who want to improve society. Two, once they win, the most important thing is to cash in and stay on the gravy train.
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The fact George bush and his band of merry war criminals are treated like a coterie of cuddly elder statesmen makes my flesh crawl. They lied and millions of people are now dead maimed or forever traumatized.
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Only thing I’d add is that if you’re poor, there is nothing but consequences. We are unwilling to inflict consequences on those seen as powerful.
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Exactly. The spiral of minor crimes very much comes to mind. A poor person accused of even a very petty crime can get caught up in the system and their life ruined. Meanwhile billionaires don't even pay taxes, much less go to prison.
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