Unworthy Victims

One of the problems with victimology and unwavering victim-worship is that it is unevenly distributed. In western culture we're almost lead to believe, whether by accident or not, that certain people are more deserving of our sympathies than others for matters having nothing to do with the circumstances of their victimization, all things being equal. The "usual suspects" are always our template for villainy, and the "typical victims" are always getting hammered into our sympathetic nerves, time after time. All else who don't fit the narrative need not apply, even if they have been objectively victimized too.

The image of a girl being raped by a shadowy man, even as tragic as it is, has been turned into little more than a thought-stopping cliche. It is indeed the prototypical image in our heads when we think of sexual exploitation, simply because of its incessant repetition in film, television, and the news media. Its depiction no longer makes us think, we merely become anesthetized to it, and we ignore and become incapable of seeing exploitation in other forms perpetrated on less-prototypical human beings. Not only does its repetition rob our emotional minds blind to the real tragedy of it (just because we've seen it a hundred times), but it holds that emotional mind hostage and blocks its rational ends from seeing the travesties committed on those our sympathetic acuity has been blinded to.

One wants to talk about how the predator manufactures the consent of his victim when he exploits her, but what about when culture has done the same to you, and has manufactured your consent to feel one way or another toward or against someone, at its discretion, by repetition? When the mere gender of a person, the age of a person, or social class of a person, has more to do with your outrage, your indignation, your sympathy for them, than the act that they have become victim to or perpetrated, you've already become a victim to the cliche of the media narrative yourself. That is how culture and the propaganda, the "thought-stopping cliches," have molested your will and alienated your compassion from you by their constant mercantile presence. Herman and Chomsky wrote on this phenomenon in like manner:

“Our hypothesis is that worthy victims will be featured prominently and dramatically, that they will be humanized, and that their victimization will receive the detail and context in story construction that will generate reader interest and sympathetic emotions. In contrast, unworthy victims will merit only slight detail, minimal humanization, and little context that will excite and enrage.”

—E. S. Herman and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent

According to culture, men and boys are unworthy victims, so society does not care when they are victimized, abused, and maltreated en mass. Boys may only be sympathized with because they also fit the class of "child," but not because they are boy children. According to culture, teenagers are unworthy victims, so society does not care when they are victimized, abused, and maltreated en mass. So by these two observations alone, we should expect society to feel more sympathy for a six-year-old girl that has been mishandled, than a 15-year-old "young man" who has suffered the same--or even still, has been murdered, or sold into sexual slavery as a bacha bereesh in Afghanistan, even as much attention has been given to the treatment of girls in that country.

That which we assume "en mass" dictates how we respond to individuals within that mass. It would certainly lend an explanation as to why it does, and why male offenders are touted as "beasts" while female offenders of the same crimes are given the "mother of three" treatment. Where do you think your sympathy is "supposed" to go, given the choice between a beast and a mother of three? What if the "beast" had children too? Nobody is given the chance to care, and it is not important anyways.

So while we are all required to feel sympathy toward the typical cases, and hatred toward the "usual suspects," let's not forget those our culture has forgotten to take seriously. The moment you have an image in your mind about a typical case victim, fill her in with her exact opposite, and remember that it happens too, and how nobody cares about it when it does. Nobody's singing the lamentations of a teenage boy who has been violently raped by a woman, no matter how traumatic, just because it doesn't fit the typical schema of "offenders and victims." Nobody's asking for the head of the female rapist either. And when you realize this, you'll see real sexism, real ageism, real classism at work in ways the focus group didn't think would be commercially viable enough to wrest your "unquestionable" sympathy for.

All media is the same story being sold, over and over. Don't buy it.

The Kids are Alright

The kids are alright. The only threat to children, if one can even call it that, is too much fretting about threats. Most parents understand that there are two directions we can thrust our concern at as to what is harming kids--the immanent (actual) and the potential (possible). When a child is drowning--that is to say, when a child is facing an immanent threat to their state of being--it seems asinine to direct our attention instead toward the potential hazard of them scuffing their foot on a rock at the bottom of the pond. For instance, no one says when a child is drowning, "Save that child, he might scuff his foot on a rock underwater!" That would be misdirected priorities.

That is clearly the case when the immanent threat outweighs the potential threat. One might excuse such misdirected fretting if the immanent harm and potential threat are of equal magnitude of danger though (if that's possible), but not when the child is experiencing no threat outside the imagination of his onlooker. These are not equal terms though. It is clearly unconscionable to think the potential for harm is more deserving of our attention than direct endangerment in here and now. That is to say, the potential for harm does not always necessitate an impulsive response from the adult or peer, but on the other hand, that immanent harm always does. Direct endangerment of a child, be it physical abuse or otherwise, is nearly always more deserving of our attention than potential, social and culturally-based perceived "threats" we have to be reminded to worry about.

This is all very well and good to say, but sometimes it is understandable that deciphering immanent hazards to children from potential ones is difficult and subjective. What is an immanent harm and a potential threat? Ultimately, potential threats are just that, potential, in it either hasn't happened yet, is happening and may just not be causing any damage to the child, or is happening whether we know its effects or not. Chances are, if our children are being bombarded with so-called destructive media messages for example (a potential threat to them), beyond our knowledge as adults, our reserve for panic isn't going to do a bit of difference in assisting us to save them from harm's way--not as it would if the threat was immediate. Children are going to be receiving these messages invariably, whether we remain ignorant of them or are running around trying to sanitize all that their eyes rest on.

The issue is, if a potential harm is causing some so-called threat so minor that parents, even with all their so-lauded "intuition," don't even notice it without having to be reminded to pay attention to it via the news media, then it by no means deserves the shock and worry that we ought to be reserving for actual immanent harms that children, and adults, can find themselves in the middle of, where the effects can be anything but minor. For example, childhood obesity is a much more hazardous threat, and an immediate one in many cases, than the potential for that obese child to be abducted--but which do parents and the media fret over more? Which inspires more legislation, despite fewer deaths? Abduction is sexier than obesity, when it comes to the mainstream culture, evidently.

One of the main differences between potential threats and immanent harms is that specific steps can be taken to respond to immanent harms in a practical, reasoned way. You can take your time with it and find a solution to the issue (proper diet and exercise, in the case of obesity). With "potential hazards," there is only so much preparation one can do because half the damage is manufactured in our minds. The only steps we can take to reduce the potential damage are whatever our minds can dream up ("stranger danger" survival strategies, for instance). It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy though. We might say, "thanks to our best efforts to keep children indoors, we have reduced sun burn--and because it has worked, we can be proud of ourselves," even when other solutions could have been less restrictive (sunblock for instance). Now that example is a bit sarcastic, but it shows exactly the kind of misdirection and self-delusion that preventionists often engage in.

Children are either being harmed or they are not. If they are not suffering in some way emotionally or physically, then they are probably not being threatened by whatever our guilty personal demons can dream up to haunt their developmental trajectories. This is true whether it be violence in video games or satanism in daycares. Often is the question asked "what is X doing to our children", but I want to know, what is X doing to parents? Is your child X's concern or is she yours?

The issue isn't so much about protecting children's innocence, because they won't be innocent forever anyways, no matter what you do to protect that artificial edifice built around them. The issue is about making that inevitable transition from one point of relative ignorance to another go as smoothly as possible in light of learning and exposure. With a potential threat, one has time to sort out solutions in working around it, and children will grow up healthier for having learned how to do that. It's not X that harm's children, it's the lack of an authoritative adult or peer presence there to give X appropriate context. If you want healthy, strong, independent human beings from your children, show them what sex is. Rather than focus on tying up the so-called "profanity apologizers" like perpetrators, we should be focusing on the kid's perception of what the they have set into the world. There are those who take responsibility, and those who assign responsibility, and only the former parenting style produces a strong human being.

When you say that children don't have a right to be harmed by something (something minor that is), you're saying they don't have a right to learn about how to deal with minor threats. Children should be free to learn about anything and everything in the world in all his beauty and ugliness, so long as it is presented to them in a way their ability to reason about it will be able to work around. Most kids grow up alright despite a whole slew of threats both real and imaginary throughout their developing years. This is true for life in general. The only ones who don't probably had no role models, or had their rumps cushioned on every fall.

Molestation Fixation

What good reason is there for the news to report on an incident such as molestation or bullying, involving a child, toss around speculation and rumor and tie in every major thought-stopping social issue and cliche whether related or not, for twenty paragraphs, and then not post a followup? What reasonable purpose does it serve to whip a community of readers and watchers into a frenzy over an isolated incident involving a child during a time when there are no answers (preceding a trial for instance), and then not report on the outcome or result of the events?

Are we to believe that the first mention of "Man facing rape charges" or "Area teen arrested for bullying" is the definitive statement on the event? What if the charges are thrown out? What if there is insufficient evidence? What if evidence was obtained illegally? These things don't seem to matter as much as the initial speculation, the unfounded rumor, and the redundant "reactions from locals" on those speculations and rumors, which the news media revels in with such lack of insight. Of course there is no reason, it is simply a ploy to sell news media to the public.

The inevitable outcome of this is that, particularly in cases where children are involved, the news media is able to get whole communities riled up about something, have them coming away believing that the whole world has gone to hell or that their children are in imminent jeopardy (as if they weren't prior to the broadcast) or that the kids have all gone crazy, and then not be there to inform them when justice is served and when all has been rectified. If there is no reason for people to be concerned, no reason to fear, no reason to pass unqualified judgment or dispersion, then the news media isn't interested in telling the story. 

In reality it is not the world going to hell, it's not the system failing itself, it's not the kids going crazy, it's the adults who have made money selling insanity about otherwise sane institutions, sane kids, and sane sets of circumstances. We live in a world where things happen and then they are resolved, some issues persist and some don't, some gain in intensity over time and some lose relevance. That is all there is, but in order to make it worth the public's while, these isolated events have to be turned into catastrophes, outrages, and emotional pits where we are expected to dump our personal burdens and frustrations. The outrage is presented and then we move on, and nothing is gained. If it was meant to be genuine, we'd hear the followup. 

There is a fascination with child molestation in particular that is grotesque in its own revelry. It is pornographic. Adults don't want to see healthy, happy children living healthily and happily, they want to see stories involving healthy, happy children getting abused or traumatized. If they didn't, then it wouldn't sell as well as it does. News media knows this fact about human nature, and it's time the viewing public becomes honest about it as well. 

We're all against child molestation and bullying, but all the expressed concern about child safety we're required to feel after the fact (once we're reminded to worry about it) isn't doing anything to prevent it from happening before the fact. Perhaps if we weren't so fascinated with the harm and destruction of children after the fact, we'd put more consideration into how we deal with situations before the fact. We're all for children living as happy and healthy as possible, but that doesn't mean we have to get ourselves off to the stories, speculations, and rumors of children who have been violated and victimized on (and by) the 6 o' clock news. 

Children get abused every day in every community, and nobody ever hears about it. Does every parent who loses a child (by state intervention) due to abuse or neglect or any other reason become vilified on the news? Of course not.  Only the easy targets get vilified: the bullies and the child molesters. That which doesn't land on the news is that which has become so customary we don't even pay attention to it anymore. Those who are being abused, the children, see it differently. And just as child molestation was once something just as swept under the rug, the "routine abuse" of children that so bores modern America will one day be as vilified as molestation.

It's a sane world with insane people living in it, so justice prevails, no matter what anyone thinks. 

Kids and Sexual Suggestion

It's not so much a problem that children are exposed to sex early, it's the way they are exposed to it. People seem to prefer exposing sex to kids coyly and comically on a regular, daily basis, rather than honestly and factually in small doses. Society is still hung up about sex, and so (after decades of declining standards over the acceptability of its suggestion) has been going to great lengths to throw sex into everything "suggestively," failing to find suitable any honest and accurate depictions of sex acceptable for viewing by children.

So if we have to be concerned about anything (and I don't think we do anyways), it would be that kids are getting the wrong idea of what sex is, and the real implications of it. A child can watch a commercial where a bikini woman opens a beer bottle with her "parts" while serving it to a leering man, and it is completely acceptable, but it is thought that if that same child saw even just the image of a vagina, or a penis, he or she is going to be traumatized for life. Neither is traumatizing. To view one as more hazardous than the other is mere superstition, and just an indication of how backwards a child's everyday reality is in the 21st century.

Expose them to sex early, sure. Expose a child to sex suggestively, sure, but counter it with exposing them to sex as an uncensored reality as well. If we leave it up to parents to pick the time when their children are "ready" to see an accurate portrayal of sex, the kids have already had 15 or so years of seeing sex as a series of untruthful, amoral, absurd, sexist, and exploitative imagery, and will likely have a misunderstanding about the word. It will all have to be unraveled and untangled before any discussion about sex as a real thing with real implications can be presented.

All the parental controls in the world are not going to stop the abundance of media from seeping into a child's everyday life, so it's best to just confront the issue early on as an inevitability. Show and tell them the honest truth about sex the way one would if asked any other question concerning human biology, and move on--tailoring the lesson to their developmental comprehension. Censorship of reality doesn't work, all it does is turn the illusion into reality.

Adult Sitcom Tropes

Adults use children in drama as props, sensitive props upon which to pair off the so-called complexities of adult affairs. How many tender scenes depicting two adults engaged in so-called painful dialogue are intercepted by some child of theirs, seemingly catapulted out of nowhere and who's arrival signals the complete closure of the "dirty" "dark" "depressing" adult-talk? Suddenly the adults in these fictionalized portrayals decide to go all-smiles at the sight of the child with the subtlety of a painted clown face. What's worse is how the child is to remain oblivious to the crying clowns--which is what these adults are--and skip along merrily as if to fulfill every wish an adult could have about a child.

Children are perceptive. They are not as perceptive as they are often made out to be when adults wish to showcase their perceptiveness, but they are not the "runaround dunces" they are commonly depicted as in the sitcom world of adult wish fulfillment. As perceptive as they are capable of being, even adults eventually have to concede that as they grow, children do develop more direct ways to express their ability to decode the so-called "sophistication" of adult affairs. These are called "teenagers" in this same sitcom universe, and because adults have to accept that teenagers are no longer runaround dunces and have powers of perception, they choose to recast them as the enemy.

Runaround dunces are no threat to the adult's self-inflated perception of their importance, so they are more or less depicted as inconvenient playthings. However, teenagers, being also under the adults' power but capable of usurping them, are rendered as the enemy. The teenager has to be shown as an impetuous brat willing to call insurrection without warning if the adults so much as suggest anything to them. They must put themselves in jeopardy (they can never be depicted as right), and the adults must swoop on in and heroically rescue them from their own undoing. They usually finish out with a talk as if the teen has learned some valuable lesson in self-reliance. Such a thing is there to please the adult's conscience--it's really just a cover for the fact that the teen has come full circle and is now in complete deference to the adult's authority. The curtain closes. This is the only way these events can unfold on television, never in reverse.

Watching adult-centered fictional television is literally like watching one age group's self-serving skewed view of reality. All the other perspectives--the perspective of the runaround dunces and the perspective of the impetuous no-nothing brats are not considered. At the end of the day, only the adults must be satisfied, and the children, just satisfied that the adults are satisfied.

It is similar to the old television trope where each character is called upon to give an account of something, and we get to see each character's skewed recollection of events that cast them as the heroes and everyone else as the villains. In this case, adults love to cast themselves as the heroes, even as misunderstood heroes, and everyone younger than them (or older as the case may be) as the "enemy." Adult television, and all of it's assorted tropes, are propaganda for the 25 to 50-year-old demographic, and more importantly, their inflated opinion of themselves. To be egotistical is to be human. Adults just have the means to televise theirs non-stop, 24/7.

Sexuality Supermarket

Loosening sexual mores allow for tolerance, but also provide impetus for individuals in governments or corporations to create in their future customers or constituents any sexual appetite most fitting with whatever social message or piece of merchandise they wish to peddle. Fetishism is a natural evolutionary function of sexuality that social engineers would love to exploit, and with increasing tolerance for alternative sexual appetites comes unprecedented ability to construct markets out of them. Advertisers know how to play this game, and the motto is as it always was: "get 'em while they're young."

Beyond their consent, like it or not, children are raised and sexualized by the increasingly accessible media. This is not so much a bad thing in and of itself, but at the same time their sexuality is being shaped by the media and other companies, they are not given the sexual nurturing they need because people don't want to be "seen" as en-culturing a child into functional sexuality. It should be no doubt then, where sexual dis-functionality stems. The panic over whether a company is exposing children to a sexual lifestyles before they can comprehend such things is another distraction, because it should be no news that a corporation is not in it for Junior to begin with.

If there should be concern, it rests squarely with the culture that hasn't allowed the people in Junior's life (who are, or should be, the ones "in it" for him) to be the ones to nurture his developing sexuality as they would his ability to read. Time and time again though, that responsibility is taken away from the adults in his life, and given over to the television and the internet by a culture made too squeamish or paranoid about appearing to be "too involved" with kids.

More disturbing is the mechanism where future generations can be made to love the egotism and material servitude it takes to power our economic engine, by influencing their sexual development to correspond to what best suits the interests of those who have a hand in shaping that culture. How many little boys will grow up with a sexually driven inferiority complex to females after spending their formative years sexualized by a media that obviously finds greater value in its female customers? The idea behind this social engineering is to designate what populations buy and what populations don't, take the ones that do and create in them this belief of superiority as instinctive and unstoppable as a biological necessity (like their sexuality). Then take the ones that don't and create the opposite with theirs--an inferiority complex--so they accept their place or at least don't take issue with their depictions and social devaluation in the media for being what it cultured them to be, because they will be so busy getting off on it.

Abominations as such that would never be allowed by a stranger passing a child on the street are permitted and perpetuated on a daily basis by strangers who just so happen to be further away from the kids in question, but wield the same influence. Given the choice between a person who loves your child and a person who wants to make money off your child, the parent will side with the profiteer. So the marketing exec goes to work every day, makes his pay and feeds his family on the idea of stealing children away from their parents. The stranger on the street just wants to model the daily "how do you do?" for your kid, and yet he is made the villain--no doubt by who.

Any media-backed morality is innately immoral, especially if it's presented as "counter-culture." There is no such thing. That which is truly counter-culture, is that which can not be marketed.

Diversions and Distractions

What gets society all up in a frenzy and what really matters are two different things. It seems like it was always like this. Society is so caught up in portraying the symbolic gesture of doing the right thing that they seemed to have forgotten completely how to do it. This is to say, society is distracted by the sentimental, sensational nature of heroism and the impulse to frame it inside some kind of digestible narrative, and can no longer (as a whole) just appreciate things or actions for what they are on the surface.

Whether we're caught up in the wrongness of burning the flag while ignoring the less viscerally arresting imagery of corporate imperialism, or caught up in the "sex beast" who looked at a child the wrong way while ignoring how society has been turning a blind eye to the treatment of black boys in education, we're distracted. We're not paying attention to the right things. We're distracted by the glamor of narrative and symbolism, by sensationalist media and sentimental hand-on-heart "oh dear"-isms, and for that it's getting harder to tell what really matters. What really matters is people and the planet, not how this blog or any pundit out there frames the goings on between those two things.

No matter how we feel about our adversaries, whether they be labeled "maggots" or "sex beasts," or "antichrists," it should never distract us from living and loving those around us for whom our allegiance and loyalty should be full. We shouldn't be ignoring the isolated crying child on the bustling city sidewalk to return to our private den that night and redirect our guilt and self-hate for inaction toward some overhyped convicted sex offender on TV caught entering a library. Who among us could possibly argue that this is a better use of those energies? Assist the crying child on the sidewalk, and forget the TV sex offender, and the world will be better for it.

Perhaps this is idealistic, but it's the truth.

The Boy King and the Giant

Everyone thinks that their side of an argument is the little man standing up victorious over the mightier adversary. Everyone believes that the one thing they have to guide them against their adversary to victory is truth. Indeed, even the big, mighty establishment itself thinks of itself as the underdog standing up to its oppressor, the general population. The simple truth of the matter is that there is no side that is mightier or weaker than another, and there is no side that claims the monopoly on truth, because there are hundreds more sides that also claim that same precious artifact.

Regardless of this, simply stating that one is in the possession of some truth, no matter how far fetched, is like painting a target on your back. People will incarcerate, shun, or even kill you simply for saying you hold the truth, even if you don't. If there's one thing true in the world, it's that those who hold onto their version of the truth with the strongest conviction are the ones going down at the hands of those who can't seem to grasp theirs very long.

When the outcome is unlikely, the prevailing puny is praised as being closer to the truth (such as the case with the boy king killing the giant in a single hit), but when the outcome is likely (as in the case of the outsider CL losing out to the child abuse entertainment industry), the prevailing powerhouse is practically worshiped for bringing the so-called truth into 100 million homes every night. Sometimes it seems society is more interested in perpetuating and glorifying those it casts as predators simply because they had the audacity to hurl that label at them to begin with. But of course, in their eyes they are just the meek David staring down the beast, a delusion brought on by endless repetition of the romantic sentimental typical plot. Sometimes it seems society is more interested in playing the constant hero than it is in actually doing what is right.

Run Down the West

The decadent west has been described as a "vampire" by some critics, sucking children dry of blood. Blood is a life sustaining fluid, and to be robbed of it is to be dead or dying. Here, the west is said to be depriving children of their essential life elements--typically understood as the catchall term for modern affluence. The west stresses individualistic egotism, instant gratification, progress and persuasion over such mundane things as wisdom, guidance, kindness, charity, and patience. Indeed, in the west people seem to be fighting to retain these virtues on a personal scale in an environment that does nothing but encourage the opposite.

Children grow up in this environment, and learn quickly the world does the opposite of what it teaches. The so-called character in their "character education" is actually forged in a fight. It is caught between coming and going, between doing what is right and doing what the market and the media encourage, between valuing humility and respect and climbing to the top of an artificial social edifice to spit in the face of those who lost out. In truth though, virtue is just as important to sustaining an individual as blood. If to be robbed of blood results in a poor health and death, then to be robbed of personality by culture is to be in a state of comatose where one's will is no longer in control of the body just barely kept alive by the external system. Children need individuality like they need blood or air, otherwise they are living a life of a slow drown in the depths of illusion (aka. what the mystics call maya).

However illusion-based the west is though, it is also a free world, and the "big bad media" is simply an organization of individuals producing a product by utilizing that free will. Censorship of the content of the media, or managing culture, should be no entity's sole discretion. The culture simply "is" and nothing can be done about it. It is an engine fueled by a collective perspective shared by hundreds of millions of people, it is not inherently evil or even wrong, it's just ubiquitous and persuasive and limits our resolve to resist it (and therefore utilize our own individual will against it). The only solution to tempering the pervasiveness and destructiveness of western affluence on the minds of younger generations is through direct love and guidance of an adult who is himself also a victim of that "vampire" of affluence. It can hardly be argued that the CL is anything but.

Unlike other sources of guidance who may be entrenched in the will of society, or even be benefactors of the system (such as social workers), the CL is an independent agent. Through their outside charity, their love and guidance, a child is able to truly prosper as an individual. The CL is able to teach children about the grip of the west, to understand what makes it so powerful over human life, and ultimately how to respect that human life more than any product, social system, idea, or even society itself. They learn through their interactions with the non-parent how to swear allegiance to no artificial pillar of culture and only swear allegiance to themselves, how to be self reliant, how to be a person and not a puppet. When a child is given that kind of deep appreciation for life, theirs and others', by observing the works of the person who loves them of their free will, then they grow so much more protective of life. They'd see material things to be temporary pleasures that add to life, and not life itself.

In doing so, the vampire, the Babylon dragon, is rendered tame.

Who the Cap Fits

I've used "antichrist" almost interchangeably with vigilante, exploiter, and molester. It's a label and like any label it's meant to be something flung out at a group of people with the intention of keeping it stuck to their foreheads. There are none wreaking havoc on innocent civilians with the intention of hurting child molesters that are in it for the well-being of children, and it's important for society to realize this. And because there is no more vilified force in human existence than Satan, to work conflating these so-called well-meaning propagandists waging war with society's common sense with such a prestigious force is simply to be fighting fire with fire in hopes that their whole "plan for victory" will end up in cinders charred by their own flame once all of society has been consumed.

It's a label, let's not forget that. Human beings invent labels to pin on certain people to conflate them with social menaces in order to achieve political power, or just social influence. If this is how people work, if this is what causes them to see "predators" where there are none and to see love where there are predators, labeling the real predators in the world "antichrists" should be sure to cause them to, for once, call a spade a spade. Who the cap fits, let them wear it.

The child abuse entertainment industry is a parasite that hatches in a healthy human brain and causes them to believe the industry, by provoking their sympathetic nerves with careful editing, zooms and fades, is actually on the side of the child. Nancy Grace tricked the majority of America into believing Headline News was on the side of the little girl kidnapped and killed by just showing the girl's cute face repeatedly for months. By doing this, hundreds of thousands were hypnotized into attending the five year old's funeral, a girl they would never have known if not for the industry's quest for their ratings and viewership, and advertising patronage of course. This is an antichrist. Vigilantes and child molesters, yes, them too.

Child Molestation

Let's not mince words or wax poetic on this. Child molestation, including all sexual exploitation and kidnapping, is evil. While vigilantes are consumed by hate to the point where they would not bat an eyelash at the mutilation of those who stand in the path of their lust, child molesters are just as sick. Both come in the guise of some savior and leave society scratching its scalp, disgusted and unable to come to terms with what would drive an individual to such depths. While vigilantes are gratifying themselves over the severed tongues of their adversaries and treading blood in the storm drains, child molesters are making them feel vindicated for doing it.

The doctor may be able to get away with the excuse that causing a child harm by the prick of a needle will create great benefit because of the injection, but the same logic will never justify any other harm done to a child, or to society because of a child. Unless you create a fanciful story whereby a child must be harmed in order to save their life, intentionally harming a child out of a need to protect them should go against your deepest principles. The first rule, the cardinal rule, of CL is "do no harm," and this is true no matter what form of it is manifested. As we shall see, this doesn't just mean "don't subject the child to harm" but also, do not seek any kind of benefit from children being harmed, because to do so is to be an accessory to their suffering.

Having said that, it should be surprising that when society says it wants to protect children from molestation, they do the opposite. Most child molestation, by wide margin, takes place between family members, not strangers. Most child molestation takes place within the home between people the family trusts, not strangers on the playground. Most child molestation occurs between parent and child. Very little child molestation occurs due to rogue slugs on the internet, but so much emphasis is placed on this tiny percent, and it happens at the ignorance of the more prevalent forms of child molestation. Society easily fails to accomplish what its best sentiments had directed it to do when its distraction by the tiny minority of cases overwhelms its attention toward the wide margin. Child molestation is child molestation, whether society has clearly painted a target on the perpetrator's back or not. Imagine that!

And with all the tear-jerking on the issue of a child being victimized, we can only conclude that selling child molestation as an entertainment format in the media is tough when the perpetrator is "one of the audience"--namely, all the parents lapping this stuff up. Nobody wants to insult their paying parental viewers or readers, so the perpetrator always must be some rogue slug instead. Parents just don't make very convincing villains to a parental public, no matter how much the child had to suffer at that particular perpetrator's hands. Rogues always make better villains, no matter how inoffensive the crime. Their priorities are backwards (the majority of child abuse is ignored, the minority is blown up to ridiculous super-villainy status), and because of this, child molestation continues to be a sensationalist epidemic, children suffer at the hands of this "child abuse entertainment industry", John Walsh gets rich on their unfortunate demise, and vigilantes have a never-ending vat of human beings to terrorize for their own pleasure.

No one who is benefiting from child molestation is in any position to preach morality on the topic, it doesn't matter if you're a child molester, a vigilante, or a media reporter earning a buck off the sale of your latest story. On the contrary, the groups who have any position to say anything on the issue are those who don't stand to benefit from child molestation in any way--the hapless public lead to believe anything, and those who love children--known as CLs.

Shadows and Tall Trees

The only thing worse than the bigoted media is the mechanism by which people begin to convince themselves that what it prostrates is a permissible representation of reality. It's a waltz of back and forth, a symbiotic relationship where ratings both feed from and manipulate the culture's perceptions. It is the mechanism whereby a fictional exaggeration, the 'bumbling dad' for instance, influences the cultural perception of the typical, and whereby a tragic accident by negligence inspires hyper-vigilance that in turn creates hazards out of harmlessness.

How many children will be caught in the crossfire of those poised on the rooftops to protect them by shooting at shadows?

Shadows are a flat, formless non-entity, false representation of the thing casting them, and depending on where the sun is located, they are either significantly shortened (and therefore less frightening than their owners), or they are exaggerations--significantly enlarged. When it comes to children, every peg that could cause them to trip in the high grass casts a ten foot shadow in the media realm as if the sun were resting eternally on the horizon. Even if humanity matched the size of their fear with the size of the thing being feared, it would still be nothing but a fear of a shadow--a formless entity.

As for the child's shadow, it's safe to assume it's a perpetual noon, as the shadow of the child (considerably larger than the peg), has been inherited its shadow's shortness. We over-estimate dangers and under-estimate resolve. Adults fear the impediments more than they do the relative effects of a peg coming into contact with a child, and this is done on the basis that because it has been oft repeated, it must be true. This is called a fallacy. A shadow is still just empty air, fearing it will not intimidate that which is casting it.

Good Over Evil

The distortion of reality to fit sentimental politics is the work of the evil and the powerful, for which there is little to distinguish. We are who we are. The status of wrongdoings and the relative punishments human beings receive are inversely proportional to their size in the pond. The bigger they are, the easier it is for them to evade the repercussions of their actions, and therefore, the the easier it is to justify their lives by the laws--to play the moral high ground. We are the small fish, being eaten by the big fish, and we don't want to be justified.

Sensationalism is the greatest force of evil in existence, because unlike any material object (such as money), its evil property is not ascribed to it by human beings. For instance, there is nothing evil about money in and of itself, it is a material or conceptual thing that, without human interference, is incapable of being evil. Sensationalism on the other hand is bread out of human nature, it can not be independent of it. It is the intentional manipulation of not just information, but of the fallible human psyche, to produce an intended response from another human being. It is the molestation of another individual's will for furtherance of one's own, masquerading itself as objective.

Objectivity is a fruitless pursuit, but however impossible it may be to be completely objective when reporting on the affairs of the world, it will never justify, as is often made the case by the media, the intentional deception of the public--the manipulation of the public's trust. The powerful are in no position to play the moral high ground simply because they are powerful, when reporting on the crimes of rogue, powerless individuals like pedophiles committing crimes.

For the small fish, there is no greater honor than to be found guilty by the wicked, it simply means that you're doing something right. When the crime one is being accused of only happened in the minds of your accusers, who were influenced by the sentimental sensationalism ubiquitous in society, then one is only guilty of offending their weak minds with individual strength. Such a thing is greeted as a sign of victory among the rogues.

The prosecution of harm where no harm has happened with draconian sentencing that destroys a person's existence, as well as the existence of their family--including their children--is nothing more than pent-up passive aggression funneling itself into the likeness of the one being accused--the scapegoat for society's repression. The repression of society is evil, and though evil exists among the powerful and the powerless, it's one that is perpetrated almost exclusively by the biggest fish. It's effects drip down and corrupt every segment of civilization, and while it may all seem clean and business-like, the transactions taking place among the powerful, each cover-up blood-dollar finds its inevitable repercussion further down the food chain in the face of the beast the sensationalist media will portray as its scapegoat.

Only the guiltless have any moral high ground. What goes around, comes around. There are more of us than them.