Comment by stephenr
19 days ago
> The media has spent decades pumping the fear of pedos
I'm not sure I'd be so quick to assign people's natural outrage at child abusers to "the media", and I don't think that outrage needed any pumping
19 days ago
> The media has spent decades pumping the fear of pedos
I'm not sure I'd be so quick to assign people's natural outrage at child abusers to "the media", and I don't think that outrage needed any pumping
Agreed and agreed. On the other hand, Protecting the Children has been the go-to justification for quite a few controversial initiatives worldwide. In this context, saying we should move on translates to something like "let's stop wasting time on that guy so we can discuss banning VPNs to protect kids against guys like that guy."
I've heard a lot of horror stories about communities defending predators and gaslighting or ostracizing victims, not to mention traditions of pederasty and other objectionable practices in many societies, so I'm not sure how natural the outrage is. We seem capable of accepting many outrageous things as normal with conditioning.
A lot of that outrage was manufactured as part of a right-wing conspiracy theory about a cult of Satanic pedophiles within the Democratic party. That and the related moral panic around transgender "groomers" were both pushed by the Republican party and the media specifically to foment outrage at "the left" and the LGBTQ+ community.
Donald Trump bragged on tape about how he could get away with sexual abuse, and he had years of allegations even before 2016, and none of it affected him. A shocking number of people don't care until they're presented with a political narrative that demonizes the proper groups.