American Insanity

Make sure you read Violet Blue’s SF Gate column from last week.

Violet discusses the case of some teenagers from Greensburg Salem High School in Pennsylvania. Three girls, ages 14-15, sent nude and semi-nude cell phone pictures of themselves to their boyfriends, ages 16-17. The cops got hold of the photos, oogled over them for months, and then finally dragged all six soon-to-be-sex-offenders to court for trafficking in child pornography! According to this report, “the girls are being charged with manufacturing, disseminating or possessing child pornography while the boys face charges of possession.”

Just try– try!– to wrap your head around the logic here. The charge is child pornography, which inherently involves the sexual abuse of a minor. But these girls took the photos in question themselves… so did they sexually abuse themselves? Can the girls be both perpetrator and victim? And is the government seriously trying to resolve this by having the girls (and the guys) labeled as criminals and sex offenders for the rest of their lives?

But here’s the worst part: No one cares! No one in the god damn fucking American mainstream gives a flying fuck. Just mention the phrase “child pornography”, or the phrases “marijuana” or “Internet gambling” for that matter, and all deference is automatically accorded to the cops. No one dare stand up for the accused due to the adult-on-adult peer pressure against being associated in any way with these “bad” categories. (Of course you don’t even have to be accused of anything criminal to get fucked by the authorities. Just a few days ago, a pro poker player was robbed of $15K in cash and a $50K watch because he was carrying them on his flight from Detroit to L.A. and that’s– GASP!– unusual!)

Let me tell you where the blame belongs: The prosecutors and the cops the school officials are certainly accountable for their part in this insanity. But the real source is the American public, who are too lazy to think for themselves or to speak out against the bullshit. They go to church and behave nicely and follow the rules and the insanity is not their problem. Well, I call Bullshit on this, and Bullshit on the pathetic American public, and I hope you will too.

POSTSCRIPT: I watched exactly ten seconds of Obama’s inauguration two weeks ago. I got to the TV when Aretha Franklin was on, singing something about “freedom”. And in just a few seconds I could see that she was giving it her all: FREEEEDOOOM! Then I got disgusted and turned it off. Because what freedom is there in America, really? Sure, there’s freedom to work and own a house and stuff like that. You are free to watch the Super Bowl like a good consumer. But that’s not freedom. Freedom is at the edges. Freedom only counts if you are doing something outside the mainstream comfort zone. And the biggest test of freedom is whether you are free of the nonsensical and unwarranted persecution of your government. By that standard, we are not free; instead we have a government that is more and more like that of the defunct Soviet Union, ready to unleash all its force upon you if you have stepped out of the mainstream line.

POSTSCRIPT #2: The New York Times mentions the case in this article. And then they go on to say:

Sending nude pictures, whether it is done under pressure or not, is part of a pattern of teenage behavior that the Family Violence Prevention Fund, a nonprofit domestic violence awareness group based in San Francisco, has labeled digital dating violence.

Got that? If a teenager sends a nude picture of herself to her boyfriend, she is committing “digitial dating violence”. WTF?!