Sometimes I find myself at a loss. The past few years have been quite an experience for me as I have taken a deep dive into the studies of persuasive communications and their relationship to propaganda and attitude change. I also self-published a book on Critical Race Theory, attempting to show readers just how deep of a rabbit hole that subject is, and how simply banning its use in elementary school will have little effect on how the theory is being used as a social transformational tool. Finally, I took a principled stand for the Second Amendment and due process of law by suggesting that all elected officials, even those we support, must be held accountable for unconstitutional actions. Failure to do so equals consent in the minds of those who thirst for power. In one article, I cited a study showing how Trump’s position on a minimum wage proposal was presented from both a left and right-wing perspective to gauge party loyalty, which was effective in shifting the opinions of right-wing voters. I also speculated that this was likely the intent of his statement on red-flag laws, but I digress. This has done little more than isolate me from a larger audience who for the most part, is heavily invested in the idea that Trump is our savior and that banning CRT in elementary school is the solution to our problems. I have been told on more than one occasion that the type of articles I am writing are of no interest to the larger conservative audience. Of course not, people want to read what reflects their views. What they fail to understand is that feeding back to you what you already believe is the nature of the new propaganda. With artificial intelligence now producing content of its own, the public’s beliefs and attitudes will be even easier to guide and control, as the mainstream narrative keeps the public focused on partisan politics and the idea that we must vote for a particular candidate or we are doomed. My main argument over the past few years is that Americans need to shut off the news and study what is known about attitude change and persuasive communications. I am in no way claiming that I am the sole provider of this information, by the way, as all of this is published in communications journals. I am merely attempting to show what has been documented, and speculating about how it is affecting the mindset of the public.
With all of this being said, presuming anyone is still reading, I found myself this morning a little perplexed about what I should write. Last night, I watched The Sound of Freedom for the first time. This is an interesting movie because it received criticism not only from the left for being made-up hype about nothing but there was some on the right who called it a misdirection of sorts, distracting the public from the reality of child trafficking and who is involved. I would be inclined to take the latter position only because we know of Epstein’s island and the number of politicians and celebrities who have been there. There is also a popular conspiracy about devil worship and child sacrifice concerning Epstein’s Island. I will not be discussing this as I believe that too is a misinformation distraction meant to discredit anyone discussing the issue. This isn’t to say that the events depicted in the film didn’t happen, only that there is much more to the story. The end of the movie had the greatest impact on me. It left me feeling downright disturbed. The claim was made that the United States is the world’s largest consumer of child sex. This would mean that we have a society teeming with pedophiles whose sexual lusts are driving the kidnapping and selling of children across the globe. While I can not find anything that backs that claim statistically, I have found that there are an estimated six million men in the United States who can be considered to have pedophilic tendencies. Here is the disturbing part. That number was published on a website that dedicates its research to the issues faced by people who are no longer referred to as pedophiles in the scientific community, but minor-attracted persons. Which of course, are now being discussed as a marginalized population. We also know that there has been a massive increase in the number of arrests of those who consume child pornography over the last decade. Finally, the American public has witnessed an attempt to de-criminalize, or at least de-stigmatize, pedophilia by trying to reclassify it from a mental illness or a crime to a normal sexual orientation. Don’t forget the issue of extremely graphic and sexually charged books being discovered in elementary school libraries.
This is something that cannot be denied. I have written on this topic before and I can say that there is an effort within the halls of higher academia and the scientific community to prove that pedophilia is not as harmful as previously assumed. In my article, The Problematic Science Defining Child Sexual Abuse and the Normalization of Pedophilia, I cite the work of Bruce Rind who has taken a lead role in studying this topic. Luckily, his work was met with much skepticism at the time and many in the halls of Congress deliberately distanced themselves from it. His article, “A Meta-Analytic Examination of Assumed Properties of Child Sexual Abuse Using College Samples,” was something I came across in 2010 as a student in the social work program at Northeastern State University. The title of the article itself struck me as odd from the beginning. Assumed properties of child sexual abuse using college samples? That implies two things. One, the harmful effects of child sexual abuse are assumed, not proven, and there is an academic effort underway, as stated earlier, to prove and document it. Sick. First, the latter part of the title, “Using college samples” indicates that his paper involved the already existing, detailed studies from around the world investigating the effects of child sexual abuse. There are many things to take from Rind’s paper that paint a very disturbing picture. For instance, he makes the claim, or academics around the world world rather, are claiming that the negative effects of child sexual abuse are not necessarily from the act itself, but other determining factors such as family life and the relationship with the adult. Here we go blaming the traditional family again, but more on that later. Secondly, he claims that the effects of sexual child abuse are determined to be harmful because they are looking at it from the assumptive position of abuse, as opposed to other determining factors he mentions, when, according to him, it shouldn’t be. Did you get that? Traditionally speaking, the existing presumption that adult-child sex is an act of abuse, and harmful to the child, should be discarded in favor of the view that other determining factors could be the cause of the negative consequence, not the sexual act itself. Rind’s so-called findings get more disturbing yet as he implies that there is a difference between a five-year-old girl being raped and a 15-year-old boy who consensually agrees to engage in sexual acts with an adult. The latter, he claims, should not be considered child sexual abuse and that an engagement such as this may be beneficial for the child.
How does he justify the act of adult-child sex simply by saying the minor consented to it? The word consent implies there was a proposition in the first place. Meaning the adult in question has pedophilic tendencies. This, in modern society, is a crime. The left, however, is muddying the waters by referring to it as a violation of social norms as opposed to being a crime. This is where this gets interesting and downright troubling. This goes back further than most people may realize. First, it is important to understand that Critical Theory plays a role in this. Herbert Marcuse, of the Frankfurt School, argued that true human liberation would come when people’s basic sexual desires were set free and people could act on them without the restrictions put in place by societal norms. What societal norms? That sex was used as a means of not only reproduction but also maintaining white hegemony and the societal norms established by Protestantism. According to an article entitled The Natural Order of Disorder: Pedophilia, Stranger Danger and the Normalising Family, which is essentially an analysis of Michael Foucault’s 1978 book, The History of Sexuality, the term pedophilia itself is a social construct derived from the illusion that the white, heterosexual, bourgeoise family is the caretaker of social norms and what reproductive practices should look like. The pedophile, the authors claim, is a constructed enemy meant to create the illusion of the family as a safe haven from sexual danger. This is written in an academic journal called Sexuality and Culture. The authors of this article also go into the history of sexuality and psychology mentioning the time when homosexuality was treated by the medical profession as a mental disorder and because of this, other sexual deviants were invented in the minds of the public as shadowy figures who posed threats to women and children. As if pedophiles don’t exist and people don’t kidnap and rape children. This article also argues that sexual deviancy, and legislation that outlawed it, was not the result of valid scientific research into the psychology of sexuality, but of fearmongering from legislatures and an anxious public, who of course at the time, was predominately Christian.
I pulled up Foucault’s book this morning as well, and after getting through the first few pages I have to say it is quite telling. He is writing from the perspective of a homosexual who takes Marcuse’s views that unlimited and unbinding sexuality is the road to freedom and modern society, with its taboos and attitudes towards anything that doesn’t fit the normative view of how sex should function in society, is nothing short of repression. It is important to understand that this guy’s work is considered instrumental to the modern study of sexuality. The opening chapter starts with a description of the seventeenth century, a time he describes as being sexually free when everyone’s sexuality was out in the open and there was no need for secrets. He says it was a time when “knowing children hung about amid the laughter of adults: it was a period when bodies made a display of themselves.” Whatever that means. He then goes on to describe the next century as a time when sexuality was confined to the strict purposes of reproduction and kept safely tucked away behind parents’ doors. Is this guy sick or what?
Traditionally speaking, conservative Americans pride themselves on their morality and their Christian worldviews. How Christian are we when we let these kinds of studies take place in the halls of our higher academic institutions? Most people turn away from discussing these topics. What about our churches? Our churches are doing nothing to stop it. In fact, most of them are pushing the homosexual issue along with acceptance of the transgender agenda. If the claim made at the end of Sound of Freedom concerning America, and the consumption of child sex is true, we are a long way off from being anywhere near the higher level of morality we believe we represent. We should all be investing our time and efforts to expose this mentality and the efforts to normalize pedophilia as a sexual orientation. I know I will be. The following link is a paper I turned in as a graduate student in a Master of Social Work program. The same program incidentally, where I was denied my degree three days before graduation.
If you enjoyed this content please consider subscribing to my website and checking out my most recent books.
A Critical Look at CRT in Education, Research and Social Policy, now available in paperback.
And Without a Shot Indeed: Inducing Compliance to Tyranny Through Conditioning and Persuasion.
