Blogs For Victory

So the Epstein list was released – as it turns out, just as it was I started watching The Sound of Freedom, that movie last year which got all the Establishment types upset. Now we know why. Or maybe, now I know why.

Of course I’ve long been familiar with both the trafficking and the vile nature of our Ruling Class, but I guess the juxtaposition of the two events sort of drove it home for me. I considered as I watched it that one of the victims portrayed in the movie is about as old as my granddaughter. And it really exposed, though subtly, just how many powerful people must be involved in it all. One of the scenes shows the kids being transported via a merchant ship – one of those large, modern container vessels. Ships have crews, you know? It isn’t like you can actually have a container filled with people over a days or weeks journey without someone outside the container noticing…if nothing else noticing the smell of human waste which must rather pile up inside the container.

Everyone not directly involved is paid to look the other way, of course. This ends up being lots of people…from average Janes and Joes to quite senior corporate and government people. Anyone not paid to look away is probably kept in line by fear. The people who traffic the kids have a well-deserved reputation for being cruelly violent. But, still, how can you look away? Sure, you’re just some poor slob on the crew of a merchant ship, or driving a bus to the border…but you know what is going to happen to those kids. You know. Maybe in the dark of the night you try to tell yourself that you don’t know, but you do.

Nobody knows how many kids are trafficked each year but its likely in the hundreds of thousands around the world. Maybe into millions if we consider the number of kids who are working in mines and such and I suspect a lot of them not necessarily voluntarily. Just physically moving them around takes a huge logistic system…after all, the traffickers don’t want them dead or even seriously abused in transit. They want the kids looking healthy and fresh when placed on the market, whether that market is sex or labor. This means that at least at points along they way there must be food, medical and housing facilities for the kids.

As I pondered all of this I jumped out at me: why we have this. Why, indeed, we have all sorts of miseries and hideous, anti-human actions. It is simple: we don’t punish.

The movie, as is the way of such things, has a happy ending: the particular kids taken are rescued and the culprits are jailed. Good. But it doesn’t stop anyone. No more than taking down a drug shipment ring takes down a Cartel. Nobody is punished.

Jail is not punishment.

To the criminals, it is just part of life. To be avoided, but not something to be afraid of. Remember, they’re amoral animals…people who can transport drugs or children are not people who have the same sorts of likes and dislikes you and I have. To them, being brutal and in charge is what matters…and sure, they all dream of being another Pablo Escobar lording it over a country (for a time), but if all they can lord it over is their cell block, that’ll suit them just fine. They don’t have higher thoughts. They are the gutter and so only gutter considerations exist. I’ll pause here and note that even the very worst of these people can repent and become saints…but unless and until they do, they are worse than beasts in the jungle. More cruel, absolutely irrational in motives.

To end this cruelty – and all the cruelties we see these days – is going to take something more. As I was thinking this over through the day, I saw a report pass on the time line about two men who had held a woman at knife point and raped her…they had just been released without bail. Another report was about a pack of savages looting a bakery. You think jail is going to stop such people? Knife wielding men breaking into a middle class home to rape are not afraid of jail. In jail they’ll just rape their weaker cellmates and consider that just as good a thing to do. Packs of roaming savages looting stores don’t have the wit to even think about jail. All they are thinking about is how fun it is to steal.

We’re going to have to break these people. And I mean that in the sense that once upon a time, we used to break them at the wheel. If you are not familiar with it, then I’ll ask you to take my word on it: very brutal. And it was used on robbers, not just murderers. We’re conditioned here in modern times to think of such punishments as the unreasonable actions of our cruel and ignorant ancestors. I’ve been drifting away from that over the years and now I completely reject the notion. They knew precisely what they were doing and why.

We’re dealing with people who make sane life impossible. Just what in heck are we really supposed to do with someone who views a child as a way to make money? A store as a place to steal? A woman as someone to be raped? How are we to instruct? And I don’t mean instructing the miscreant – by the time someone is selling a child it is only God who can change that person. I mean instructing everyone else. That is, telling the people that if they decide to do such things, their end will be one of prolonged, agonizing pain. Not jail. Not a plea deal. Not a probation. You’re going to be tied down and then very heavy objects will be used to break your bones and mutilate you – starting with your feet. And our hope is that you survive the breaking so you can live for a couple days without so much as a sip of water before you expire. Quick and painless executions are for decent people, folks. We can hang a politician who takes a bribe or a safe cracker who robs the rich…but the person who steals from the working man’s store or violates the honor of a woman is someone who isn’t worthy of a quick end. Needless to say, anyone who sells a child should endure weeks of pain.

And here’s the thing – and I’ve noted this before – it works. The polite society that existed pretty much universally just 75 years ago was the result of a thousand years of ferocious violence being applied by society against the bad guys. As far as I can tell, there’s no other way we’re going to get out of this. Until we find the iron in our blood to really punish, the savages will just continue to run amok.