The perfect victim
By Capt. Fogg
Hysterical anger is a very effective tool for the manipulation of the American public. It's easy for instance, to make people forget the large-scale and coordinated export of well paying, technical, engineering, manufacturing and executive jobs to foreign countries by raising the specter of Mexican immigrants taking away our career opportunities in dish washing and fruit picking. Illegal immigrants are excellent pawns in the game as they can't afford to speak out or set the record straight regarding their "burden" on society.
Less obviously motivated by partisan politics however, is the hysteria over sex offenders. They could not be more nearly perfect targets. Nobody has any sympathy. No one wants to be seen having any sympathy and the legal terminology doesn't really discriminate between the monsters who torture and kill children and the damn fools who were sure that teen age girl they picked up in a bar was 21. The category conjures up images of the unspeakable yet it includes, in some States the teenager who got caught "mooning" people from a moving car or the guy who just couldn't hold it in any longer and got caught urinating in the bushes.
Of course adding to the general fear of the public serves authoritarianism and it eases the road to a more medieval justice system in which an offender can never be redeemed nor can he escape suspicion and the presumption of malice. Be he a 90 year old ex con with 70 years of abiding by the law or some harmless bozo with bladder problems, he is marked and cast out like Cain.
The public satisfaction with perpetual punishment and exile for a broad spectrum of crimes seems nearly unanimous. The rules of exile, by which a registered sex offender may never live or work within a half mile of any place where children might congregate are proliferating and perhaps nowhere more than in Miami Florida. Wandering, homeless men, being now without hope of employment or shelter or plumbing would seem to be something society would want to avoid, but the City of Miami is happy to have them living, with official sanction, with rats and other vermin under bridges -- like trolls.
The logic behind a program supposedly designed to make a released criminal less of a danger to society by forcing him into domestic exile from which he can only escape by death or a return to a prison cell; a position from which he has nothing to lose by committing another crime, truly escapes me, but I can't blame a stupid, counterproductive and probably illegal policy on power hungry politicians alone. Without the hysteria and panic and abject safety seeking stupidity of the American Middle Class Conservative, they couldn't get away with it.
Update:
This morning's CNN poll tells us that 45% of respondents would approve of laws forbidding registered sex offenders to live anywhere.
Hysterical anger is a very effective tool for the manipulation of the American public. It's easy for instance, to make people forget the large-scale and coordinated export of well paying, technical, engineering, manufacturing and executive jobs to foreign countries by raising the specter of Mexican immigrants taking away our career opportunities in dish washing and fruit picking. Illegal immigrants are excellent pawns in the game as they can't afford to speak out or set the record straight regarding their "burden" on society.
Less obviously motivated by partisan politics however, is the hysteria over sex offenders. They could not be more nearly perfect targets. Nobody has any sympathy. No one wants to be seen having any sympathy and the legal terminology doesn't really discriminate between the monsters who torture and kill children and the damn fools who were sure that teen age girl they picked up in a bar was 21. The category conjures up images of the unspeakable yet it includes, in some States the teenager who got caught "mooning" people from a moving car or the guy who just couldn't hold it in any longer and got caught urinating in the bushes.
Of course adding to the general fear of the public serves authoritarianism and it eases the road to a more medieval justice system in which an offender can never be redeemed nor can he escape suspicion and the presumption of malice. Be he a 90 year old ex con with 70 years of abiding by the law or some harmless bozo with bladder problems, he is marked and cast out like Cain.
The public satisfaction with perpetual punishment and exile for a broad spectrum of crimes seems nearly unanimous. The rules of exile, by which a registered sex offender may never live or work within a half mile of any place where children might congregate are proliferating and perhaps nowhere more than in Miami Florida. Wandering, homeless men, being now without hope of employment or shelter or plumbing would seem to be something society would want to avoid, but the City of Miami is happy to have them living, with official sanction, with rats and other vermin under bridges -- like trolls.
The logic behind a program supposedly designed to make a released criminal less of a danger to society by forcing him into domestic exile from which he can only escape by death or a return to a prison cell; a position from which he has nothing to lose by committing another crime, truly escapes me, but I can't blame a stupid, counterproductive and probably illegal policy on power hungry politicians alone. Without the hysteria and panic and abject safety seeking stupidity of the American Middle Class Conservative, they couldn't get away with it.
Update:
This morning's CNN poll tells us that 45% of respondents would approve of laws forbidding registered sex offenders to live anywhere.
Labels: civil liberties, grotesqueries
posted by Capt. Fogg at
5:11 PM
3 Comments:
This is one of my hobby horse issues. The whole sex offender registry has done much more harm than good by encouraging hysteria among parents and inciting vigilantes to violence against "offenders" who aren't a danger to society. And all too often the people who end up on the list are not actual offenders.
I recall a while back, a couple of people were murdered for being on the list and one was convicted of having sexual relations with his girlfriend when they were both around 17. I forget what the other one was, but it wasn't a true sex offense either.
This sort of Scarlet Letter mentality will destroy our society long before even real sex offenders would.
By
Libby Spencer, at 12:24 PM
I think only people who molest or kill children should be given such low status, But, not for statutory rape, skinny-dipping or mooning!
To be sure, some states, do make this distinction, but others seem to becoming more like the Taliban
By
Anonymous, at 7:59 PM
The tendency is to lump all kinds of disparate things under hazy headings like terrorists or sex offenders -- and of course Liberals.
The fewer the pixels, the more one thing looks like any other thing. It's the kind of thinking that justified attacking Iraq and it's the kind of thing that lets tyrants trample liberty in the name of freedom. The more afraid they make us, the more freedom we're willing to give up.
By
Capt. Fogg, at 10:55 PM
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