Crossposted from The Wild Wild Left
What better way for the Catholic Church to dodge responsibility for their criminal actions in covering up their pedophile Priests than to blame the 60's.
How bizarre to even make the claim that its only Pedophilia if you have sex with a child under the tender age of 11. Golly, does this mean we're going back to the Era of child-brides, or going to start passing out condoms in the middle schools? 12 to 14 year olds seem to fair game in the Catholic findings, making the sickening quote I once heard in a movie about abuse by the abuser, "If its old enough to bleed, its old enough to breed," come to real-life in the most reprehensible way.
Their claim is that the 60's era of "Love, Generosity, Communal Sharing and Anti-war" lead to a climate of "deviant sex" with which the Priests couldn't cope.
Amazingly? There is not ONE iota of evidence that the "Hippies" were involved in the sexual abuse of children AT ALL. Only PRIESTS.
Well, here's a news flash for you, you hypocritical, control-freak Christinazis:
Sex and Love are not DEVIANT.
WAR and CHILD ABUSE are DEVIANT.
Got that? Sex not deviant, War deviant. Love between adults, good; loving a child as an adult, sick and criminal.
The Church, like any other Political institution (and by all means, that's exactly what it is) couldn't care less about the lives it destroys ~ it cares only for maintaining its Power over the People.
Its all about CONTROL. Let me connect a few dots for you.......
I am sure most of you are now familiar with the Trilateral Commission's book "The Crisis of Democracy" published in 1975.
Read Noam Chomsky's description of direct quotes from that report carefully. Twice if you need to. Think about our Government appointing a commission to counter the activism of the 60's, and the power the people took back to end the Vietnam War, and enact social reform. (my emphasis)
The report argues that what is needed in the industrial democracies "is a greater degree of moderation in democracy" to overcome the "excess of democracy" of the past decade. "The effective operation of a democratic political system usually requires some measure of apathy and noninvolvement on the part of some individuals and groups." This recommendation recalls the analysis of Third World problems put forth by other political thinkers of the same persuasion, for example, Ithiel Pool (then chairman of the Department of Political Science at MIT), who explained some years ago that in Vietnam, the Congo, and the Dominican Republic, "order depends on somehow compelling newly mobilized strata to return to a measure of passivity and defeatism... At least temporarily the maintenance of order requires a lowering of newly acquired aspirations and levels of political activity." The Trilateral recommendations for the capitalist democracies are an application at home of the theories of "order" developed for subject societies of the Third World.
Now, I want you to think about life in the 60's and 70's. One income was enough to raise a family of 5, in a nice middle class, 2 car existence. The press was still free and unbiased, the citizens were very aware, and activism resulted in stronger Unions, the push of equality by race and gender, and the end of forced conscription and illegal warfare.
Even Pope John XXIII tried to grow the Catholic Church into a more reasoned, kinder version of herself; a result pushed by people leaving the strict, unyielding institution having tired of its position of damnation for most of society. Guitar masses, renouncing anti-semitism, beginning to embrace people of color, easing of the fire and brimstone to a message of love and hope - all slated to bring people back to the fold because of pressure applied by that "excess of Democracy."
This was followed, I believe, with a direct response by the varied Power structures, likely influenced by the Trilateral Commission's report, but probably not as coordinated by it directly as may seem evident. Who knows?
The first attack was by infiltrating the various groups that were effective in coordinating the People in making their Democratic voices heard. COINTELPRO was formed by our Government to incite violence, undermine coalitions by subterfuge of its leaders and create out of the ether reasons for their arrests.
The second was to delegitimatize Unions, accusing them of graft, violence and ultimately disappearing leaders. Jimmy Hoffa, anyone?
The third was to fund and raise the National attention level on what had prior been the fringes of Christian society: The Rovian plan to attach the highest levels of Political Office to "Born Again" fundamentalist Churches whose members would be pliable - people who would unquestioningly follow their Leader's commands for fear of damnation.
The end result is fairly obvious.
Our middle class is in shambles. Our earning capacity leaves two incomes barely able to keep a home, let alone have new cars every few years. We have been relegated to fenced off "free speech zones" and nearly every protest results in arrest. We have no privacy. Leaders of any resistance movement are raided, their computers taken.
The era of "Rainbow Coalitions" have been replaced by a national mood of distrust, self-interest and what I can only call the fracturing of human unity into a competing tribal mindset. Religions hate one another, people of different ethnicities hate one another, the backlash against acceptance of gender/orientation is huge.
Science is being replaced with Creationist "Young Earth" voodoo, and our Schools are being filled with dogma disguised as "science." There are "Museums" popping up, trying to sell The Flintstones as a documentary.
Not that there is anything new under the Sun, my friends.
History is rife with tales of slave rebellions being met with even harsher treatments, so as to render those seeking freedom and self-determination, to "return to a measure of passivity and defeatism" as the Trilateral Commission likes to call it.
Religious history is equally fetid in ages of utter repression when reason started to gain popularity over blind obedience. Galileo anyone? Inquisition? Mayan sacrifices?
The creation of wages over barter itself is nothing but a tool to control people and make them at the mercy of the few.
The making of one of our basic human needs, our sexuality, into a "dirty, unacceptable act" unless "blessed" by a "religion" is an attempt to control people. The same goes for food taboos, be it sacred cows or pork chops.
At what point did the sharing of pleasure, so entirely acceptable in Polynesia become an act of self-loathing? Unlike the white-washed movie "South Pacific" to me, Michener's work of the same name spoke of a culture entirely free of hierarchical domination and true Democracy in a utopian society based on sharing and the good of all over the greed and power of the few. Love and sex were as open as the sharing of a meal. Possessions were not even a concept. You used what you needed, and gave as you could to all. Even to the horror of the Western mind, the children were not "owned" by their biological parents, they were part of the "all" of the village. They lacked the word for "other." Every single being born was the child of the whole village and cared for as we can only imagine as "our own." Fed, loved, cherished, taught. They were stewards of their Earth, not exploiters. There was always plenty for all.
Too bad for history, this mindset did not conquer the world; yet by its very Nature, a communal and embracing ideology has not the concept of conquering.
Instead the cancer of Control and Domination spread the Earth, in repeating cycles of abuse and rebellion.
I for one, would gladly send my child into the "heathen" embrace of the now-destroyed culture of Polynesia than into the "pedophile" embrace of the Catholic Church.
What is happening right now, in our Society is exactly an attempt to keep "the excess of democracy" down all while playing lip service to it in the "Arab Spring" rebellions.
Everything around you is right out of the playbook:
People are being made to feel powerless, apathetic, and like resistance is futile. We have become uninformed and isolated.
Any tool or movement to regain our Democratic Voice is being repressed, financially crushed, imprisoned or met with excess violence.
It is increasingly the case that mere survival is so tough, that we have not the means nor the energy to organize against the top 1% holding all our wealth and Power.
Fundamentalism and Nationalism is on the rise - a sure sign of every cycle that has lead to fascism.
We are involved in Warfare for the sole purpose of enriching the few.
Poverty and disease are endemic, and our very safeguards against them are being destroyed.
Everything in your World is an attempt to maintain control.
That is why the 60's are no vilified - it was an era of direct democracy in action. They cannot allow that.
That is why the Constitution had been bastardized to exclude you, and support "Corporate Personhoods."
That is why the Church says gays cannot marry, but priests can fuck 12 year olds.
The only way to win is to DEMAND our right to self-determination, wage a slave revolt and cease allowing apathy and hopelessness to creep into our souls.
We are FREE BEINGS, and our freedom is only taken with our complicity, no matter what the efforts made to confuse or fill us with disinformation and fear.
Its all about CONTROL.
And in the end? Only you control you!
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post script for ACM discussion
I guess the larger question is how we can attain equality, equity, sustainability in a system in which power always tends to corrupt, and in its corruption is it inherent self-protection.
The present system in the US is actively trying to reduce our active input in our own affairs, keep us distracted and ill-informed.
Will we be able to turn enough minds around, when People on the right, even intelligent people say, "We know you want socialism. We will never let you have it." ?
Can we break the western mindset?
Can we learn to rise above the European Capitalist mindset, which is heavily infused by a delusion of superiority and enforced in some measure by archaic religious fears?
How do we teach people they can be free?