I generally enjoy the local news on Halloween. The corny jokes, the little bat flapping on the seven day forecast, the coverage of children in costume and revelers wandering around having a good time. The local news talking heads engaging in lame but friendly banter.
One of the stories this year, though, really pissed me off. Apparently, sex offenders are getting to spend halloween down at the county courthouse.
This aggravates me on many, many levels. Firstly, if these people are fucking dangerous, why aren't they in custody? And if they are not dangerous, why harass them on Halloween? Oh no, there will be children running around - just like on every other day after school. Hell, on Halloween the children get escorted by their parents. It's actually less likely that anything will happen to them.
But, you know, children. The trump card of fearmongers.
Also, although some places seem to be discriminating between pedophiles and other sex offenders, lots of places aren't. So if you got nabbed for statutory rape when she was fifteen and you were seventeen, you get to spend Halloween downtown. Yeah, for the rest of your life. Because, you know, you might flip out and nab the children.
I'll say it again. If these people are dangerous, lock them up. If they are not, leave them the fuck alone, okay? If they need to be on probation and carefully watched, then they should be watched all the time. There shouldn't be anything so goddamn special about Halloween!
Which gets to the core of my anger. Because what these empty-headed news drones are saying is:
...and that really pisses me off.
No one has ever doctored Halloween candy with poison or razor blades and then handed it out. Of the eighty recorded cases of sharp objects stuck into candy - across millions of trick-or-treaters visiting millions of houses since 1959 - most of them were hoaxes. No creepy guy is waiting for that special night to prey on anyone. Halloween is fucking safe... except for the drunk drivers. But no, safe doesn't sell advertising space. So this year it's the fucking pedophiles who are coming to get your kids, despite the fact that there has never, ever, been a case of someone swiping a random child who came trick-or-treating. Ever. We're singling people out and locking them up in case they may, possibly, do something that has never actually been done by anyone.
Shit, how many more steps until we let the authorities just lock people up without any grounds at all?
I fucking hate fear-mongering and what it's turned this nation into. A nation of bleating sheep who vote for a guy because fucking Saddam Hussein was coming to get them. Because we'll believe that anyone is coming to get us. Because they're always telling us so.
And, just like the drunk drivers and the actual terrorists who, you know, did it, we wind up ignoring the real threats in favor of the bullshit scary ones.
And speaking of scary things and brainwashed sheep, get a load of this.
It might be funny, if it were a parody. But it's not.
They're teaching it to their children. Teaching their children to fear and despise, blindly.
They're a cult. They really are. They have their own radio and their own teevee and their own books telling them what to think, and they hear and obey, and they teach their children to hate without questioning. They aren't interested in dialogue, they are interested in blind caricature. Godwin's law notwithstanding, these people are just like the Nazis. Fervent, obedient, voiciferous, and rejoicing in their unquestioning hatred. They have to hate the liberals, because everyone knows that liberals are like this and like that and are Bad People, and no, they aren't interested in talking about it. They believe.
Now that's fucking frightening.
- Sun Ra