Watching the national news has
taken me back to my working days — days spent in rooms with criminals,
wife-batterers, rapists, child molesters, murderers — few of whom
accepted responsibility for their own behavior. And living in this
country is feeling a bit like dealing with the offenders’ families and
communities — firmly in denial.

Denial. Blame. Minimization. Distraction. All classic maneuvers.

While
the offense may come from the perpetrator himself, the crimes could
often not occur — at least not repeatedly — without the silence
and/or active collusion of family, employers, friends, churches — all
the organizations and individuals that move to protect and ‘forgive’
the offender; and often to blame the victim. In the refusal to accept
the evidence. In the protection of one’s own position, income, influence, at the cost of honesty, recompense, accountability.

The very individuals who speak with disdain of the private, adult
sexual lives of others, suddenly become coy about the exploitation of
teenagers in their care. Those who condemn others for — sadly —
ordinary sexual indiscretions, are publicly and undeniably revealed to
have committed the same (or worse, more destructive) sins, but are
somehow exempt.

Because they are sorry. Because they are religious.
Because God forgives them and so should you. Because they are
Republican. Because such behavior should now be considered private and
irrelevant, where it was previously considered ‘fair game’.

The very individuals who lecture about family values and the
degeneration of American Culture, apparently consider financial and
ethical shenanigans involving the public trust — and the public purse
— perfectly legitimate. Misdirection, double-speak, and outright lies
are just part of the game. What’s a few hundred thousand
in cash or golf abroad from lobbyists? It’s a coincidence that
subsequent votes were to the benefit of said lobbyists’ clients. Just a
perk of the job. Everybody does it.

He’s
one of ours, after all. As long as he’s one of ours, he didn’t do it.
Or, if he did it, it’s not his fault. He was seduced, entrapped,
confused. Victimized. He promised not to do it again.

Or, if
he did it, and we can’t slip him past it, then it’s all his fault. No
one else was involved. We didn’t know. Or, if we knew, we thought he
had quit doing it. Or we didn’t understand how bad it was. Or — no —
actually, we didn’t know. He lied to us.

The victim(s) lied to us. OK,
they told us, but how were we to believe such outrageous accusations
against such a fine upstanding person / corporation? There was no
evidence. The evidence was unconvincing. The evidence didn’t fit our
ideology. There was no room in our world view for this evidence.

Well,
so there was evidence, and we did know, and we knew it was bad — but
the real crime is how the system (the child protection workers; the
cops; the media; the prosecutor; the judge; the opposition party)
handled/ leaked/ took advantage of this relatively minor problem. It’s
been escalated beyond all proportion.

We will deal with it ourselves.
He’s in treatment; we’ve instituted new policies; we fined the
corporation. No further attention — no further investigation — is
required. We all need to move on.

I once sat in a room with a
man who had molested his three daughters, his two granddaughters, for
decades. He assaulted another man in the group for ‘taking the name of the Lord in vain’. He was a Christian, you see; and therefore superior to the other man — who was not, in fact, an offender, but a therapist.

A devout Catholic therapist, as it happens.

Just
as most rape and child molestation is not about sex, the core of these
scandals is not about sex, either. It’s about hypocrisy, greed, abuse
of power (which is, after all, what many who have too much do with it),
selfishness, narcissism, and the arrogance of the untouchable. But
criminality — the abuse and deception and exploitation of the weak and
uninformed and easily led — uses the same techniques, in both the
commission of the crime and the denial of responsibility.

We
have seen all of this in the past few weeks. In the past months; in the
past years — as military contracts are let without bids to companies
with connections, which are then not held to the terms of the
contracts. In the public flaying of those who question the war and so ‘don’t support the troops‘ by the very people who refuse to provide our soldiers with sufficient equipment and armor. In the pretense that we don’t torture. In the lies about who knew what, and when.

It’s about votes. It’s about money.

But really, right down to it, it’s about power.

Yes, I know this post should be dense with links, but it’s the middle of the night, and you know what I’m talking about. If you have links you think I should add, send them on.

I do want to thank Ryan, though, for his series of posts that helped clarify for me these connections, the cause of my recent agitation.