as a child being told “the moon controls the tides” with no additional explanation was like. oh okay. you want me to believe in magic? you’re talking about magic right now? okay. fine
sorry. only semi-related but i simply wasn’t ready for “the sun is a distant gorilla”. thank you NASA
80s Satanic Panic campaigner: Satan is LITERALLY lurking beneath every preschool, kidnapping thousands of children daily!
People in 2022: Haha, how silly. Who couldn’t see through that?
20s human trafficking campaigner: Gangs of Mexicans are just waiting to kidnap every well-off white lady in the suburbs. Thousands disappear every day, and the media doesn’t even mention it. You are in CONSTANT DANGER and the only way to stop it is banning all these things evangelicals hate
People in 2022: Whoa. This is so scary. I have to do something about this, the real threat of human trafficking. But first, let me threaten to get my undocumented maid deported if she reports anything we’ve done to her
Rebranding the Satanic Panic to be about “human trafficking” was the smartest move these people ever did, since no one wants to be against human trafficking victims, so they’ll be more credulous, even towards organizations that push paranoid conspiracy theories with very little relation to trafficking in practice, who stage dramatic but ultimately useless raids for the cameras (because when you’re helping traumatized children, it helps to be as loud and dramatic as possible) and show very little regard for any real victims they do rescue (for instance, releasing a bunch of rescued children after less than a week bc they had nothing at hand to help). You can be an outright QAnon guy and if you claim you’re helping “real” human trafficking victims instead of openly ranting about adrenochrome parties under pizza shops, people will treat you with kid gloves when you make a movie about how great you are, yes, this is about the organization the hit movie Sound of Freedom is about!
They’ve done all of these things, including releasing trafficked children in a matter of days bc they put all their thought into doing a big dramatic raid for the cameras and nothing into what to do with anyone they rescued. Oh, and they don’t actually verify that people are trafficked before launching a big, dramatic, violent raid to “rescue” them. And since they’re far-right, the list of things they consider “trafficking” is ever growing. All sex work, no matter how consensual, is trafficking in their eyes. No doubt soon enough they’ll be discussing “liberating” trans kids from their parents, if they haven’t already.
In the end, what these people have learned is that you can get away with McMartin-level nonsense if you just excise the Satanism from it and pretend it’s secular
Barbie (2023) really had Barbie say “hey. I know the reason you hurt me is because I hurt you. I’m sorry I hurt you, because you didn’t deserve that. I know you are a better person than this, and you are fully capable of being that person. I can’t change the past, and I don’t think we can be in each other’s lives anymore without hurting each other, but i am sorry and I want you to be happy. I want you to find your identity and love yourself and live.” and then she realizes she’s also talking about herself.
she’s saying “I deserve to live. We both deserve to live.” it is one of the kindest things I have ever seen done to someone and to themselves in any piece of media ever
