We live in a bizarre world at the moment. Never in the history of our current western society have we spent so much time and energy saying all the right things when it comes to “protecting the children” (and saying plenty of wrong things too), yet DOING absolutely nothing to back up those words. We are an outrage culture, for one. We are addicted to outrage. We are addicted to reactionary anger, spouting off at the drop of the hat about imagined ills and dangers and hurts. Yet after we outburst, what do we do? Well, the answer to that is… Basically nothing. Nothing, that is, except make laws and pass bills that effectively make it MUCH more difficult to actually do what we need to do to fix the problems we are raging at.
This is extremely true in the case of children. “PROTECT THE CHILDREN!” We scream, but it’s not that we are screaming it, it’s what we are screaming it about. We aren’t screaming that we should protect them from things they truly need to be protected from. We aren’t screaming about protection from hunger, or death, or disease or any myriad problems and issues that children are at risk from in our society every day. No, we scream about imagined things. About drag queens, and nudists, and vaccinations, and books and racial diversity and ‘wokeness”. We rage that our children are being “indoctrinated” by things that are simply every day, natural helpful, important and/or necessary things, while simultaneously ACTUALLY indoctrinating them with religion, hatred, bigotry, bully mentalities and media.
To add fuel to the fire, at the same time we are raging against the imagined ills, we are creating very real ones in their place. From making it easier for child abuse to happen due to cutting social and school programs such as sexual education, therapy, lunch programs, LGBTQIA+ safe spaces and many, many more to outright forcing children out of loving homes due to ignorance, hatred and fear, as in the case of LGBTOIA+, nudists, homeless or other issues being seen as ‘dangerous’ to children… when in reality it’s the tearing them away from their families that does the most harm.
So as a society, we are absolutely failing our children. We so desperately desire to be angry in their name, but so desperately do everything possible to make sure they are never truly safe and protected. We want to FEEL good about ourselves, even if it means ignoring the true problems in exchange for being SEEN as being righteous. After all, in our day and age, it’s all about clicks and likes and reach and impressions and reputation…. but never about reality.
The thing is, our children don’t even need the protection that the outrage demands. Not really. Most of the things the outrage rails against are not only not dangerous to children, but are beneficial and necessary. We NEED to be teaching children about racial diversity. We NEED to be teaching children body acceptance and proper terminology and lack of shame. We NEED to be teaching children it’s ok to feel different and love whoever you wish to love. We NEED to be giving our children supports like food and shelter and education health options and mental health support. We NEED to be doing better….
….but we simply can’t see the forest for the trees can we? We just continue to only see red through eyes of ignorance, and the children continue to suffer. When are we going to get tired enough of it?