And the Absurdity Award Goes To……
The United States needs to award a daily prize for the news event that best epitomizes contemporary American culture. My vote for yesterday’s winner goes to Walmart, for ordering its workers to remove video game signs and displays that depict violence from stores nationwide, while continuing to sell guns. Fake guns killing fake people: atrocity. Real guns killing real people: good business.
The day’s still young, but it looks like today’s Absurdity Award is going to the people who killed Jeffrey Epstein and think that Americans will believe that the most convenient death in world history was a suicide, committed under a 24-hour suicide watch, in a cell containing nothing that could possibly end a life.
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.
Craig,
Interesting you raise the issue of violent games and movies. There is no direct correlation between fictional violence depicted on screen or games and a rise in actual violence, anymore than pornography leads to sex crimes.
However, the level of violence and lack of moral message in modern movies and video games does seem to “normalize” or inure some people to the effects of violence in everyday life.
It’s far too simplistic to simply attribute the actions of the mentally unbalanced to ownership and easy access to firearms.
Likewise is your readiness to accept a conspiracy theory for any unusual or difficult to explain event.
To a wealthy and resourceful man like Jeffery Epstein finding a method of accomplishing suicide would not present much of a problem. (Even Herman Goering achieved suicide in similar circumstances).
What is surprising is the cell contained no concealed CCV TV. But apparently that’s not legal in New York.
In some way, (although terribly incorrect) I find it hard to join the lynch mob of outraged ‘victims’.
The is no evidence of Epstein using violence against any of the victims who seem to have sought out his parties as as an alternative to street prostitution. Like the porn lawyer and sleaze aficionado, Michael Avenatti, the victims seem to be relishing the role of ‘victims’ in the hope of notoriety attention,and a large pay day.
It’s a sad fact of modern society that tens of thousands of young teenagers runaway from their homes for a wide range of reasons and choose to live a ‘feral’ existence on the mean streets of major cities.
Most quickly succumb to a life of drugs, disease, sexual exploitation and survival at the edges of society. Very sad, but hardly a new phenomenon or easily solved by indignant outrage and sanctimonious persecution of corrupt creatures like Jeffery Epstein.
These wayward runaways, will encounter far more evil and depraved predators than Epstein. Of course, no one will care, as long as this activity is kept to the edges of society, among the flotsam and underclasses.
These thoughts may be “politically incorrect’ , but I believe far more honest that the simplistic, sanctimony and ‘moral outrage’ hypocrisy of those seeking to enlarge the scandal for political gain.
I’m reminded of the lyrics sung by the late Johnny Cash:
“I wear the black for the poor and the beaten down,
Livin’ in the hopeless, hungry side of town,
I wear it for the prisoner who has long paid for his crime,
But is there because he’s a victim of the times”.
And Paul Simon who in 1969 wrote :
When I left my home and my family
I was no more than a boy
In the company of strangers
In the quiet of the railway station
Running scared,
Laying low, seeking out the poorer quarters
Where the ragged people go
Looking for the places
Only they would know.