Your must-read today: @RottenInDenmark debunks the "39 sex-trafficked kids recovered from double-wide trailer in Georgia" story, which was almost entirely bullshit that the rest of the media credulously passed on. He did this by "reporting." https://www.huffpost.com/entry/government-did-not-break-up-child-sex-trafficking-ring-georgia_n_5f52b7a1c5b6946f3eb1c5d9?v2&guccounter=1

As Hobbes fans know by now, "sex trafficking" is one of those classic recurring American moral panics, in which we try to exoticize common crimes, so that we can safely Other them & imagine them as something that monsters do, that cops must stop w/ more punitive force.

In reality, almost all crimes of sex & violence in the US are *ordinary*, meaning they are committed by men against their families or people they know.

Again: it's just plain old American men, beating, raping, & killing those around them.

Americans do not like contemplating the fact that their culture encourages, enables, & covers for violent, predatory men. They do not like the thought that violent, predatory men are as essentially American as apple f'ing pie, and always have been.

So again & again, Americans have these shared hallucinatory panics in which exotic predators -- nothing like the men YOU know -- snatch innocent kids off the street & conduct bizarre Satanic rituals with them & sell them on f'ing furniture sites to a cabal of secret pedophiles.

If you imagine these crimes all being committed by exotic Others, you can indulge your reactionary impulses: more punishment! Tougher cops! Longer jail sentences! You can crucify the Other to externalize & expiate your own nagging guilt.

If, on the other hand, you acknowledge the fact that these are everyday American men committing these crimes, you have struggle with how to change culture to stop producing predators. You have to start thinking about a more compassionate society ...

... that provides people housing & basic necessities so they do not end up desperate & vulnerable. You have to start thinking about how to hold ordinary men accountable & teach them some basic emotional literacy. You have to reckon with what a bloody, cruel place America is.

That's no fun. Reactionaries need binaries, need Good & Evil, need an Other to punish. They are profoundly uncomfortable with self-examination & ambiguity. They are allergic to facing the consequences of their attitudes & actions. They don't WANT to curtail male privilege.

So we get this never-ending procession of exotic (largely fictional) crimes on which to project & externalize America's sins. We fall for them because, as lurid as they are, they are comforting. It's *them* committing these horrors, not *us*. So very American.