Why 'Sound of Freedom,' Jim Caviezel's controversial child sex trafficking film, is a hit

Funny you should mention this given your own foray into discussing fentanyl statistics as an example of how there are problems with crime stats. How am I to interpret this?

That it's okay for you but not for others? Or that you're just seeking an argument? Both?

In any case, none of us are obligated to comment specifically about the movie. I haven't yet. Haven't seen it. Might not see it. How it goes with any thread topic where associated issues often arise and get discussed. But yes, some of the stats I mentioned as examples provide context for understanding sex-based crimes and crime in general.

...not unlike your fentanyl example.

 

This thread is about the movie. You’ve confirmed you haven’t seen the movie. You claim you were trying to “provide context” about a movie that you haven’t seen. That speaks for itself.

 

Okay, I'll play.

Where exactly did I claim to be providing context about a movie?

 

So one more thought on the issue of what is the harm I'm trying attention to an issue even if it's incidence is vastly overstated. Mind you, I think that's an overly charitable framing. I think human trafficking us depicted in the movie is for statistical purposes non-existent. That doesn't mean it never happens, but actual verifiable incidents are almost impossible to find. The distinction will be a bit more clear in my obviously imperfect analogy below.
As usual, a lot depends on defining your terms, your thesis, and your goals. Almost everything flows from that. I will be upfront with mine.
When I say human trafficking barely exists, I mean the type depicted in the movie, where someone is kidnapped or otherwise coerced in the first instance and to some form of sexual slavery and transported for that purpose.
My thesis is that this type of incident gets nearly all of our emphasis because of a concerted moral panic campaign, and that most instances of exploitation, which are real, involve desperate individuals that don't need to be transported and at least originally voluntarily enter into the relationship due to a lack of meaningful choices in most cases and the normal human incidence of psychological manipulation and domination.
What we are dealing with is not something new, but sexual exploitation of the desperate and marginalized and drug addicted as it has existed throughout human history in different forms and with different methodologies, but not something new, and not something that we need to dedicate special training and societal resources to, which actually cause unintended or sometimes intended harm.
My goal, and I would submit it should be the societal goal, is to try to take reasonable measures to prevent exploitative harm to individuals primarily but not exclusively sexual abuse.
Against that backdrop an imperfect analogy, and one that my mind ran with a bit, as is wont to be.
So let's say it an NFL defensive coordinator looks at the success that the Eagles had last year with Jalen Hurts and their push quarterback sneak. It was virtually unstoppable anytime the Eagles needed to convert short yardage. And it helps shape the outcome of games.
So the new defensive coordinator says I'm not going to carry seven defensive backs on the roster, I'm going to overload with five nose tackles. I think the Forward pass is the unwelcome development away from the traditional toughness values that formed young men in old time football. So we're getting away from that. At best, we're going to play single high and put everyone else on the line of scrimmage, especially in tight, which will successfully stop the offenses that dominated the 1930s and 40s football.
Under the new regime short yardage conversions are successfully stopped. However, opposing offenses throw at will and score easily.
So what is the harm of simply emphasizing short yardage defense? Well in doing so, you remove resources from other areas. You may stop short yardage plays, , but you are giving up far more passing yards and scores, because you don't have defensive resources there, all of the resources being concentrated on stopping the short yardage run that is situation specific and highly infrequent in the average NFL game.
I will admit that I was somewhat triggered in this thought by the fact that Hillsborough County is setting up a special division of the courts to deal with human trafficking victims, as opposed to other victims of sexual exploitation that we've been dealing with for years.
That is the primary harm. Michael Hobbes said it much the same way but didn't use the football metaphor that I thought would be especially effective. I like sports metaphors because it's my frame of reference and the frame of reference of most of the people I am discussing political issues with. I like using the steroid era and home run production to show the impact of global warming as a statistical issue with greater incidence of extreme weather. Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds hit home runs before they choose. But the statistical increase in home runs is the equivalent of greater heat in the atmosphere.
To overstretch the metaphor, imagine Florida Alexa governor who says that passing offenses are woke, and that no Florida college football teams can throw the ball more than 10 times a game. Some will argue that this will cause them not to be competitive but he brings in the new Hillsdale scoring system, which mandates that running yards count 20 times what passing yards do, and invalidates rule changes going back 60 years that promoted the passing game, at least within Florida.
To the extent that national governing bodies name other national champions, he threatens to sue them and says that we will have our own championship recognition system under our rules. He threatens a loss of job or criminal prosecution against any Florida coach that wants to promote the passing game, saying that it is grooming immoral behavior and loose morals that were not so prevalent back in the days of the Wing T.
Further, and this is getting more into CRT, the new Florida gubernatorial administration dictates that Jake Scott is the Future model for all safeties, noting that he was the starting safety on the only undefeated team in history. Most NFL observers believe that Ed Reed from the University of Miami is the greatest free safety in NFL history, but the new Florida Governor says that Jake Scott shall be the model for what a safety should look like, and that further, running back tandems should look like Csonka and Kiick. He hires outside experts who analyze the season success of teams that look like that versus other teams and concludes that the chances of being undefeated are greatly enhanced by having running back tandems that look like Csonka and Kiick and safeties that look like Jake Scott.
I admit that's probably an over extension of the metaphor but it's not an over extension of the reasoning they use or their mindset.

 

I’ll start off by saying that I agree with your goal that we should take measures to rescue and support people who are being exploited against their will.

I’m also trying to be charitable and give you the benefit of the doubt, that your goal in this thread maybe is advocating for the proper allocation of resources. It’s difficult when so many of your posts seem to be vehemently arguing against this movie and any message that it puts out. You even go to the point of claiming the problem is “statistically nonexistent.”

You seem to want to diminish the problem by saying most sexually traffics people are desperate individuals who somehow entered voluntarily only to be trapped against their will. That is not a way out of the problem.

The United Nations seems to think that it is a problem:

Latest global research on human trafficking trends illustrates a worldwide slowdown in the criminal justice response to this crime with both a decrease in victim detection rates and in the number of convictions.
…
These alarming findings prompted UNODC to mark the 2023 World Day Against Trafficking in Persons by calling on governments, law enforcement, public services, and civil society to enhance their efforts to prevent human trafficking, identify and support victims, and prosecute the traffickers.

“Our message this year is clear – ‘reach every victim of trafficking, leave no one behind’,” said John Brandolino, UNODC Director of the Division for Treaty Affairs. “The European Union is a key partner for UNODC and together we strive to strengthen global anti-trafficking responses.”
[/QUOTE]

https://www.unodc.org/unodc/en/huma...nator-urge-states-to-leave-no-one-behind.html

 

World Day against Trafficking in Persons 2023: UNODC and the European Union Anti-Trafficking Coordinator urge States to ‘leave no one behind’[/QUOTE]
Don’t give me the benefit of the doubt that I am only addressing the allocation of resources. I’m not. I thought that was clear.

I do think the problem addressed by the movie is statistically insignificant. To avoid ambiguity, I defined my terms, to wit:

When I say human trafficking barely exists, I mean the type depicted in the movie, where someone is kidnapped or otherwise coerced in the first instance into some form of sexual slavery and transported for that purpose.

The UN Report is not to the contrary. Reading it, including the links to defined terms, they are talking about matters far broader. First, it implicitly agrees that the primary danger is not criminal kidnappers, but the vulnerability of marginalized populations. By far the best thing we can do to lessen this exploitation is to make marginalized people less vulnerable, so they will not voluntarily enter into exploitative situations out of desperation. From the front page:

Global crises, conflicts, and the climate emergency are escalating trafficking risks. Displacement and socio-economic inequalities are impacting millions of people worldwide, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation by traffickers. Those who lack legal status, live in poverty, have limited access to education, healthcare, or decent work, face discrimination, violence, or abuse, or come from marginalized communities are often the primary targets of traffickers.

Totally contrary to the message of the movement/movie.

And the definitions make clear they are using a far broader definition of trafficked/exploited victims, which makes much more sense. From the embedded links:

5.2: Eliminate all forms of violence against all women and girls in public and private spheres, including trafficking and sexual, and other types of exploitation.


8.7: Take immediate and effective measures to eradicate forced labour, end modern slavery and human trafficking and secure the prohibition and elimination of the worst forms of child labour, including recruitment and use of child soldiers.including recruitment and use of child soldiers.



10.7: Facilitate orderly, safe, and responsible migration and mobility of people, including through implementation of planned and well-managed migration policies.


16.2: End abuse, exploitation, trafficking and all forms of violence and torture against children.

16.4: By 2030 significantly reduce illicit financial and arms flows, strengthen recovery and return of stolen assets, and combat all forms of organized crime.

17.9: Enhance international support for implementing effective and targeted capacity building in developing countries to support national plans to implement all the Sustainable Development Goals.

I am confident that the UN, an organization I love and used to aspire to work at, is talking about something far broader, embracing and emphasizing numerous goals antithetical to the framing of the movie and movement. Parenthetically, I have toured UN Headquarters in NYC multiple times with my family. Very inspiring

Simple logic tells us that transnational kidnapping into sexual slavery doesn’t make sense. Why incur that expense when there are so many desperate and vulnerable individuals? In all or most instances, busts/rescues are of sex workers/ runaways that entered into their situation voluntarily for lack of meaningful choice or manipulation by a significant other, not transnational gangs. And they are not being held against their will.

And most sexual abuse victims are victimized at home, school, church, etc. That is the reality this moral panic seeks to obscure, and I stand by my statement that the problem as framed by the movie doesn’t statistically exist and is no more than a moral panic promoted out of irrational fear and some deep lizard brain impulses, and in this case merging into a political movement in which people like Flynn/Cavaziel love to tell their wide audience that elites and political opponents are torturing children to drink their blood, a libel that goes back centuries.

That’s undeniable

 

Australia just busted a large child porn/abuse group via investigation that began with the murder of 2 FBI agents in Florida. Videos/photos said to show 800 different children taken by who knows who over who knows how many years. 19 arrested.
Australian paedophile ring busted after murder of FBI agents

There were allegedly 800 child victims among the 16,000 files police found on the man’s hard drives, along with a “paedophiles handbook” about how to talk to police if caught.

 

Thanks for the link. You could hear a pin drop right now in this thread.

 

Because while good police work, there are not any details provided that support any of your allegations and/or blood cult activities.

The children could have been rescued because they lived in the home of one of the turds. the links states 13 rescued and later 2 removed from harm. But we wouldn’t expect details in an initial presser.

This case was one of the few cited that is actually Pedo’s. Abusing a toddler, just kill him in the parking lot.

Just trolling, you know better

 

You seem to be in a moral panic over moral panics. I do not know a single person who is in a panic over this issue. Do you? Do you know anyone personally, who is in a panic over this?

 

He is likely a qanon MAGA cult member. I think many of them are projecting their own pedophile behaviors onto others.

 

The left behaving like there is something to hide makes the worst-case conspiracy theories seem valid. But we can’t raise enough awareness about this issue, so I rather welcome the incessant panic as the left attempts to downplay it.

 

Here is me not downplaying it. Why are these guys always republicans and friends of Trump specifically?

GOP donor Anton Lazzaro sentenced to 21 years for sex trafficking minors in Minnesota

 

Lazzaro, who has said the charges against him were politically motivated, maintained his innocence, denying that he paid any of the girls explicitly for sex.

 

FWIW, moral panics don't imply actual "states of panic" but a general and widespread fear, often causing some form of political action. The more recent smear by republicans about supposed groomers and pedo rings in non-existent basements of pizza joints and now the sudden concern over sex-trafficking would count in my book as a moral panic--despite that groomer slurs & pedo rings were little more than toilet dwelling politically contrived attacks.

Reminds me of the moral panic over sex abuse in day-care centers in the 1980s.

Problem was that false accusations abounded and numerous children were victims of adults influencing their claims, which as a matter of age, children are highly vulnerable to such influences.

 

What political action has resulted from this “moral panic” over child sex trafficking? Have there been people arrested and falsely charged with sex trafficking because of this, that would not have been investigated anyway?

 

Just saying that it often involves political action. Moral panics simply denote the fear being widespread. Besides, the movie just came out. There may or may not be actual political efforts in the future (that's politics for ya), but it doesn't mean there isn't widespread fear about it. In fact, I think this thread provides some evidence for it.

Another example of an earlier moral panic. Back in 1986, the #2 selection in the NBA draft, Len Bias, died of a cocaine overdose just two days after the draft. This sparked (or further sparked) a moral panic over drugs, eventually leading to the 1986 and 1988 federal anti-drug abuse acts and put into overdrive the war on drugs in which a massive number of laws were passed in states around the country in subsequent years.

 

Its actually remarkable in this case that the panic got worse after political action, but this is probably the key political action during this obsession:

FOSTA-SESTA - Wikipedia (Became law in 2018)

Mostly what's happened is its made life harder for sex workers who arent being trafficked.

 

I think it's a bit broader. Aside from clearly partisan agendas ("your side does it more"), pedophilia and child sex abuse/trafficking have been politically weaponized in a couple ways. One is in how LGBT people are discussed. Suggesting they're a danger to kids is an old trope. The other is with labeling people groomers for supporting inclusion programs or supporting age appropriate discussions of gender, orientation, or even sex education (information that I think makes kids safer).

As a side note, in political discussions, we debate the prevalence and scale of repugnant things all the time. Many conservatives believe that the left overstates how widespread racism is, for example. Or they may believe that the left places too much emphasis on mass shootings and semi auto rifles compared to gang shootings and handguns. Does that mean most conservatives support racism and mass shootings? Of course not. They see a mismatch between the rhetoric and reality which is skews those discussions and which they believe are going to result in the deprivation of free speech rights and guns rights.