A Children's Crusade?

Image source & attribution at footnote 4below

Last night I attended a local theatre production of Newsies, based on the story of the Newsboy's strike of 1899¹ in New York City — a David and Goliath story of poor kids against the newspaper magnates, Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst. In the second act, the book writer of the musical, taking some historical licence, added a reference to a Children's Crusade where all oppressed children in the city were to be invited to join in the Newsies strike.

The whole scenario of the musical was so déjà vu. How many stories could be told of power and wealth “elites” (and their friends and benefactors) oppressing and abusing children?² How many stories have never reached the light of day because the powers that be control the news and suppress any criticism or exposure of their ways?

For decades, thousands have kept silent about the sexual abuse of child stars in Hollywood; about the “Harvey Weinstein”³ types who preyed upon them; about the culture of abusive fame-makers; about young singers, musicians, athletes, pages, altar boys, nursery and school children groomed, compromised, enslaved, used.

Children, throughout history have suffered almost beyond telling, but more and more their stories are leaking out, though, for the most part, the MSM will not expose the crimes of their media bosses, or the friends of their bosses, or the willing or entrapped servants of their bosses. Those in the alternative media who try and expose the horrors are maligned, targeted, and accused of the very crimes they are seeking to expose.

How many accounts of abuse must adults hear before they act to protect the children of the world from the buying, selling, kidnapping, trafficking, organ harvesting, sacrificing, and murder of vulnerable children? Of course, we don't want to believe such can be: that is why, in part, gross abuses have gone on for so long. We refuse to know.

So what is the solution if adults will not act to end the suffering of children? Must the children rise up to expose crimes that offend the ears of and appall even adults? Must the children organize and march in the streets with banners demanding prosecution of criminals for unspeakable acts against children?

Will the abuses and crimes only come to full light and the prosecution of those in the highest levels of government and corporate power when children march? when children are compelled to know and speak of things that children should not have to know and speak?

Is it time for a Children's Crusade to bring down the powers that have used and abused them or their global siblings for so long with impunity? If adults will not act, what other choice do the children of the world have?

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1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsies ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newsboys%27_strike_of_1899
2. This is not to say that people in all stratum of society are not guilty of egregious offences against children. But it is to say that the powerful are more able to suppress exposure and prosecution; more able to buy-off or intimidate victims; more able to set up networks of protection for their crimes.
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Weinstein
4. Image:
Page URL: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Sunday_5_A.M._Newsies_starting_out._LOC_nclc.03310.jpg
File URL: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a3/Sunday_5_A.M._Newsies_starting_out._LOC_nclc.03310.jpg
Attibution: By Hine, Lewis Wickes; National Child Labor Committee Collection [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

Beyond Naïve?

More and more we hear “opinionators” wax eloquent about the need to rid modern society of the plague of false / fake news, fantasies, “crackpotism” and conspiracy theorists. Today's example was broadcast on CBC's “The Sunday Edition with Michael Enright” found at

http://www.cbc.ca/radio/thesundayedition/donald-trump-is-the-logical-outcome-of-america-s-fascination-with-irrationality-1.4311993

Here Kurt Andersen, author, journalist, and interviewee, critiques (with some justification) the shaping of “American” (more accurately, “USian”) character and beliefs. The great irony, however, is how insensible Kurt Andersen seems about his own fantasies and alternative reality. How naïve (perhaps?) — (yea, how historically “unscientific”) to disparage with such lightness the perpetual déjà vu that wherever there is even one person without conscience who can con, conscript, or control others, and whose life-mission is to pursue and protect power and gain, there will be and has always been CONSPIRACY. Even a cursory overview of history establishes this REALITY: secret combinations have always been the reality of a power-and-gain-obsessed world.

Indeed, the current reality is that many on the Left and Right are deeply engaged in secret conspiracies and abominations in pursuit and protection of power and gain (and for some, also, the pursuit of extended / eternal life without death). Credible, fact-based witnesses exposing high-level corruption, crime, and conspiracy are everywhere, if we would but listen.

But Mr. Andersen is transparently amongst the many who hearing, refuse to hear and seeing, refuse to see the déjà vus; one who sports his own fantasies with (apparent?) unawareness.

WE, too, live in a fantasy of ignorance if we imagine that Mr. Andersen is not an establishment crier (whether witting or unwitting) on the road to criminalizing so-called “false news, fantasies, and crackpotism.” It doesn't take much exposure to all kinds of media to realize that belief in God, religious expression, and moral values fall more and more into the despised categories of false and unacceptably oppressive. Already we see it in the shadow-banning, smearing, targeting, and outright banning of unwelcome exposures and truths about those who are pursuing and protecting power and gain and self. Ethics, morals, standards, and just laws have always been the anathema of psychopathic agendas.

So as a suggestion to Mr. Andersen: it might prove enlightening to apply his own Moynihan quote:

“You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are not entitled to your own facts.”

Yes, folks, it is past time to acknowledge the empirical, déjà vu reality of power and gain agendas and to get on with exposure from the roof-tops and accountability in the courts for corruptions, crimes, conspiracies, and abominations.