Don't look now

There's something to be said for ignorance. Not the slack-jawed yokel variety, but the purposeful kind, that looks away from something unbearable, and seemingly implacable, and pretends it isn't there. As survival strategies go it's not such a bad idea to whistle past a graveyard, especially when there's a monster in the graveyard who wants you to believe there are no such things as monsters.

I remember Bobby McFerrin's "Don't Worry, Be Happy" topping the charts during the 1988 presidential election. It was the unofficial anthem of the Bush/Quayle campaign, seriously, until McFerrin objected. And what an aptly narcotizing message it was to usher in a Bush White House: Busy yourselves with that pursuit of happiness thing, and leave the boring and dirty affairs of governance, finance and, ah, "national security" to us. Here we are, second term of the second Bush presidency, and most are still trying to heed that advice even as the White House jukebox plays "Don't Question, Be Fearful."

And let's consider this: most people don't worry a great deal about what doesn't directly and immediately affect them. They either lack the time, or the luxury, or the inclination. It's unsurprising, and even understandable, but it becomes a grievous problem when the world beyond their world is only an abstraction, and all the people in it, and the exegencies of lifestyle trump lives lived far away.

All politics is local, they say. And, well, they would know. News too. Or rather, "news you can use," to distinguish it from the apparently useless kind that comes from other countries, even other cities. And this utilitarian parochialism handicaps the discernment of patterns. Here's what I mean, and where this is going: How can we ever connect the dots, when all we have is our one, great dot?

I'm thinking of this because I've been reading about Peter Lewis, who resigned yesterday as South Australia's parliamentary speaker. He has raised claims that a sitting Labour MP is a paedophile, and that there is a "network of 'organised activity' between a group of high society paedophiles in Australia involving politicians, the judiciary and public servants." (Lewis resigned before he was due to lose his position for "bringing the parliament into disrepute.") The allegations are being investigated by police, though Lewis's office also names two policemen as perpetrators. And what's more, two of Lewis's informants, Robert Woodland and Shaine Moore, have recently been murdered.

More on Australia's protected paedophile/mind control ring can be read in this post from last Saturday. If you've missed the recent comments from Australians, you may want to read them.

From one:

Allegations concerning these men have been surfacing in Australia for a long time, but they go back under pretty quickly. A combination of dexterous disinfo and public incredulity is enough to bury the story.... So if you are wondering how a paedophile ring stays underground for so long, I'm not. These perpetrators are hiding in plain sight, which makes them effectively invisible.

I've been in the same room as the police when they've seen the rope burn on the wrists and ankles of victims, bruising from strangulation - and there has been no investigation, no referral, no follow up. Experience suggests that it doesn't take much for people to turn a blind eye to things they can't bear to see.

If our news is only local - if we have just the one dot, and nothing to which it connects - we will not be able to make sense of the apparently senseless crimes. If we read wild claims that a number of our leaders and authority figures are patrons of a sheltered paedophile cult, and we have no context for them, we can comfort ourselves by tossing out the charges as not conforming to our consensual reality.

And if our news is global, and we see the same patterns emerge with the same details of abuse and cover-up, thousands of miles apart and in multiple countries, we can still console ourselves. We can wave it away, saying "but this has been debunked," and "this sounds like 'Satanic panic.'" And as I said above, there's something to be said for remaining purposefully ignorant. I reached a tipping point a couple of years ago, and I can't do that anymore. Even if I wanted to, it would be hard so long as I get emails like this:

"I've been trying to work up the courage to email you for some time now, but the truth is that i was quite afraid of what could happen to me if i spoke out in any form about what i've seen. i am tired of being afraid. you're welcome to publish any of this letter that you wish, though i'm sure there's not much here with which you aren't already familiar. here's the deal: this ritual abuse thing is very real and needs to be stopped...."

No one denies the reality of paedophilia, just the ritual, institutional, protected characterization of the crimes. Such denials remind me of the "few bad apples" argument regarding torture at Abu Ghraib. Likewise, no one can deny the intelligence community's interest in mind control, just its success. And coincidentally, many of MK-ULTRA's contract researchers who claimed the program a failure, like Dr Martin Orne, went on to be leading debunkers of "recovered memory." (Though let's be clear: the evidence for ritual abuse/mind control does not rest on recovered memories alone.)

So it's real. But why is it? This is the question most people who get this far will stumble over, because I believe the answer lies far deeper than recreational perversion. In an earlier post, I suggested an esoteric, hermetic meaning. Power in "the Crowleyan sense. The sense of sex magick."

From the same comment I quoted above:

It's taken me a long time to come to grips with this, but, yes:

There is an international cult that believes that the path to illumination and spiritual liberation is through the rape, torture and sacrifice of children.

The cult is highly organised and protected by a network of middle- and upper-class professionals, who are either cult members, or access the 'services' of the cult (eg child porn/prostitution, rendering them vulnerable to blackmail).

The cult is modelled on Crowley's writings, as is evidenced by the internal pseudo-Masonic 'degree' structure, the existence of OTO-like 'chapters', and the doctrine of 'strength', 'master/slave' and ritualised rape.

I don't fault anyone for whistling past the graveyard the world is becoming. I'd join you if I could. I used to know all the tunes. But I've seen the monster, and it's too late for me.