Savage Indignation

[poliphilo]

If you want to go round all day in a haze of Pickwickian goodwill then don't start your morning with a well-researched article about child prostution in Cambodia.

Poor Cambodia. First it gets bombed by Henry Kissinger, then it gets worked over by Pol Pot- the maddest genocidal tyrant of the 20th century- then- with half its adult population in a state of post-traumatic stress- it becomes the world's premier destination for western sex tourists.

Human nature in the raw is almost intolerably disgusting.

We talk about paedophilia- which is essentially the brutalising of the weak by the strong- as if it were something marginal and shadowy- as it has to be in Western societies because of the harshly enforced laws against it- but remove the sanction of active policing and far too many us, presented with the spectacle of an unprotected child, will be calculating (a) how to have sex with it or (b) how to enslave it and then sell it to other people for sex.

Show me the average man and I'll show you a predator and a bully.

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That woman did the right thing.

In fact her response is magnificent.

By an odd coincidence I've just this moment been watching a TV documentary about the Civil War. For some reason I can't explain the Civil War moves me more than almost any other war in history.

[jackiejj.livejournal.com]

I was driving home from church and stopped at a red light on Bearden Hill. Just to my right was a marker for a brick mansion on top of the hill. The marker said that the house was built in 1848 by a retired Mexican War general, and that during the Civil War it was used as headquarters for a different general, and that Bearden hill was used for tents for the troops.

Sitting at the red light and looking at the restaurants and banks that now surround the old mansion, I realized that all around Knoxville are old Forts and famous names--we even have Civil War cemeteries. I need to take some pictures for you.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

"I need to take some pictures for you."

I'd like that.

I remember visiting a Civil War cemetery at Frankfort, Ky. It was a deeply affecting experience.

My first wife's home town was bombarded by confederate artillery during the civil war. There was an old house on the edge of town that still had a cannon ball embedded in its front wall.