The Witch Hunt

Of course it's a witch-hunt. The question is why? And why now? And why these targets?

The ever widening net of mostly rich and mostly powerful men caught with their pants down, metaphorically and literally, has shaken some of the complacency of the High and the Mighty that they can do anything they want to anyone they want and get away with it. Something in the air says no, no they can't. Not any more.

Or does it? There's a certain oddness about this particular witch hunt for predatory men of substance and power. For example, despite numerous ongoing accusations against him from dozens of women, going back years, Trump is somehow held harmless as a new-born babe in the current firestorm, whereas Bill Clinton's indiscretions, each of which was aired and paraded back in the day, are once again a Thing, the question being "Should he have been forced to resign?"

Well, maybe. But he isn't in office now, a different sexual predator is in office now, and literally nothing is said about him. Why is that?

What is really going on here?

I'm reminded of the Satanic Sex Cult panic that swept the nation during the Clinton years. Thousands of people were accused, hundreds went to prison, some of them still there, though so far as can be determined looking back on it, there was no Satanic Sex Cult and most if not all of the accused were innocent of the charges against them. It was a witch hunt, yes, but more than that, it was a gross manipulation of law and a misuse of child-witnesses to "prove" things that never happened. This was not just tolerated but sanctioned at the very highest levels of the US government for years, and even now, many prosecutors and judges involved absolutely deny they were caught up in and fostering as fraudulent a mania as has ever arisen in the country.

In this case, however, it's not quite the same because the men accused are for the most part rich and powerful; except for Weinstein, I don't think there is a criminal case being made against any of them, and the Weinstein case is perhaps an outlier due to factors we don't know -- yet; many of the accusations are decades old; and from an objective standpoint, little that is being revealed is all that unusual.

Yet many careers have been halted in their tracks, the long time careers of very prominent men in movies and show business, the arts, publishing, television news and print journalism, politics and on and on and on.

But in the course of this "housecleaning" as some people have called it, certain people (like Trump -- but no doubt there are many others) are allowed to get away with it, no matter what.

Something similar was taking place in the Church for many years. Certain priests and higher ranking clergy were clearly being targeted whereas others -- who may have been just as or more guilty of pederasty or rape or who knows what other kinds of sexual indiscretion or oddity -- were left quite alone throughout all the hew and cry.

Why?

So here we are now, with certain prominent men (and a few not so prominent) being burned at the figurative stake while others continue on in positions of power and influence as if nothing was happening, nothing had changed.

Hm.

Curious.

There must be an explanation, but I don't know what it is.