It's systemic; it's individual; it's endemic
End result is the same: innocents wounded and accountability dodged
I walk up to the store Sunday mornings to buy the Times, then, for these past months of chaos, I read it slowly over the week, generally ending with the front page & opinion sections at the end of the week. One thing this does is allow the blaring and defanged headlines to sink into the quagmire of futile irrelevancy: the shit keeps spewing and sober-minded reporting cannot keep up. So, by Thursday, I am less-aggravated to read Sunday’s reportage on the latest Admin clusterfuckery. We are usually three or four new catastrophes beyond whatever captivated the writers in Sunday’s edition. Too, it does help to have the perspective that the world spins on, for better and worse. Evil and incompetent and shallow and greedy people, thoughtless clowns and heartless bastards alike, crowd the stage. Maybe in greater numbers than before, or with less subterfuge and subtlety, but same-old, same-old.
I came across this obituary—>
One of the more- (but not the MOST-) prolific abusive priests, one of the highest-ranking enduring pedophiles hidden, protected, and enabled by the (catholic) church, had died. The Times spent a full page on him. I know there are reasons for these, objective and theoretical public interest—and that an obituary isn’t the place to wage a war against systemic cover-up of systemic abuse. I get it.
But even this coverage, which names his crimes, feels soft, feels polite and discreet, downplaying the massive harm caused. Fuck him. May the heaven and hell he claimed to speak about exist, and his time beyond time in a cauldron of fire offer ample opportunity to reflect on his depravity and failure of character.
When the women bravely came forward to speak about Harvey Weinstein’s decades of bullying and demeaning abuse, it had been an ‘open secret’ in the industry, yet part of his defense was there were too many victims. ‘It seemed pat, that they all told the same story.’ Because the fact that the asshole simply did the same thing over and over again somehow is beyond the grasp of the people inclined to disbelieve the one, the three, the fifty-three victims of a predatory powerful asshole.
Our simplistic good vs bad misses the truth of most humans. We are neither binary nor dualistic. Nuance, we dearly miss thee. The swim coach who inspires and wins championships and launches careers; the musician who adopts strays and helps his old mother and builds houses for the impoverished; the teacher who sparks joy and meaning and direction for generation of students; the director who makes magic and launches careers; the priest, the parent, the man, the men: each and all might do incredible things for generations of impressionable and searching and raw youth. AND they might also, separately, abuse the trust, minds, hearts, and bodies of some of those youth. Both/and. Humans compartmentalize. We are tragic and inspiring and horrendous and simple and profound. We should know better, we should know enough.
The good deeds don’t excuse the failings. The harms done don’t mean the good deeds weren’t genuine. We must take an honest measure and see what what holds up in the light. The inclination to either/or, to insist on purity, is naive. We must not make such delusional distinctions: 'He helped my son get into college—no way he harmed those girls.’ ‘He wrote the Declaration of Independence—no way he was a rapist exploiter of humans.’ ‘He baptized my son—no way he abused him ten years later.’ ‘He was an inspiring magician, getting the best out of those kids—no way he preyed on some of them after hours.’ No way.
Every way. It is tedious in its familiarity—except for the harm caused.
And then there’s the community response, the collective denial. The systemic fuckery, I say: when the powers that be serve as a force larger than the individuals within the system, even those those powers are only human themselves. The church leaders, the studio bosses, the politicians, the boards of trustees: they protect the institution at the expense of not just the already victimized young people, but they allow future harm to occur, more children/young people to be victimized. It’s money, it’s clout, it’s ‘reputation’—as if those things are more important than flesh and blood humans.
I saw this documentary twice this week at the MSP Film Fest. Its scope and depth would be served by a full miniseries, so complicated and intricate are the individual stories. As it is, the doc is heartbreaking and powerful. The ‘open secret’ not simply of the two primary abusers, but the entire licentious environment, of a specific piece of post-70s porous boundaries: these are real and were common.
My own school in DC had bad boundaries, casual and persistent sexually charged interactions between students (boys without boundaries, primarily)—and, additionally, predatory, charismatic teachers. Several of the most-damaging teachers were also fantastic teachers and mentors. Both/and. I can say one of them, specifically, saved my life in many ways. AND he abused the trust of generations of young women (girls under 18). Both/and. I recognize all he did for me, and for others, and I recognize the harm and damage he caused, and his utter lack of repentance or acknowledgement, and I say, Fuck him.
What is also similar is the ways that the boards of these schools operate, how their first impulse is to minimize, dismiss, and always to protect the brand, the entity. As I sat in the theater, I pondered that in the list of film festival benefactors and supporters (the folks who run the city, truly), we would likely find the names of both the current and previous CTC board members, the folks who refused to work with the survivors and only at fiscal gunpoint did the barest of the right thing.
Is there a playbook? Are they evil? It’s money. It’s the disposability of the young, female, and powerless (and young males, too): collateral damage & easy sacrifice for a winning team, a renowned theater, a political party, a church.
At what cost? For what purpose? Any god that prefers predatory powerbrokers to the innocent and powerless is no god at all. Power and money, the grand idols.