{"id":23538,"date":"2014-07-23T09:53:16","date_gmt":"2014-07-23T15:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/?p=23538"},"modified":"2014-12-24T08:46:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-24T15:46:42","slug":"porn-and-our-regularly-scheduled-bi-election-immigration-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/publiccatholic\/2014\/07\/porn-and-our-regularly-scheduled-bi-election-immigration-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"Porn and Our Regularly-Scheduled Bi-Election Immigration Crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC \"-\/\/W3C\/\/DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional\/\/EN\" \"http:\/\/www.w3.org\/TR\/REC-html40\/loose.dtd\">\n<html><head><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><meta http-equiv=\"content-type\" content=\"text\/html; charset=utf-8\"><\/head><body><p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>There are two kinds of people who obsessively watch porn.<\/p>\n<p>Those who enjoy it.<\/p>\n<p>and \u2026<\/p>\n<p>Those who believe it.<\/p>\n<p>Either way, porn is addicting and degrading. Porn is based on degrading a group of people for the titillation of those who get off on the degradation.<\/p>\n<p>Both those who watch porn because they enjoy it, and those who believe it, will become addicted to it if they don\u2019t pull back from it. That alter world where degradation of other people reigns will take them over and the day will come when they find they can\u2019t just turn it off.<\/p>\n<p>The difference between those who watch it for the titillation alone, and those who get so wound into it that they believe it, is the difference between doing harm to oneself and doing harm to others.<\/p>\n<p>The porn believers can become dangerous as they seek to act out the things they have watched. Every prostitute I\u2019ve ever known has told me about painful and rather hideous things johns did to them in attempts to live out things they\u2019d seen in porn. Rape victims report the same stories.<\/p>\n<p>I would guess that the international sex tourism industry finds its customers among porn believers. Acting out fantasies of degrading other people can take porn believers over. That leads to every kind of horror for their victims.<\/p>\n<p>These same assessments also apply to intellectual porn. All the demagogues of all the eras and epochs of history instinctively knew this. They could, by producing the mind porn of hate politics, gain power. It was \u2014 and is \u2014 as seductive to the demagogue as to the demagogues\u2019 followers.<\/p>\n<p>The practice of moral and intellectual demagoguery gets votes. It ups ratings, sells books and pleases advertisers. It also confers a kind of heady, ego-driven power over other people.<\/p>\n<p>There are, as usual, two kinds of people who obsessively watch this intellectual porn or listen to it on the radio.<\/p>\n<p>Those who get off on the titillation it provides.<\/p>\n<p>and \u2026<\/p>\n<p>Those who believe it.<\/p>\n<p>The trouble with demagogic porn is that it never, ever, claims to be a fantasy. Point a finger at sexual pornographers and one of their first defenses is that \u201cit\u2019s not real.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But the purveyors of intellectual porn always, always, always claim that what they are saying is factual and true. They can get away with this because it usually is based on facts. What they leave out is that the facts are carefully selected to promote one viewpoint and that the facts are mixed with a lot lying implications.<\/p>\n<p>Here is a case in point:<\/p>\n<p>The sudden incessant discussion of the supposedly all-new \u201cborder crisis\u201d is moral and intellectual porn. It is obvious demagoguery.<\/p>\n<p>This story gets ramped up every bi-election season. Then, after the votes are counted, it goes away. It is being put out there right now because we are in a bi-election season.<\/p>\n<p>It is political demagoguery, designed to gain power. It is also intellectual and moral porn of the worst sort.<\/p>\n<p>The problem of people coming over America\u2019s southern border illegally is real. The trajectory of children crossing the border alone has taken on a 70 degree angle. It has gone up, and is going up.<\/p>\n<p>However, the wild stories about gangs meeting them at the border to recruit them and how one in four of them are \u201ccriminals\u201d are untrue. They are being told to ratchet up the emotions and build the outrage past rational thought. The constant 24\/7 drumbeat of hysteria about this issue is manufactured for political reasons.<\/p>\n<p>One of the simplest and most effective things we could do to stem this tide of people crossing into our country illegally would be to severely punish the business interests who hire them. If they couldn\u2019t find jobs, a lot of this would go away.<\/p>\n<p>If you try to pass a law like this, the business interests will work against it with all they\u2019ve got. And they will win, <em>especially <\/em>if the people who are running the show at the time are Rs. I\u2019m not just saying this. I\u2019ve seen it. I can also verify with court actions taken by business interests to attack such laws.<\/p>\n<p>We also need to look past the Rio Grande and consider why they\u2019re coming. We spend billions \u201cbuilding\u201d countries in other hemispheres. Perhaps we should take a more serious look at our own.<\/p>\n<p>However, this is all talk. Nobody is going to fix the border problem. Nobody <em>wants<\/em> to fix it. Just try to act on either of these two suggestions and watch who will object. It will be the same people who own the media that runs this bi-election immigration frenzy.<\/p>\n<p>This reportage is demagoguery for political purposes.<\/p>\n<p>It is moral and intellectual porn designed to whip people around. It uses fear and hatred of other people to get viewers worked up past the thinking point and keep them there until November. It turns good people into the face of ugly. At that point, it is impossible to reason with the viewers and believers of this porn. They are irrational.<\/p>\n<p>The easiest and simplest way to avoid falling into the porn trap (whatever the type of porn) is to follow the teachings of the Catholic Church.<\/p>\n<p>No other church will take the stands on issues where the public is all whipped up against them. Other denominations follow the zeitgeist. It pains me to say this, but all I have to do is consider the sounding silence I\u2019m hearing from everyone but the Catholic Church right now, and the ugliness I\u2019ve seen on this one issue from various clergy in the past.<\/p>\n<p>If you want to go to heaven, do what the Church teaches. If you want to follow Christ, then turn off the porn.<\/p>\n<p>What these media people are doing by deliberately whipping people up into mass hatred in order to change how they vote is deeply immoral. It is anti-Christ.<\/p>\n<p>If you blindly follow them, you become immoral and anti-Christ, right along with them.<\/p>\n<p>My delete file is bulging with ugly, bitter and downright crazy diatribes against both me and the Catholic bishops because I dare to say this.<\/p>\n<p>So be it.<\/p>\n<p>I am a Christian. I am a Catholic. I choose Christ.<\/p>\n<p>It is my responsibility as a Christian, Catholic blogger who chooses Christ to say this. If nobody listens, that\u2019s on them.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 There are two kinds of people who obsessively watch porn. Those who enjoy it. and \u2026 Those who believe it. Either way, porn is addicting and degrading. Porn is based on degrading a group of people for the titillation of those who get off on the degradation. Both those who watch porn because they [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1155,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33,1144,10,6718,5392,6126,900,43,726,6685,41,1],"tags":[5028,3721,6733,6763,620],"class_list":["post-23538","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america","category-calling-evil-good","category-catholic","category-child-labor-2","category-christian-leadership","category-corporatism-2","category-economics","category-faith","category-following-christ","category-immigration","category-politics","category-uncategorized","tag-cable-news","tag-demagogue","tag-immigration-crisis","tag-political-porn","tag-porn"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Porn and Our Regularly-Scheduled Bi-Election Immigration Crisis<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"&nbsp; There are two kinds of people who obsessively watch porn. 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