MIDLIFE CRISIS-19, Sunday, July 23, 2023 - On What Do You Invest Your Time, Energy?
So here is The Guardian, and "experts," back at it, weeks after the movie's release, maligning it - a movie production that addresses a real and egregious reality within our global society.
The specimen in this case? Adam Gabbatt, @adamgabbatt, The Guardian ("Sun 23 Jul 2023 06.00 EDT"), tagging the article with the keyword, "QAnon." There are no other tags, nothing from which awareness might be drawn, nothing from which a child might be protected. That is eager, intentional, and under the "News" tab.
Headline:
"Sound of Freedom passed the $100m mark. Who’s really watching the movie?" (1.).
Subheading:
"The ‘QAnon adjacent’ film, co-opted by the right wing, has a ‘pay it forward’ scheme resulting in sold-out shows but empty theaters" (1.).
Think about the time and energy exerted on that quality of journalism, thirty-four (34) words in, more than one-hundred and fifty (150) characters, and not a single word advocating for protecting children.
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This tool goes so far as to count empty seats in a theater - like I just counted words and characters unrelated to protecting children - but his time, energy and focus is spent questioning not just the subject matter, but attendance, as if they do not exist.
"[The "pay-it-forward" campaign, reported as a "scheme" by Gabbatt] has clearly been working. On 4 July, the day of the film’s release, nearly 20% of its sales came from people who bought those extra tickets, IndieWire reported. But there are growing suggestions that a lot of those extra tickets aren’t actually being used: that the sales figures might be over-inflating Sound of Freedom’s significance.
"In a theater located in New York City’s Times Square on Thursday afternoon, there seemed to be evidence of this.
"According to Fandango, all but 28 seats had been sold for the 3pm screening of Sound of Freedom. As the lights dimmed, however, the Guardian counted 45 vacant seats dotted around the half-empty theater. Minutes before the 6.30pm screening, Fandango showed that only two seats were still available. Again, there were more than two vacant spots as the film began" (1.).
Notice the phraseology that Gabbatt used. He alleges that vacant seats over-inflate the movie's "significance."
But what is the significance of the movie? It is an effort - an act - to bring attention to the subject of human trafficking, specifically the sexual exploitation of children. Empty seats are not a scheme, they are a product of donations made by individuals who are willing to contribute toward the campaign of awareness.
Clearly these types of people are worried, unsettled at minimum by attention being drawn to the underlying subject matter. What this type of article demonstrates is an effort to deep-dive the movie's success in order to discredit it.
Even the input from the expert noted in the article is unproductive. The movie told Tim Ballard's story, using one account, a sting operation that took place within conditions in a foreign country in which the sexual exploitation of children was taking place. The movie focused on consumers who travel to destination locations in order to purchase children. That is it, one example; the movie was a sample of the broader subject matter.
It is a long excerpt, but it demonstrates the irony of which is a false narrative. The movie does not refute the claim as to what percentage of child trafficking the movie might represent. The movie represents Ballard's experience. That is Truth, or as a radical might define as, "his Truth," it cannot be "unhelpful and inaccurate," in that it is one example. So the conflation of an "inaccurate" claim about the movie, with "the majority of child victims know their traffickers" is false, because the latter does not render the former false. What this attempt does accomplish, is put the expert's motives in question, or at least Gabbatt's use of the expert's opinion - in or out of context - in question.
Excerpt:
"Despite the rightwing acclaim, anti-trafficking experts have not been on board. Teresa Huizar, CEO of the National Children’s Alliance, told Rolling Stone that it was unhelpful and inaccurate to portray the trafficking of children as the snatching up of minors from public places – as Sound of Freedom does.
"Instead, the majority of child victims know their traffickers, Huizar said: “In a lot of these cases, the trafficker starts out calling themselves their boyfriend or girlfriend.
"'We want to believe that people trafficking children are unknown, nefarious strangers,' Huizar told Rolling Stone. '[It] makes people uncomfortable to think some of these things happen in their own communities, in their own schools, with people they might run into at the grocery store.’
"Speaking to ScreenRant, Jean Bruggeman, Freedom Network USA’s executive director, agreed.
"'Young people end up in trafficking situations because their family is in incredible poverty, because of political unrest, because the child is being rejected by their family for their sexual orientation or gender identity,' Bruggerman said” (1.).
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The question becomes, on what movie is Huizar working? She is not, and that is a notable point. The very person cited as an expert is investing her expert ... cough, cough ... time and energy into refuting a movie aimed at raising awareness in the very expert's field, while she offers no solution to the very problem that she asserts is the majority of cases. Again, that is notable, no solutions, no action, only continued push-back.
Ordered like pizza, children are purchased for sexual exploitation, in some cases their organs are harvested into the organ trade, and there are instances of ties to Satanic ritual, as it is certainly not simply "cultural differences."
You are either for it, or against. If you are aware, there is nothing inbetween. Maligning attention on the subject matter as conspiracy, is the conspiracy.
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On what do you invest your time, energy?
- Matfucius
1.) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2023/jul/23/sound-of-freedom-qanon-movie-conspiracy-theories?fbclid=IwAR2WT1iIcTYu-nU1hM4cxLBmF6v05Ae1jzlj0jIP2k6rEVBldOs6X_o78mM
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