by DAVID STROM
The Guardian is a Left-wing newspaper.
That doesn’t make it any more untrustworthy than any other news source, since almost by definition every MSM news source is untrustworthy. If you want to get a reasonably accurate sense of what is going on, read many sources. We all have priors, and most of the time they are just inclinations to believe some things more than others due to our preferences and experiences.
But sometimes those priors are so at odds with how the world works and moral decency that a viewpoint should be totally dismissed, and here is a great example.
The Guardian believes that talking about child sex trafficking is too Q-Anon adjacent to cheer for. A movie that celebrates rescuing children from the growing sex trade plays into the dark conspiracy theories that The Guardian fears are animating Right-wingers, so it’s best to sweep the whole problem under the rug.
No, I am not kidding. That is their critique of The Sound of Freedom. Too much God, too much concern for children. It might lead people to think that the child sex trade is a real problem and that too many people at the top of our society are unconcerned about it.
The critique of Jim Caviezel’s latest movie is truly bizarre. It concedes that nothing actually in The Sound of Freedom promotes Q-Anon (a conspiracy theory about which I have only the vaguest notion, and nobody I know buys into), but since the theme of child sex trafficking plays a role in both the conspiracy theory and the movie, it’s important to trash the movie lest people worry about…child sex trafficking…or celebrate those who bravely stand up to the traffickers.
However one chooses to slice it, Sound of Freedom has over-delivered on expectations in dollars and cents, a feat of profitability uncommon for a comparatively low-budget production without a major Hollywood-led promotional campaign. Judging by the robust round of applause that concluded the fully-seated screening I attended on Wednesday evening – and this, in the liberal Sodom of Manhattan! – it would seem that the folks at the two-year-old Angel Studios have tapped into a substantial and eagerly marshaled viewership.
Following that money leads back to a more unsavory network of astroturfed boosterism among the far-right fringe, a constellation of paranoids now attempting to spin a cause célèbre out of a movie with vaguely simpatico leanings. The uninitiated may not pick up on the red-yarn-and-corkboard subtext pinned onto a mostly straightforward extraction mission in South America, pretty much Taken with a faint whiff of something noxious in the air. Those tuned in to the eardrum-perforating frequency of QAnon, however, have heeded a clarion call that leads right to the multiplex.
“Eardrum-perfeorating frequency” is, I admit, a nice turn of phrase. It is also itself bizarre conspiracy theorizing par excellence. The movie is about freeing children from sex traffickers, and sex trafficking is a real thing. How do I know? The Department of Justice says so, not just some Q-Anon conspiracy theorists.
It is, in fact, big business. Tens of thousands of children disappear every year in the United States, and many more elsewhere in the world. Sound of Freedom even focuses on sex trafficking outside the US, and there isn’t a hint of theorizing about Bill Clinton leading some sex ring. It is pretty straightforward, and not only tells a real-life story, it celebrates fighting a real problem–one of the worst taking place in the modern world.
Best not talk about it though. Because Right-wingers don’t like sex traffickers, and we shouldn’t encourage them. Next thing you know Right-wingers might want to stop it! Damn Christians!
In Sound of Freedom, he leads a unit to Colombia and eventually goes rogue on his single-minded quest to locate and liberate the still-missing sister of a boy he managed to save from sex slavery. The defenseless siblings are drawn into the nefarious clutches of their abductors in the stomach-turning opening sequence, which clinically walks us through the steps by which a glamorous and implicitly trustworthy woman poses as a modeling scout to round up the most apple-cheeked prospects and separate them from their parents. In a montage that plays like a JonBenét Ramsey fancam, she stokes our horror by primping the youngsters with red lipstick and suggestively mussed-up hair.
And yet a coating of plausible deniability covers a film that takes care to be the most anodyne version of itself, all while giving those in the know just enough to latch onto. The traffickers are anonymous foreigners, mentioned as “rebels” in an unspecified regional conflict with no connection to the alleged Clinton Crime Family, though a title card at the end points back to America as a hub for the “$150bn business” of exploitation. The religious dimension seldom extends beyond a god-fearing undertone, most perceptible in archetypes like the reformed sinner on the righteous path. (Character actor supreme Bill Camp classes up the joint as “Vampiro”, a former narco who gave up his profligate lifestyle after fornicating with a 14-year-old while in a cocaine haze.) The trafficking follows no motivation more elaborate than the servicing of rich predators, eliding all talk of body-part black markets and the precious organic biochemical of adrenochrome harvested as a Satanic key to eternal life. The first rule of QAnon: you don’t talk about QAnon where the normals can hear you.
Just WHO is the conspiracy theorist here? He literally keeps telling us that the Q-Anon stuff (about which he seems to know quite a bit, and I, a certified Right-winger worried about the Elite’s obvious tolerance for sexualizing children does not) is nowhere to be found in the movie. Still, he sees it where it isn’t there.
It is a “subtext,” and apparently the millions viewing the movie are all deeply steeped in a fringe theory about which few people have a clue.
Again, who is the conspiracy theorist? Methinks somebody needs to lay off the Meth; it inspires paranoia.
These zestier strains of scaremongering are absent in the text itself, but they lurk in the shadows around a film outwardly non-insane enough to lure in the persuadable; the disappointingly un-juicy Sound of Freedom pretends to be a real movie, like a “pregnancy crisis center” masquerading as a bona fide health clinic. (Our hero Ballard, by the way, went on to found the paramilitary rescue squad Operation Underground Railroad, a group criticized as “arrogant, unethical, and illegal” by the authorities. But then, they would say that. They’re in on it, this goes all the way to the top, etc.)
See? He keeps saying that all the things he believes are there sub rosa are not there at all in the actual film. Apparently he believes that we are getting subliminal messages not to have a Coke and a smile, but to…what? Fear child sex traffickers are among us.
I have news for you: child sex traffickers are among us. That isn’t a conspiracy theory. Almost every street hooker is there due to some form of sex trafficking or another, and there actually is an international market in people. Geez. This has been commonly known forever.
Can’t talk about it though. Might get the Christians upset enough to help fight it.
They also lost a Bundle on Strange World
Gardian with its QAnon bullshit there is Q and there are Anons there is no QAnon they are as real as those “terrorists” at school board meetings, a creation of the CIA who are child traffickers looking to discredit those that know. 85 K children this government has “lost” after they cross our border and are taken into “protective” care. How many more were not and slipped into the US? The Cartels run the border and the south west US, big money.
Why Republicans Are Smearing Everyone As Pedophiles – Now Conspiracy theories work on different levels.
Recommended by whom? This is propaganda for morons. .
Microsoft and Bill Gates wants to choose your Child Career for them it was plain and clear in their We See TV ads form a few years ago
I see you wish to change the flow to political pedos and not the liberal media being defensive about the movie, none of Epstiens customers have been charged. Why is that? Why did Biden stop checking DNA at the border?
Would the real pedophiles please stand up? The irony of Republicans calling Democrats pro-pedophilia –
biden is the worst of the worst, a child predator.
Yet it was Mr. Grab-em-by-the pussy who was a good buddy of Jeffry Epstein for over 15 years. Their eventual falling out was over a contentious bidding war between the two for the Maison de l’Amitie real estate following Abe Gosman’s bankruptcy.
“I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it – Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”
That their own boy is a self-confessed serial adulterer probably explains the tawdry slander the right is constantly cranking out about Joe Biden. They previously targeted Clinton with their moronic Pizza Gate garbage.
I find both adultery and incest both disgusting, what was 15 year old Jill doing on the married senators lap..his “babysitter”.
Trump assisted the investigation into Epstein the one the FBI got involved in and sent the rich mans john off with a slap on the wrist deal. Mueller I think.
But why are they attacking this movie? A rescue of a child.
From the memory hole
Newly revealed footage leaked by an ABC insider has exposed how network executives rejected allegations against Jeffrey Epstein years ago, even though there was content regarding the merit of those claims in-hand. “I’ve Had This Story for Three Years…
You do realize Jill Biden is 72? Does Joe Biden look 23 in the photo? They first met in 1975, when she was 24 years old. Biden’s first wife died in 1972. There’s an 8 year difference in their ages. The social media tale that they met when she was a teenager is b.s.
Trump is 24 years older than his current wife. She was 28 when she became wife #3. Trump was 52. He divorced wives #1 and #2.
You didnt answer my question, why is the rescue of a child from sex slavery so threatening to the left?
Thats what the movie is about.
I suppose if Lassie came to alert you Timmy fell into the well , you would have the dog put to sleep if CNN or Rolling Stoned had a half baked editorial on collies.
The Biden tale about Joe and the ho is fiction go read what Jills ex husband has to say. OMG she has had a divorce just like Trump!
Do you know what a loaded question is? That’s why you’re getting no answer.
That Biden met his wife when she was 15 is a LIE. That Trump has been an adulterer who has publicly bragged about it is not. Biden has always been a family man. Trump was a libertine until he got too old to chase younger women.
And idiot Biden thought so much of her and his dead kids that he lied about the deaths to exploit it for political purposes. What a shit bag.
The story of jill becoming joes wife is a tawdry story of adultery and infidelity. jill is a monster in her own sense. She is a perfect fit for the feral pack of dogs that is the biden family. There is nothing of redeeming value the biden family has to offer for America. The degree of dysfunctionality of the bidens is far and away more abnormal than the average American family. And look where they are and have been for years, in a spotlight that has enabled them to continue the debauchery cesspool they inhabit.
And in the most recent court action with London Roberts, the stripper and mother of their seventh grandchild, the bidens had no objection to the disownment of the granddaughter.
“Cold Shoulder – and Heart”: NY Times Columnist Maureen Dowd Blasts Joe Biden for Ignoring Seventh Granddaughter, Hunter’s Love Child Navy Joan Roberts | The Gateway Pundit | by Kristinn Taylor | 30
Disgusting
I guess being an opportunistic whore like Kamala is how she gets away with making out with Kamala’s wife at the SOTU address.
biden showered with his adolescent daughter repeatedly. In her diary she described the showers as inappropriate. What did biden force his adolescent daughter to do while in the shower?
Unlike idiot Biden, Trump hasn’t grabbed anyone. He also has RAPED anyone, something else idiot Biden cannot claim. Trump was in real estate, as was Epstein. Eventually, Epstein was kicked out of Trump’s hotels permanently. What business did the Clinton’s, Schumer, idiot Biden and other prominent Democrats have with Epstein, aside from having children get their nut off?
Democrats are degenerates. Unless YOU are a degenerate, you should probably be finding a different party to support.
Oh, so Ketanji Brown Jackson, clearly the dumbest member of the U.S.’s highest court, WAS easier on child pornograpers who appeared before her court. But hey, other judges (no political leanings mentioned in the absurd article) did as well, so where’s the harm, right, Comrade? Who were the “other judges?”
Well, if ABC News says something, it must be true, right Comrade? And who would those “three federal judges” be? Certainly someone as well informed as you must know. And we all know how honest CNN (the failing network) is.
As to Roy Moore; where are the findings of the courts in the claims of these women against him? How much did the Democratic PAC have to pay to Moore when it was found the PAC was guilty of the salacious claims against Moore?
It seems the author of your referenced article has just one goal; demean Trump and conservatives. (Wonder if her opinion will change after she gets out of junior college) Not one word from her about how you on the left never held ONE Democrat responsible for the lies that Republicans want to ban book, i.e. books that, if you shared with someone under legal age 5 years ago, would have been considered a crime of child abuse. But I’m sure you’re just fine with the grooming of children, so it’s no big deal with Ketenji Brown Jackson letting child pornograpers off easy. Hell, just take a look at the disgrace who heads the teacher’s union. And if children can be groomed, no problem with selling them for sex. Or, perhaps you can show us an example of the Democrats coming out against that practice?
You’re a disgusting pig, Comrade Greggie, and probably a pedophile yourself.
Funny they would invoke the memory of Roy Moore…
Roy Moore wins defamation suit.
Democrats run Russian bot operation against Roy Moore and the media supports it
https://dailycaller.com/2018/12/19/democrats-russian-bots-false-flag/
Roy Moore accuser added notes to yearbook recently to make Moore look guilty
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/roy-moore-accuser-admits-she-wrote-part-of-yearbook-inscription-attributed-to-alabama-senate-candidate
Roy Moore was not banned from mall
https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2017/11/mall_never_banned_moore_and_other_lies.html
The Democrat party has gone full-on degenerate.
So I guess they were upset because it wasn’t ant leftists propaganda junk like The Butler, Reds or Ant Bully and it made better in the box office then Southside with You about the Obamas or that Dr.Fauci movie
their just upset because its doing better in the Box Office then Southside with You and that Fauci movie and anti gun film Miss Sloan
Not sad news
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/former-us-gymnastics-doctor-larry-nassar-stabbed-in-prison/ar-AA1dFyNZ
Executive Order on Combating Human Trafficking and Online Child Exploitation in the United States