The Grooming of America (and the World)

How did the water in this pot get so hot?

First, I would like to say a few words in defense of the word grooming. I think it is a terrible thing we have done to this good little word, which meant preparing someone for some good future career. The word we really mean is seducing.

But since a word was needed for the process of preparing someone’s thoughts to be accepting of seduction, I guess grooming will have to do. Poor grooming.

A week or so ago, my fellow author Alexander Hellene wrote a substack article called “We Wuz Groomed”, which you can find here. In this article, he talks about how his generation, growing up in the 1990s, was essentially groomed, by school and music and more, to think of indiscriminate sex and porn, etc. as normal.

A few days ago, a friend brought up a similar topic, describing TV shows from the 90s and detailing the ways in which many of the pillars of the Woke movement were slipped into society by showing them in a humorous light and having characters we all connected with treat these issues as if they were acceptable, even normal.

Now—people often say that they are not influenced by what they watch. But the truth is, there is no part of our memory that easily separates the way characters behave in a TV show set in the modern day from our neighbors. When our minds search around for information about how we should act or behave or think, modern people are as lightly to recall something said by their favorite sit-com character as by a real co-worker or neighbor.

So the laid-back attitudes of these fake people began to be accepted as gospel by the real audience.

The more I thought about this, the more I thought: Hellene is right!

Our whole culture has been groomed.

It started over a century ago. Somewhere, I have a post where I trace back many modern woes to the idea of overpopulation, but I cannot find it at the moment, but that one idea is used to justify a whole mountain of sins.

And it moved from one idea to another, each one being introduced slowly, through music, movies, media, public school, so that, like the frog in the stew pot, we didn’t notice that the water was getting Wokier.

All this reminded me, again, of Francezzo’s ancestor from A Wanderer in the Spirit Lands. I know I quoted this only a month ago, but it seems worth quoting again:

In this book, written in 1896, Francezzo, a dead man, is traveling through Hell, when he meets an ancestor of his who tries to lure him into staying there and helping to corrupt the living:

Again, I saw the power in intellect and in literature which I could control and influence through the imaginative descriptive faculties of mortals who, under my prompting, would write such books as appealed to the reason, the intellect, and the sensual passions of mankind, until the false glamour thrown over them should cause men to view with indulgence and even approval the most revolting ideas and the most abominable teachings. 

That last line is worth repeating: cause men to view with indulgence and even approval the most revolting ideas and the most abominable teachings. 

Is that not the essence of grooming? To cause the victim to accept revolting and abominable things with indulgence or even approval?

Now, at this point, you might be saying: Whoa! I don’t think this modern Woke stuff is so bad. Why shouldn’t consenting adults behind closed doors be allowed to do, well, whatever they choose?

Putting aside the fact that the current Woke culture wants to open the door, there is another problem.

Of people who practice non-standard sexuality, there may be some whose preferences are dictated by biology. I personally believe there is such a group, and I think a desire for kindness and tolerance toward such people—who, when left alone, would not impose their lifestyle on others or try to open their doors—is understandable, arguably even commendable.

But the problem is: many people suffering from desires other than those that reproduce the race have not reached their current state due to problems with biology but with psychology.

Why does this matter?

Because a biological issue, if tolerated, is not, of necessity, going to get worse.

But a psychological deviation from the norm is often a sign of a deeper problem, a cry for help. Such a problem manifests itself by drawing the sufferer away from the norm.

If you tolerate their aberrant desire, if you make it normal, it will mutate, pushing the sufferer towards some desire that is still outside social norms.

Let’s look at a brief, relatively harmless example. There is a tendency today for young girls to “ship” (wish to bring together into a relationship) members of boy bands with each other.

This is entirely new.

No girl before the modern day ever did such a thing.

Why? Because girls like romance…in particular that oogly-boogly feeling that comes from the pursuit of the beloved.

Back in the day when sex outside of marriage was shocking, they could easily experience this desired emotion by imagining the band member wanting to marry them or, for a spicier zing!, by perhaps imagining an illicit affair.

But nowadays?

There’s no zing!, no excitement, to a boy sleeping with a girl…because there’s no obstacle to them immediately jumping into bed.

If the girl wants to imagine the boy she is crushing after caught up in the zing! of romance, that tingly, titillating, oogly-boogly emotion, she has to imagine an illicit, taboo relationship.

Boys resisting the lure of each other now fits the bill.

Okay…now let’s look at grown men.

As each forbidden fruit of the past is unwrapped and delivered to our modern society on the plate of Woke acceptance, those looking for a thrill, for that excitement that comes from pursuing the taboo, need to look farther…

…and farther…

…and farther…

Until they reach the point beyond which they cannot go.

Only, there is no point. There is only a point beyond which we cannot afford to allow them to go, a point where society’s back is finally against the wall, and no farther tolerance can be accepted.

That point is: children.

If erotic pursuit of women and men and dogs and trees is entirely legal, the person who is pursuing a thrill, or who is pushed by their psychological trauma to move beyond the norm, is eventually going to find that the only place they can get their thrill fix is to sexually abuse kids.

So, of course, they have to come for the children.

To many of us, this idea is unthinkable.

We cannot imagine such a thing. It seems so wrong—so harmful to the child.

But apparently, the number of people doing this is rising sharply.

And we have just found out that our government has lost 300,000 children in the last four years.

(Only apparently, they are not lost. They are being trafficked. For more on that, check out the upcoming documentary Line In The Sand.)

Our entire culture has been groomed—groomed to think very false things about vice, about sex, about men, women, children, and more.

We are the frogs sitting in the pot, and we have just noticed that the water is beginning to give off steam.

The terrible question becomes: can we leap out of the pot?

Or are we already cooked?