This is a salient point. Does anyone think about mass graves when they fill up their gas tank? The mercenaries hired to murder labor activists and their families when they crack open a coke? Or more humdrum, the overworked warehouse picker who threw out their back and lost their job because their performance metrics took a dive when you open your latest amazon package?
Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug, so to speak. We all experience different levels of it, even the blissfully unaware. Our brains must do this, or surely we could not cope- we are bounded on all sides of our social experience by products of enmiseration and exploitation. There has to be a cost.
So I’m inclined to think that I’m guilty- when I bought drugs. When I bought gas. Every time I send rent money to a management corporation that would think nothing of tossing me on the street. It depresses the fuck the out me, but the pain of awareness is the cost for believing that something can and should be done.
But Bob Kraft is way, way, way more guilty. You don’t get to his standing in life without knowing the true nature of the gristmill.
Did he know this place specifically was trafficking in sex slavery? Maybe not. Does he know how that system works, tho? Absolutely. He knows that the human he “just got a handie” from had no power, none at all. And he has all the power in the world. That’s the sickest part.
Well, that is true of pretty much every interaction he has in life. As you say, we all ignore the suffering of others we cause most of the time. How much more adept at doing that must one be when every interaction one has is subject to that degree of power imbalance?
Yup. Or at least being able to ignore that awareness.
Thanks for those twitter accounts. That is exactly what I was looking for. One of them led me to a nuanced story at the Sports Illustrated site. Robert Kraft may be the hook that gets peoples’ attention, but the real story is the human rights of the women working at the place and other women in similiar situations.
Honestly, I always think of that New Zealand case from years back where a prostitute successfully took the owner of the brothel they worked at to court for sexual harassment. Lennon’s Imagine plays in my head when I think of the idea that we’d agree as a society that it’s not okay to sexually harass people even if they sell sex for a living.
