A principal from a random American backwater is in tepid water after using one of his students as bait to catch a rapist. He failed to catch the rapist, though he did succeed in getting his student raped.
The water is only tepid, because let’s face it, you know he’s not going to get more than a slap on the wrist. He probably won’t even get fired. The way our world works, I wouldn’t be surprised if state officials decide to give the man a medal or maybe a parade. Probably both. He showed gumption and initiative.
Right now, the bureaucrats at the principal’s school district are probably baking him a very large cake.
Parents, meanwhile, are likely lining up around the school with words of support for the principal, and pitchforks and Molotov cocktails for the girl who was raped.
We’ve seen this kind of behavior before, most notably during the pedophilia scandals of the Catholic Church, when churchgoers often shielded priests accused of child-rape while throwing venom and invective at those folks who had been abused by the priests.
People often despise victims while adoring the belligerent and the violent. That’s probably why people like Stalin and Hitler have such an easy time coming into power. We, as a society, reward assholes, and piss on everyone else.
This is my interpretation of what happened: The girl was assaulted by a fellow student, and went to a teacher for help. This teacher wanted to escort the girl home, and went to the principal to tell her what happened. The principal, who I assume is some kind of super villain who once did battle with the likes of Spider-Man before escaping into our own universe, laughed maniacally and said no. He had a better idea! Instead of calling the police or getting the girl to a hospital, he’d make use of her in a dastardly plot, a plot straight out of a pulp novel circa 1963.
He didn’t believe the girl had been raped, and he didn’t care if she said otherwise. It was consensual sex! It had to be. He knew it in his gut. Consensual sex on school grounds. He wasn’t going to stand for that. He was going to catch the rascals who were bumping uglies at his school, consensually of course, come hell or high water.
He no longer had access to death rays and foot soldiers, but that didn’t matter. Our fearless principal took the initiative, and courageously sent the girl out to hunt down her “consensual sex partner” . The girl would then confront the boy who had just had “consensual sex” with her, and the principal would use his latent psychic abilities to swoop in and reprimand him. He’d give him a good, stern warning and possibly detention. It was foolproof! No one, not even James Bond, not even Doctor Doom, not even the infernal forces of Mephistopheles could foil his scheme.
Well, we know how that turned out.
These are the kind of people running our schools. Idiots who don’t see anything wrong with using their students as rape-bait. Morons who think they belong in an action adventure movie. You’re not Bruce Willis and this isn’t Die Hard. You’re a school principal, and one of your students just said she was raped. You are not qualified to tell her otherwise. Call the police, sit back, and try to be a human being for just a few minutes. Is that too much to ask for?
This story might be an extreme example of educational malpractice, but this incident is symptomatic of a schooling system that dehumanizes the people who are forced through it. In the eyes of her principal, this girl wasn’t a living, breathing, human being — she was a two dimensional cartoon character. He saw her as nothing more than a plot device in a drama of his own creation, and that drama has had some devastating, real world consequences.
What I find infuriating about this story is that I know this man is never going to be held accountable for his actions. Schools are such giant, inhuman monstrosities, that it is simply impossible for them to ever do the right thing. It won’t happen. It can’t happen. You’re more likely to draw a quart of blood from a rock than you are a single drop of decency from the entirety of our educational system.
It is a massive broken mess and the sooner we toss it the better off our society will be.
You might think that’s an extreme position, but it is the only sane one to take under the circumstances. We have absolutely no control over our schools. These institutions and the bureaucracies which prop them up do not care about us.
They don’t care about our children, they don’t care about our communities, they don’t care about justice or compassion or consideration, or anything remotely life-enhancing. The only thing that matters to the educational system and those who exist within its corrosive corridors, is that it continue to exist no matter what.
It is a malignant cancer. There’s a reason the best teachers in our schools either end up quitting or burning out. Schools are toxic — for the teachers, for the students, even for the bureaucrats like our good principal.
Speaking of him, he’s not the only one who needs to be held accountable. The entire social edifice he belongs to share part of the responsibility for what happened. Everyone managing our schools, from the governor down, owns a part of this tragedy. They are all culprits, every last one of them.
But what do I know. I’m just a cranky misanthropist.
I hope the victim of this twisted affair manages to find a good quality hammer to smack down the bag of nails our society has just given to her. Hopefully she’ll find more compassion and love in her surroundings and escape the brutality, the heartlessness, and the stupidity of the adults who were supposed to be looking after her.
As for us, we allowed this to happen to that girl. We are responsible for her suffering because we refuse to resist a society where these sorts of things are allowed to happen. We consent to our society, and this consent is what made this situation possible. Without it, none of this would have happened.
We placed a burden on this girl’s shoulders by tolerating the intolerable, and by failing to strike out at those things that deserve to be struck at.
We failed to protect her, we failed to create an educational environment that would make her assault an impossibility, and we failed to provide a legal system that would guarantee her well-being while assuring that those responsible for her suffering not only paid a real and substantial price for their actions, but that society would change in such a way were their actions could never be repeated.
I find it ridiculous that our manufacturing plants have quality control systems in place, but our governments and our schools do not.
We need six sigma for politicians and bureaucrats.
I myself, am a failure. I lack the strength to do anything but sit down and complain about the world. I suppose, perhaps, someday I might manage to muster enough influence to enact some kind of change, or accumulate enough money to help out in a serious and sustained manner. Instead, I’m just a miserable fool, complaining on the internet.
Powerless and impotent while the world burns, slaughters, rapes, kills, hates, beats, steals, and destroys itself. Why is it that anger and rage are so easy to find, but love and compassion are not?
And still, people have the gall to claim that our society isn’t pathogenic! All it does is spread disease. When love is more common than hate, when peace is easier than war, and when trust triumphs over fear and apathy, then I’ll change my mind.