I am tired of pretending they are not being cruel on purpose.

Trigger warnings for discussing SA, DV, harm to others, harm to children, US politics, you get the idea. Here’s some cute penguins before we get into it (penguin image by Masa Ushimaru from Pixabay). It has never been about protecting the children, and I’m sick of watching us pretend otherwise. There are some people who pretend to be reasonable and rational when their actions don’t match what they say, and their actions are harming others. And we tend to let them get away with it. We rationalize their hypocrisy. We tell ourselves that they’re misled, or uninformed, or don’t realize what they’re doing. We spend so much time and energy trying to figure out why they’re still behaving in a way that contradicts their stated goals. We presume a lack of knowledge, that they’re missing some important bit of information, or they simply don’t see how they’re not helping and are being hypocritical. But that’s not why. Their actions do not match their stated goals because they are lying about…