every time george w. bush says he cares about children we should scream out loud

in his january 2006 state of the union address, u.s. president bush stated:

We show compassion abroad because Americans believe in the God-given dignity and worth of a villager with HIV/AIDS, or an infant with malaria, or a refugee fleeing genocide, or a young girl sold into slavery. We also show compassion abroad because regions overwhelmed by poverty, corruption, and despair are sources of terrorism, and organized crime, and human trafficking, and the drug trade.

the references to girls in slavery and human trafficking build on his prior public championing of the cause of trafficking and sexual slavery.

some visible figures in the anti-prostitution movement have embraced the president's claims, including scholar donna m. hughes, who states:

The president's stated commitment to opposing the global sex trade places the U.S. on the forefront of a new movement for human freedom, rights, and dignity. It was fitting that he made this statement alongside a call for democracy building in Iraq and opposition to terrorism.

i agree with donna hughes that it was "fitting" that president bush compared the u.s. interest in fighting sexual violence to the u.s. interest in democracy in iraq, and opposition to terrorism.

before i move forward with a critique here, i have to stop and think for a moment what it would be like if someone who had billions of dollars at his disposal, who could gain the attention of virtually every media source in the world, who could engineer the passage of laws, who had enormous influence over the praxis of international human rights law and the administration of bodies like the IMF and the World Bank --- were to talk about sexual violence, acknowledge its devastating consequences for girls, and declare that the problem must be fought --- and... here's the crucial part, what would it would be like if i could believe him.

it's a painful fantasy, i tear up a little when i think about it. what would it be like if the people who are in a state of intense consciousness, rage, and clarity about systemic sexual violence and exploitation weren't only people who have been massively brutalized and traumatized and are mostly just busy surviving? what if some of the people who 'got it', felt it, meant it, with all their hearts were presidents? what if that were true right now, and i could think about the rapes of kids and teens in systems of prostitution which are happening right now, this second as i type, and think --- it's going to stop. really. soon. it's ending, it's on its way out. in 2008 or so, sexual exploitation will have decreased by 97%, and communities of politicized people, led and energized and furious with the stories of survivors will be tracking down and confronting those last vestiges. funding will be pouring into previously slashed arts programs and education and healthcare to meet the incredibly glaring and complicated needs of people who have been tortured, to create healing, to extend shortened lives. there'll be vigils and memorials and days and weeks and months of remembrance, which will be massively attended by workers who are no longer busy just making a living because the wealth of institutional pimps and bosses and corporations will be redistributed to actually change the conditions which push so many people into systems of prostitution. and as we proceed with the return of lands to indigenous north american communities, we'll at least have a starting place to confront the racial and economic and cultural histories of annihilation which have swelled the numbers of living beings used as sexual commodities and objects.
i can only begin to fathom what it would mean for children to be safe from incestuous and pedophilic predators who like to play daddy-pimp (there's a freaking reason those two words are associated!) or amateur pornographer. if kids had places to go, and people to tell, and the recognized right to break away from any family which was dangerous or violent, and didn't belong to anyone but themselves. what if there were a president, who wanted all that. who got all that. who needed it like i do.

it's not just that george w. bush is a liar. he is a liar. "americans" as a big whole group do not respect or protect or support human lives, mostly give no thought to malaria, or to slavery of girls in international trafficking rings. iraqis are not receiving democracy from troops with weapons who refer to them with a range of racial and religious epithets. the trafficking victims protection act has resulted in very very few actual prosecutions, and almost no distribution of t-visas to victims, and does not recognize most victims as such anyway. none of this is news to anybody paying attention.

but it's not only the outright lies. it's his certainty that he can appropriate to himself the role of 'crusader for human rights', and use people like me as his symbolic recipients of 'compassion'. rhetoric about cracking down on sex tourists is ludicrous without any attention to u.s. military prostitution, camptowns, and trafficking --- taking place everywhere the u.s. has a goddamn base, which is... everywhere. and talking about stopping sexual slavery while promoting u.s. economic interests or "progress" globally is such an enormous contradiction, it's practically unfathomable. because systems of prostitution feed on economic vulnerability and poverty, and the impoverishment and vulnerability of most of the world is the constant prerequisite for the existence of the u.s. as a military and economic 'superpower'. and for a president who's slashed head start, slashed education, slashed medi-cal, slashed most of the programs which might maintain any quality of life for children who don't happen to be born into very privileged families... for that president to speak in gripping terms about saving children, is a mindfuck of alarming proportions.

for him to use people like me, survivors of systemic sexual abuse and exploitation to bolster his status as a human rights leader --- and to link it to u.s. military aggression in iraq, to the invasion of afghanistan and abuses of other nations and peoples, and the erosion of already compromised civil liberties in the u.s., in the name of fighting "terror"... well like i said, it fits.

so since apparently it falls to someone like me to try to call out president bush on his attempt to appropriate the stories of sexual exploitation survivors, i'm trying out phrases like "how dare you", or various obscenities. but unsurprisingly, it's really hard to imagine an adequate response.

i've been thinking about the way that privilege and power are loud, the ways that people in power are so often sure that they can say virtually anything, tell any lie, take possession of anyone's experience or story and revise it into something unrecognizable --- and be sure that no matter how outrageous, how dangerous, how cruel --- the responses will be soft, too low, too easy to drown out. or that we won't be there to answer at all. especially with people like me, cuz we're presumed to be dead, or else a cowering poster-child, who has few words other than, "thank you for saving me, god bless america".

while i'm navigating in fantasy-land a little here anyhow, i'm thinking about what it would be like, if every time president bush announced that he cares about children, survivors of childhood violence screamed, all at once, as loudly as we could. scream-ins, screaming marches, scream-alongs on the whitehouse lawn. the resulting tumult might bring press, or neighbors, or --- unfortunately --- cops, but whoever it brings, it would be an opening to explain --- i am screaming because president bush is lying about people like me so loudly, and if anyone's going to notice, we've got to make some noise too. and here's what the lies are. and here's why they're so dangerous. and here's how they hurt. and here's how to actually help --- and please don't talk about 'helping' or 'caring' unless you're willing to let the survivors take the lead, and willing to follow through. cuz otherwise, you're just more bad noise. i'm thinking also about what it would be like if every time president bush talked about stopping trafficking, survivors of systems of prostitution screamed, or if our voices or throats are too damaged, thumped, banged, twanged, bullhorned, drummed --- and made such a seriously unavoidable sound that we got at least enough attention to be able to get in a soundbyte, which would be simply: "president bush is an enemy to children, and to victims and survivors of rape".

shrayberin