My mother died ten years ago. But she lived long enough to take back a slander that influenced my dog decisions for thirty years.

As I was growing up, the only breed she totally dismissed was the greyhound. I’m paraphrasing but her position was essentially that greyhounds are too stupid to be worthy of the name of dog. She had one as a small child. His name was Skeeter (?). He didn’t fit in somehow.

Over her long long life she had Irish Setters, multiple terriers, German Shepherds, and Boston terriers (then called Boston Bulls). She was devoted to them all, a fine mom to her many charges, one of whom may have saved her life after a car accident — one of those notoriously stupid Irish Setters, no less.

In her final, failing days, she still had Mandy, but Mandy was also growing very old. I took up residence with her, and Lady Laird kindly lent me her greyhound Patrick for company because my mother was in and out of herself by then.

Patrick made more of a difference than I did. My mother sat in her living room and the ever calm Patrick curled up in the front room, content to be no problem to me. But he acquired the habit of checking on my mother about once an hour. He was never a licker. He would just come and stand near her for a bit. She put her hand on his head for a bit. Then he would go lie down again.

It occurred to her she should have something to give him. We told her about Cheezits. So she asked for a bowl of Cheezits at her chair side. Same routine as before. He came to check on her, she laid a hand on his head, but with her other hand she grabbed a Cheezit and gave it to him, which he accepted gravely before retreating again. It was their thing.

Her eyes lit up when he visited. He was so beautiful, so room-filling, so gentle, so serene. Her angel.

This is the greyhound soul. There are many sighthound breeds and varieties, but somewhere inside all of them is this combination of acceptance, quiet comprehension of human emotion, and uncritical love. They don’t learn how to fetch. You can bounce a nerf ball off their noses a hundred times and it never dawns on them to catch it. They don’t really play. But they love stuffed toys that have eyes and limbs. They like gathering them in and protecting them on their beds and couches.

And they also run like nothing you’ve ever seen, faster than every other dog breed and faster than any other mammal but the cheetah. Patrick once saw a squirrel across the street when I was walking him. He accelerated to full speed within the length of the leash. Only the adrenalin of terror at losing him enabled me to haul him in. Thought he’d dislocated my arm. Thankfully, he pulled up at the last possible second.

This is why there are sighthound variations. Speed and acceleration are useful traits for humans who want hunters, guardians, and competitive athletes. Scottish Deerhounds are the Incredible Hulk of sighthounds. Greyhound build but huge, overwhelming speed and endurance, heavy bones, and the strength to take down a deer in the open field.

Borzois, once called Russian Wolfhounds, are also built like greys but with hair long enough to thrive in Siberian winters, and the pack aggression to take down wolves.

Afghans. You think they’re sissies? They’ve hunted and killed in Afghanistan longer than anyone on earth but other born Afghanis. The hair? It gets cold in the mountains. The longevity of the breed? Fidelity to family.

There are Salukis. All the breed guidance tells you not to expect a close relationship. In them the greyhound reserve is transmuted to distance. But they have lovely feathers.

And windhounds. People want smaller Borzois. Here they are. A new breeding experiment.

Two others I’ll point to today. Staghounds. A direct cross between deerhounds and greyhounds. They can run down coyotes. Not an AKC breed because they’re hybrids, not necessarily interbred to breed standards. Here’s some background.

And, finally, Doberman Pinschers. One of the most feared of all breeds. Fast, intelligent, beautiful, and loyal. But with teeth. Also definitely part greyhound.

Why do I mention Dobermans? Because some of our closest greyhound friends just replaced two prematurely mortal greys with this little guy:

Where am I going with this? Sighthounds are distinct because they see. Us. All different kinds. That’s how we should be here. Not all the same but clear of vision. Not confused by all the myriad misdirections of our culture, politics, and media. I concede I’m part Doberman. That shouldn’t sever our familial ties. Faint hope?

Maybe. You tell me.

P.S. Apologies if any of this seems sentimental. Today is my dad’s birthday. He was born in 1922 and died in 1999. He thought the country was done way back then. Don’t you hate it when the old man was right all along? But I’m still his son. Just because the war is lost doesn’t mean you stop fighting. Fifteen years now. Sometimes I gasp for breath. Forgive me. What manner of sighthound was he?

Happy Birthday, dad.

Lake seems to think this is a good idea. The “anybody out there” meme.

Me, I’m ready to decamp to Instapunk Rules. Being nice has run its course. Back to the long scrivers.

Lots of advertising kick behind the new F-type Jaguar.

But it’s a stocky little wallflower.

The real thing is long gone.

I could talk more. I did. WordPress didn’t like it. Enough said. They said. Why I’m dying too. I drove this car. You have no idea. Life today is a huge diminution of what it once was. But how could YOU know?

Not starting a fight here. Jonah Goldberg is a clever guy and a good writer. But he doesn’t like the response to the cat beats dog video.

I have breaking news!

My dog is quietly sleeping on the couch! That’s right, she is a warm puddle of furriness. Earlier this morning she rubbed up against me and asked me to feed her. Even weirder, when I asked her to sit, she didn’t. She just stared at me as if I owed her money.

My only regret is I don’t have video of this amazing activity. For if I did, I’m sure The Today Show and Good Morning America would lead with it.

I can only reach that conclusion given the global hysteria over a cat that attacked a dog that was attacking a small boy. What I mean is, if one cat out of a billion acts like your typical dog, surely when a dog acts like a typical cat, it should also be big news.

Of course, that wouldn’t happen. Why? Because we expect dogs to be dogs. Not all dogs are heroes, of course. Not all dogs follow commands. Some dogs even do bad things, like attack little kids in the driveway. But these are exceptions to our expectations. Every day some dog somewhere protects a member of his family. Every day a dog does amazing things when asked. Every day millions of dogs do less-than-amazing things like sitting or fetching or rolling over.

But here’s the thing: When a cat does it — BOOM — everyone applauds like finish-line huggers at the Special Olympics. Put a video of a cat fetching a ball up on YouTube and it will rack up views like notches on Bill Clinton’s headboard.

This hero cat is a celebrity now for doing exactly what you’d expect of a family dog.

You know what this is, right? It’s the celebrifying bigotry of low expectations.

I don’t mind giving this cat her due, though who among us doubts that her motives could have been less than pure? Maybe the boy was her protein-rich “rainy day fund” as it were, “Hey Dog, I’m saving the bald baby monkey for later!” Maybe the dog and the cat worked out this whole stunt in advance to make her look good. Who knows?

All I ask is you see things through canine eyes for a minute. How would you feel if you saw this fawning coverage of a cat doing a dog’s job as proof that “cats rule and dogs drool,” as Sally Kohn put it? It’s the story of the prodigal son all over. Dogs do the hard work of being mankind’s wing-mammal in this world, and all it takes for everyone to gush over cats is one (alleged) instance of feline heroism?

Read the whole thing. It’s pretty funny. But it’s also wrong. What he leaves out is that species do interact. People have made arguments that human civilization begins with the domestication of the dog. Co-evolution they call it. Dogs simplified hunting. Humans had more time to sit on their ass and think. Dogs were waiting for air-conditioning and McDonalds. Their patience was rewarded.

Also possible that humans learned altruism from dogs. Where else do you see a being willing to die for you with no possibility of an ulterior motive?

Cats are considered exempt from the dog-human bond. That’s just prejudice, even bigotry. If humans can learn from dogs, so can cats. Why I talked about the phenomenon I’ve lived that could be called dog-cat packs. Cats aren’t stupid because they don’t obey commands. They just don’t like commands.

Lots of the supposedly lower animals are smart. Dogs learn English words, sometimes hundreds of them. Cats learn tens of them, but they still have emotional intelligence. Crows and ravens learn no English words but they learn our faces and our rhythms and how to exploit our technological civilization. I won’t even get into the genius of rats and squirrels and pigeons, and raptors. We are surrounded by intelligence, by deep emotion, by the consciousness of the universe.

Should I be talking instead about the VA scandal or the lame speeches at the 9/11 Museum dedication? Well, how the hell would I know? Your silence is driving me to silence. I’m thinking I’ll hear another evocative Raebert groan before I hear from the crushed multitudes of the Obama Pogrom.

Suit yourselves. Grrrr.

One thing cats have over dogs. Cats never submit. The smartest ones I know are nervous now.

Everybody seemed pretty surprised by this video. I wasn’t. My first impulse was to check that my feral Mickey hadn’t been moonlighting in Bakersfield. He wasn’t. He was on the couch downstairs.

I’ve seen exactly this move before. When we got Elliott, he thought he was going to rule the roost, as his foster mother warned he might. Mickey was already elderly, fat, and inclined to very long naps. Elliott was young and full of himself. Izzie was young and happy for a sparring partner. She’s always had a Bruce Lee thing going, lots of posing, angry cat noises, and plenty of slick moves. Mickey had handled all of this like Neo handled Agent Smith at the end of The Matrix, with bored slow motion parries. Elliott, on the other hand, waded into her like Mike Tyson, usually without damage. But then came a day when he got above himself, pinned her down, and had her by the neck. She was screaming. I leaped from my seat but I wasn’t quick enough to get to her before what happened next.

Mickey, sunk in sleep on the bed in the master bedroom (or so we thought), came tearing around the corner at full charge down the hall and absolutely blew Elliott up, knocking him a full two feet away from Izzie. Very like the video above.

Boom. All done. Pecking order established once and for all.

Two factors here, seemingly at odds with one another. Mickey is one of three ferals Lady Laird adopted at the same time, one boy and two girls. The girls never have become acculturated to human companionship. Mickey was braver. He thought we humans might have our points, even if he was born skeptical.

It took me two years to get him on my lap. He had a habit of fishing with his tail. The end would hook and dance like a fish lure, and so I grasped it and let it go immediately. He’d cast again with the same result. One day he just jumped up and settled his considerable weight on me, purring like a housecat. Which he’s done ever since.

The other factor is a household with multiple dogs and cats. They become part of a pack. Every individual relationship is different, but there is loyalty to the pack and its members. In this environment, cats become astonishingly doglike. They know and respond to their names, they visit and nuzzle with one another, and they worry about one another. Cats will alert you when a dog is in distress, for example. They are also jealous of one another for couch time, and their irritation is not expressed to one another but to you.

I’ve had evenings when Raebert, Mickey, Elliott, and Izzie all take turns needing to be on a lap on the couch. It’s the culture of the pack, of which we are also a part.

Mickey keeps a low profile, but in some ways he’s the most interesting of the bunch because he’s come the farthest. He was born a wild thing, but he has come to love us. This is no anthropomorphic fantasy. If we both leave to go somewhere for a considerable part of a day, he gets cross. He glares fixedly at you as if he were winning a staring contest. Not allowed. The pack is supposed to stay together.

If you’ve studied wolf packs, there’s an alpha dog and there’s also an enforcer. Raebert is the alpha. Mickey is the strong right arm, despite his gathering age.

Raebert and Mickey don’t hang together much. No need. Two big gray icons ruling the roost.

If we had a little kid here, Mickey would absolutely have done what the cat in the video did. It’s just his style.

Pat calls them not cats and dogs but the “four-leggeds.” They’re conscious, make no mistake about that. They make their feelings known. And not everything is about food.

P.S. I’ve written about Mickey before, notably here and here, despite his insistence on remaining more or less incognito.

For a bonus, he’s also mentioned here, which I link because it’s funny, back when Obama screwups were still kinda sorta funny.

Everybody’s seen the Michael Sam draft moment. I’m reminded of the old movie Speed. “Pop quiz, asshole:” If you’re the first openly gay guy drafted by the NFL, “What do you do? What do you do?”

Well, obviously, you confirm everyone’s worst stereotype by sobbing like a girl when the call comes and then you French kiss your boyfriend on national TV to drive home the point that you’re the first openly gay guy to get drafted by the NFL. Oh. And then you insist that you should have been drafted in the third round, not the seventh.

**********TIMEOUT**********

Need to explain the title. Lady Laird and I discovered an amazingly charming reality show about a troupe of competitive hip hop dancers from Memphis, Tennessee. Not one of those shows where you spend all your time laughing at the participants.

To the contrary. The show is called Bring It! And it’s funny, yes, mostly due to the stage moms, but also impressive and inspiring. This kind of dancing is intensely competitive, even confrontational given that contests end in “Stand Battles,” where two troupes dance in response to one another for multiple rounds.

The dancers range in age from about eight through eighteen, and they endure ferocious discipline, long hours, and a, well, Lombardi-type coach who knows her real job is building character, confidence, and a relentless work ethic. They’re called the Dancing Dolls. Here’s a sample of what young girls can do when they’ve been taught to dance in synchrony.

Here’s a glimpse of just how tough she’s prepared to get.

And here’s a glimpse of the coach and her youngest students. She made mistakes in her own life. She wants to armor all the girls against those mistakes.

One more clip. You may think hip hop dancing is lewd. It’s a cultural distinction. The coach is adamant that she’s not teaching her girls how to be strippers and hookers. Here’s a Stand Battle against a troupe that does the spreadeagle thing. It’s called Stinky Diva because the Dancing Dolls mock their opponents for the spreadeagle thing. Even teenage girls know when too much is too much. ESPN, take note.

Last word before the end of the Timeout. Lots of competition among the Dancing Dolls. Lots of Stand Battles. They win, they lose. She cuts dancers from upcoming performances without ceremony. But there is never any sobbing or blubbering. They are learning how to take failure and come back stronger.

***********************

Where were we? Michael Sam. Actually, there were two stories worthy of note in his draft performance. First, his blubbering and sloppy exhibitionism. Second, the ESPN determination to run the footage over and over and over and over and over and over again, as if we — their customers — needed to be slapped in the face with their superior sense of what we should approve and admire.

The point is not original with me, but it’s still pertinent. When Tebow got drafted, he was mocked for his ostentatious Christianity. When Sam got drafted, we got mocked based on the assumption that we would be hatefully offended by his ostentatious homosexuality.

Why? Because homosexuality is suddenly cool. Not because ESPN is chock full of closeted queers. That would be slightly more acceptable. But gay people are a tiny minority. The desire is to rub our faces in it, to demonstrate their cultural superiority to the rest of us troglodytes. People like me who never watched Brokeback Mountain and never will.

It’s the same impulse that drives lib politicians to outlaw cigarette smoking everywhere while fighting for legalization of marijuana everywhere. Even though Patrick Kennedy (yes, those Kennedy’s) points out that no heroin addict ever started with a needle in his arm.

It’s the same impulse that causes the MSM to flat not cover the Gosnell trial, even though he’s probably the most prolific serial killer in the history of serial killers. Even Ted Bundy might have shrunk from sawing off a baby’s head on its way out of the womb.

What’s bad is good and vice versa. The tyranny I’ve mentioned before.

Gay guys are cool? Try these facts on for size.

The sometimes-deadly disease syphilis is exploding in the United States, with most of the increase since 1995 among men who have sex with men (MSM), according to a new report from the Atlanta-based Center for Disease Control (CDC).

As recently as 2000, researchers believed the total elimination of syphilis was within reach. The recent dramatic increases in infections, coupled with the observation that syphilis closely tracks with other diseases like AIDS, have the medical and scientific community deeply concerned. The CDC report considers “the increase in syphilis among MSM is a major public health concern.”

According to the report, “During 2005-2013, the number of primary and secondary syphilis cases reported each year in the United States nearly doubled, from 8,724 to 16,663; the annual rate increased from 2.9 to 5.3 cases per 100,000 population.”

The report also says that “men contributed an increasing proportion of cases, accounting for 91.1% of all primary and secondary syphilis cases in 2013.” Most of the increases came from men who have sex with men, which were responsible for 77% of cases in 2009 but 83.9% in 2012, what the report calls “the vast majority of male… syphilis cases.”

The report warns that the numbers in the new report are likely far less than the true number because only 34 states and the District of Columbia fully report sex of sex partners.

The report raises a particular concern about what it calls “co-infection rates.” “There are reported rates of 50%-70% HIV co-infection among MSM infected with primary or secondary syphilis…”

The notion of co-infection follows closely a report just published by independent researcher Dale O’Leary in the prestigious Linacre Quarterly of the Catholic Medical Association, found at the bottom of this article.

O’Leary reports that researchers understand the problems of health among MSM are now so vast and interrelated they are considered a “syndemic,” a linked set of health issues involving two or more afflictions acting in concert within a specific population. According to the medical literature, among MSM these would include diseases like syphilis, gonorrhea, and HIV but also such pathologies as partner violence, drug abuse, and psychological disorders. Treating a single part of this puzzle would not solve the whole problem.

The HIV/AIDS infection rate alone is bleak. From 2008 to 2010 the new HIV infection rate grew 12%, from 26,700 to 29,800 cases reported. One in five sexually active MSM carry the AIDS virus, but nearly half of those don’t even know it. However, HIV/AIDS is not the only problem, as the new CDC report on syphilis makes clear. According to the Linacre paper, “MSM are far more likely to be diagnosed with other STDs, some of which have become resistant to commonly used antibiotics.”

The paper reports on a 2004 outbreak of something called lymphogranuloma venereum (LGV), considered rare in the developed world prior to 2003, which includes “tender, enlarged lymph nodes in both groins.” A 2004 outbreak in the Netherlands among MSM has led to its spread in the European Union and the United States almost exclusively among the HIV-positive.

Another linked pathology is Hepatitis C, “which can lead to liver cancer, can be [sexually] transmitted and is spreading not only among HIV-positive gay men, but also among HIV-negative MSM.” Human papillomavirus is epidemic and has led to a “dramatic increase in anal cancer among MSM, especially those who are HIV positive.”

Included in this particular syndemic, according to the Linacre paper, are issues related to mental health, including higher risks of “suicidal ideation, substance misuse, and deliberate self harm than heterosexual people.” According to the paper, even the Southern Poverty Law Center, an advocacy group for MSM, admits “that LGBT people suffer higher rates of anxiety, depression and depression-related illnesses and behaviors like alcohol and drug abuse than the general population,” though they chalk this up to “homophobia.”

Why don’t we care what ESPN thinks is cool? Because what isn’t cool isn’t. Sometimes what’s wrong reveals itself in the simple fact that it’s poisonous to life, health, and happiness. If you think you know better, Michael Sam, Bring It!

It’s A trailer. Click on it later.

Tyranny is the rule, not an exception. The assaults of tyrants or would-be tyrants are the rule, not an exception. (Laugh and cry at this. It ain’t just the Russians who live like this.)

That’s the real meaning of American exceptionalism. We had a moment — 200-some years in the sordid 5,000 year chronology of recorded history — in which one people organized themselves to address the constant antipathy between morality and power. “Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s,” Christ said. The founders of our country added another sentence: “But if you can, keep Caesar in a box.”

We have all been the beneficiaries of that innovation. It’s doomed, of course. Caesar always escapes from the box.

Your children will live in a different world. Tyranny has returned, clothed as always in promises that it is the opposite of tyranny. As always, the tyrant definitions are polar reversals: weakness is strength, grievance is virtue, dependency is prosperity, sloth is entitlement, ignorance is knowing everything worth knowing, vice is liberty, passivity is wisdom, slogans are reason, baby murder is freedom, and loveless animal sex is sufficient consolation.

Sadly, most of you will lose your children, if you have not already lost them.

When social contracts get twisted into caricatures of what they were intended to achieve, everyone loses. What awaits is chaos, violence, confusion and endless loss, perverse obsessions, subjugation.

Where we are. Get your children ready. Your life is no guide to what theirs will be. Your moment will not be theirs. Theirs will be some variation of these movies.

The first is Hope and Glory, linked complete above. Brits in Britain during The Blitz. Still civilized but shredding slowly apart. Sometimes funny but not really. Sometimes inspiring but not really. Not what you’d hope for your own spoiled young consumers. Without you, how long would they last and how much would they remember?

The second is about a child’s life in a prison camp. More Brits, but sheared off from the root of their cultural tree of life.

The full movie is online here.

Finally, the fate of the defeated and deluded. Much closer to what our own young’uns are likely to experience. The survival fight of the barely conscious, striving mightily to understand what humanity actually consists of if it isn’t some pile of convenient unthought about platitudes.

This one’s on Netflix and it’s also available in 10 minute chunks on Youtube. Contrary to the intimations of the trailer, it’s not about sex. It’s about a desperate, only partially successful attempt to come awake in the face of grave physical and moral danger.

Brace yourselves. I know you’re not ready for this fight. Nothing has prepared you. The intoxication of your evaporating moment has made you believe that optimism can save your seed.

It can’t. And it won’t.

Shammadamma.

34 minutes long. By eminent director Werner Herzog. Guaranteed to save lives. It’s called “From One Second to the Next.”

Not nasty, not judgmental, just life saving. A little over half an hour. Might impress you too.

160 years. What a whole education might do for you. Think about looking the same for the last 140 years. Witnessing everything, forgetting nothing, and having to listen to the fads and fantasies of all the intellectual heavyweights of the day.

Longevity is a curse. Why? Because all the arguments that purport to be new and salient are old and yellow. I heard MacClellan argue for peace with honor, Woodrow Wilson proclaim a new age of international responsibility and the inevitability of improvement in the basic human condition. I heard FDR orate about the end of inequality. I watched Stalin use the principle of equality to grind everyone into dust.

Throughout, I was just an ageless pretty face. I was Dorothy Parker’s boy toy at the Algonquin round table. Had something to say but couldn’t get a word in edgewise. New York intellectuals are unquestionably the stupidest creatures on the face of the earth. Only a spectacularly successful and free society can produce and tolerate such utter nonsense. I learned to hold them and the Three Stooges in the same light. Repetitive routines that are supposed to be brilliant but aren’t unless you’re the moron audience for which they’re intended. What can you do?

So I waited. Never cared for Rita Hayworth or Grace Kelly. Always knew they’d die before their time. You get a feel for these things. Thought maybe Katharine Hepburn was the ticket, but she became a parody of herself, weighed down by that accent and all those Oscars. Talked to Greta Garbo once. Learned she wanted to be alone because she had nothing to say.

Have I mentioned the artists? Picasso, Jackson Pollock, Andy Warhol, Leroy Neiman Marcus, all of them. Drunks and whoremasters and queers and poseurs. They never cared to put art back together again. They were like kids who shredded the works of alarm clocks and left them lying on the floor for daddy to deal with. Only daddy had left long ago.

Yeah. Fitzgerald and Hemingway. The first a small man with a big talent. The second a big man with a big talent and a death wish. But neither with a big brain to accompany the talent. And then came Thomas Wolfe, a tall man with a big talent and nothing to say, Faulkner a drunk man with a big talent and said it all the first time, and then all the pretenders like Mailer and Roth and Styron. Somewhere in there were some originals, but originals always burn out early. Why there’s less than a hundred thousand words of Nathanael West, and Malcolm Lowry actually used his one novel to finish drinking himself to death.

It gets lonely. When all you are is a pretty face in proximity. “Hey, Dorian,” they say. “Get me another drink.” Evelyn Waugh actually spoke to me once. He said, “I’d ask you for another drink, but I can see you wouldn’t get it for me. Congratulations.”

And I’ve been to the wars. Which is partly how I can parse the artists and writers. Just old enough to have seen the final chess match of Grant taking Richmond. Chess measured in how few thousands of dead each pawn capture entails. Why HE drank. And I saw part of Sherman’s March too. Why I’ve affected his beard since then. The only general I’ve known who hated every minute, every death, of his victories.

And World War I. And World War II. Pretense aside, I was alongside my putative grandfather and my putative father as they suffered and feared and nerved themselves up for impossible challenges. Longevity. If you asked them today, they might have some memory of an infant, a little boy, an adolescent… But it would be a fuzzy recollection. What they do remember in detail is the grown up pretty boy who resisted their notions of how you’re supposed to be.

Because I’ve been here for many ages. And the truest thing about it all is that I have the imagination most people lack. Because I’ve been there. Pretty boy and all.

A couple years ago, Comcast On Demand started listing movies attributed to ‘Phase IV.’ Things you never heard of. Figured it was the bottom of the straight to cable barrel. Didn’t watch.

But Netflix has been flexing its muscles of late, and I found a movie given four stars under the Phase IV rubric. It was called The Abduction of Eden.

The always too brief description said it was about international sex trafficking. Which struck a chord with me, given the Nigerian atrocity of schoolgirls abducted by an Al Qaida affiliate called Boko Aram. Today’s news: Hillary Clinton, champion of women’s and girl’s rights, refused repeated, insistent requests by the CIA, FBI, and DOJ to classify Boko Haram as a terrorist organization on the official watch list. Cause, you know, it would have conflicted with the administration’s meme of Al Qaeda ‘On the Run.’

Such a sweet idea, no? But look at the video. Horrific images and saccharine lyrics. Is that the genius of the Paul who is not THE Paul? Thinking so. At least Lennon got mad twice.

So I watched the low budget, straight to video production called Abduction of Eden.

Lo and behold. The single best treatment of the horrors of sex trafficking I’ve ever seen. Let me count the ways. No exploitative sex scenes or nudity, no federal agents crashing around in putative rescue attempts, no pious declarations by bureaucrats to get to the bottom of this hideous nightmare in human lives. No unalloyed happy endings punctuated by automatic gunfire and shamed, helpless girls cringing in cargo containers.

In place of all this, a good movie that drives home every noxious and humiliating aspect of this obscenity against the most basic human contract, that we will protect our girl children against predation.

Watch the movie. Dark but not without moments of light. Humanity is still brighter than evil.

P.S. RR suggests, somewhat ingenuously, that I should be a light bringer. As opposed to what? If the light that shines on the scene is a terrible light, that’s the light that has to be brung. Where we are right now.