by William Skink

I was very disappointed to see Missoula Indy columnist, Dan Brooks, provide a broad dismissal of the ongoing crowd-sourced investigation into another pedophile network comprised of influential people, this one operating out of DC.

I say “another” pedophile network because networks of pedophiles in positions of power are not relegated to some seemingly outlandish claims by right-wing, 4chan conspiracy theorists. The most documented network of child abusers operated for years with impunity. I’m of course talking about the Catholic Church and the rampant abuse that was covered up for decades.

Pedophiles aren’t just creeps with thick glasses and old Chevy vans. They are billionaires like convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Actors like Corey Feldman and Elijah Wood claim pedophilia is one of Hollywood’s biggest problems.

It would be tempting to see individual cases of child abuse–like with Jerry Sandusky and Dennis Hastert–as isolated crimes resolved through our criminal justice system. And it would be tempting to ignore larger investigations, like the Franklin Credit Union scandal, which implicated lots of influential people, but ultimately lost steam when the main investigator, Gary Caradori, conveniently died in a plane crash.

With all this in mind, let’s take a look at how Dan Brooks casually dismisses the entirety of what’s emerging with this post put up a few days ago:

Thanks to fake news stories and social-media conspiracy theorists, thousands of people now believe that Comet Ping Pong, a pizzeria in Washington, DC, is the headquarters of a child sex-trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton. The owner and his staff have been getting death threats, and they’ve seen their children’s pictures used as photos of victims in fabricated stories like Pizzagate: How 4Chan Unconvered the Sick World of Washington’s Occult Elite. Don’t search #pizzagate on Twitter unless you want to lose faith in the American experiment.

Brooks uses the trifecta smear of fake-news/social-media/conspiracy theorist to cast as unthinkable any association of sex-trafficking and pedophilia with politicians, specifically Hillary Clinton.

Since the sources that are investigating this are used to discredit any information coming out, the following source I am going to reference is a source I know Dan trusts: the New York Times. From the link:

Ten Americans who tried to take 33 Haitian children out of the country last week without the government’s consent have been charged with child abduction and criminal conspiracy, as Haitian officials sought to reassert judicial control after the Jan. 12 earthquake.

The Americans, most of them members of a Baptist congregation from Idaho, had said they intended to rescue Haitian children left parentless in the quake and take them to what they described as an orphanage across the border in the Dominican Republic. But they acknowledged failing to seek approval to remove the children from Haiti, and several of the children have at least one living parent.

Laura Silsby was the head of this effort to abduct children from Haiti, and her organization has been on Clinton’s radar–according to emails released by Wikileaks–as early as 2001.

Now, it’s not mainstream news sources making these connections by sifting through the vast trove of emails released by wikileaks. But unless those who are claiming there is nothing credible to any of this are also going to claim all the emails are fake and part of this “hoax”, then what has been uncovered so far at least merits a more formal investigation.

No one is claiming that child trafficking doesn’t exist. And why does it exist? Because there is enough demand to make the exploitation of children a very lucrative market. But don’t take it from this blogger–here is another article from the New York Times:

Every year, millions of women, children and men are victims of human trafficking, suffering grim treatment, from forced labor to prostitution. According to the International Labour Office, this illegal slave trade generates nearly $150 billion in profits annually.

What I find more disturbing than the speculation and connections being made by amateur sleuths is the continued refusal by otherwise intelligent people to acknowledge the growing body of evidence that powerful people are involved in organized child abuse.

I will let Dan Brooks conclude this post with his smug assessment that stupid people publishing their own stupid ideas is the real problem here. Take it away, Dan:

It’s possible that we have failed to teach millions of people the critical thinking skills necessary to function in civil society. Everyone had to be this dumb in the early 19th century, before the advent of public schools. But could they share their dumb ideas this effectively? Perhaps the analog here is not present citizens:past citizens but present publishers:past publishers. Everyone may have been dumber in the 1830s, but they were not the editors of their own newspapers. O brave new world.