Sound of Freedom and the Shape of Modern Propaganda 

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In the words of Dom Helder Camara: "When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.”

I like how the Daily Wire tried so hard to prove they aren't sexist that they got a contingent of their own fans to think they were going woke.

It really says something about how little these people care about trafficking/CSA that these types of stories always seem to end with the victim back home, usually with their family, when anyone with PTSD can tell you that surviving the actual thing is only the start. It takes time to recover, and a lot of people who are abused as kids go on to be abused in different ways as adults. But these people don't care about adults. They don't even actually care about the kids. The idea of childhood innocence is what needs to be protected, and if you aren't innocent, if you didn't fight back, if you weren't kidnapped out of your home, if you were queer, if you said yes to anything even if you didn't understand it, well, you weren't innocent so they don't need to care.

i watched this movie in theater with my parents and sister. i remember leaving so incredibly angry... how can they use such a nuanced and horrifying subject as an advertisement for their religion/ideology. They did this at my old church too. They used to organize these "marches against human trafficking" once a year cooperating with an organization that actually helped victims of sexual trafficking. I went a couple of times as a volunteer to hand out pamphlets to curious bystanders, and the people who organized the event had to be very persistent to every volunteer that it was NOT a chance to advertize our church. And even so, some people did. The pastors and leaders of the church always marched at the front, making sure they were caught by the cameras, ready to show the world how much good they were doing, and trying to get more people involved with their church. Never in the remaining time of the year was this subject brought up again in church. This is exactly how this movie felt to me, and i think that's why i left the theater so angry.

I have bipolar disorder. What I’m seeing in American society atm is what a typical manic episode for me feels like, but spread out among the average citizen. Everything is frenetic and every new idea or piece of information is the most important piece of information to ever exist. People, albeit out of ignorance rather than maliciousness, buy into the new crop of conspiracy theories with such gusto that they begin to almost *hope* that the horrific and disgusting consequences become a reality. Whether it’s every member of congress having children in their basement or a microchip implanted from a vaccine that turns the inoculated into a zombie democrat, they’d rather be right than be okay. Good vid!

41:15 The "delightful" irony of someone wanting to protect a child... by secretly filming them in a bathroom without theirs nor their parents' consent.

Attacking poverty (whatever that ultimately means) would solve a whole host of societal ills, beyond child sex trafficking. Unfortunately, America is the land of "Fear the stranger in raggedy clothes" to an extremely unhealthy degree, and views them overwhelmingly as a potential threat. America is more interested in punishing bad guys, whoever that it is, than actually helping anybody. The idea that maybe someone gets help that "doesn't deserve it" destroys their willingness to actually help the other people that *do* need it.

Genuinely, saying this as a survivor of CSA, who lives in a nation who struggles beneath the thumb of fascist military projects that only react to the end tail of a problem without addressing the underlying material and economic realities that cause that problem, thank you for this video. I hope i can one day speak on this types of issues in such an incisive, thoughtful way as you.

I had forgotten what Sound of Freedom was about when I clicked on this video, so I did not expect the topic of child trafficking. I especially didn't expect it to be handled with such an acerbic profundity. I'm hard-pressed to not think of this as your best video to date, and one of the best video essays I've ever seen.

Our girl is sponsored now! Good for you Babe, secure the bag!

Sorry to be partway off-topic, but the analysis of modern American culture has explained to me where the void came from. The void being this gnawing sense in my head that there's some kind of wonderful, heroic thing I should have been doing with my life. I know my limitations. I've never believed it. But it's still there. Of course it's taught by the culture. Everybody my age wishes they'd grown up to be Luke Skywalker or Han Solo. Generations earlier wanted to be cops, or cowboys. Stories are, as you said, supposed to help us orient ourselves within the problems of the world so that we can go on about the adult work of trying to reduce or even solve them. They aren't supposed to completely distract us from the problems by tricking us into accepting false solutions. So, thank you very much for explaining all of that! Also, the algorithm recommended the video just fine. I'm sure it helps that I have "All" set for notifications, but still, it seems to be working as of this anecdote.

Babe, wake up, sequel to the Run, Hide and Fight analysis just dropped

It sounds like The Daily Wire thought that corporate, sterile filmmaking but with conservative talking points was the way to go... i.e. the Ubisoft approach. Fascinating. Taking the art out of art and pitching it as "safe for conservatives".

This was one of the most well-researched, insightful, and entertaining video essays I've seen. Thank you

“We should never accept any solution to child trafficking that wouldn’t satisfy our anger” Damn. That’s really powerful. And all you need to do is wade into the comments of any article discussing pedophilia or a CSA offender being tried. There’s never any discussion about how we prevent harm or help children heal, it’s literally just a stream-of-consciousness spiel of all the terrible, unconscionable things they would do to torture and maim the offender. No one actually wants to help children, they want to harm offenders.

Jesus Christ. That last ten minutes was absolutely masterful. This is right up there with In Search of a Flat Earth as the most astute and incisive analysis of the modern American right

I find your video essays to consistently have some of the best and smartest analysis on RU-vid, at least of anyone that I watch. This might be my new favorite of yours, despite my personal fondness for the ones about clowns because of how much I love them. I'll probably have to watch it again to properly process all of my thoughts about it but I really appreciated how much research went into all of this. Great job!

You've pretty much crystalized exactly why this film made me uncomfortable when I was hearing about it and saw it. Great video!

I don’t hate conservative America and how they view things, but when I and everyone else not conservative saw that a movie like this was being made and by who, I knew sensationalism and religious messaging was going to be the primary focus instead. They think Hollywood is trying to silence conservatives, but in reality, the rest of America knows tone-deaf stunts like this movie are going to be pulled. I appreciate you articulating your thoughts on this movie.

I mean this as a compliment: This video made me deeply uncomfortable.

The pause at 19:00 where Harmon had an epiphany from God about the release date had me trembling.

What I've never understood. How is this film praised so insanely, when Lynne Ramsey did it best in the avenue of the thriller with You were Never really Here. It's one of the most brutal and emotional narratives I've ever seen with child trafficking and vigilantism. It literally does what Sound of Freedom, think it does.

Best commentary on the issue of Human Trafficking I've EVER seen.

Such a great video essay. The final monologue reminds me of Folding Ideas. Thank you for presenting the complexities of worldwide CSA

You really deadass used a different movie essay to dunk on the daily wire again

There is actually a ton of flaws in tims story we dont get here. I dont have the stuff on hand but a lot of other videos about the movie get into it a bit.

I’m so glad you covered this. I was doing poll work in 2023 against issue 1 which would have raised the threshold to pass a constitutional amendment in Ohio from a majority to 60%. This was done by republicans to try to prevent an upcoming pro abortion amendment from passing. But there were some people I’m the area who supported the issue and were very conservative. They kept talking to me about trans grooming and how abortion is sin and murder. But then they kept telling me to watch this movie/documentary. I was kind of confused because it had nothing to do with what we were talking about but I later realized that it was Sound of Freedom and that it was big with conservatives. I was conflicted because the movie didn’t seem bad or right leaning but it was loved and supported by right wingers. Now this all makes more sense. Thanks!

We had 6 weeks from signing the film to releasing it in theaters, as much as I enjoyed listening to your analysis of the marketing of the film, I was in the marketing strategy meetings, and I WISH we'd had time to think about and plan, the marketing this deeply. 

For the record, we also tried really hard to reach out to the left (which happens to be "my" team - mostly), but to no avail. Also, Angel isn't a “faith-based” studio, but it's probably okay if most people think that, but not everyone who works here is even religious. 

And lastly, pay it forward was NOT used to buy out entire theaters, in fact, it isn't even possible to do that with the tech behind the Pay-it-Forward system. There were a few cases where individuals or companies directly bought out entire theaters for company events and such, which is what Jim was referring to, but not through Pay-it-Forward. Buying out theaters for events is common in the industry.

Not sarcasm: i really respect that you agreed with something Peterson said. Especially after you just described the ludicrous attempt to reinvent the idea of a story. Maybe I'm cynical, but didn't expect that. Very impressive to maintain the intellectual honesty when you must desperately want to distance yourself from him.

Yo, my hat is off to your body of essays. I have enjoyed most, if not all of them and I have found the caliber of your analyses and delivery consistently impressive and engaging. That said, your entire passage starting just after 1:24:00 is just.. powerful. If by some chance we ever have the opportunity to shake hands, it would be my privilege to do so.

The way you deconstructed this topic really amazed me and made me want to make my own investigative journey into some of our current events. I liked how you exemplified Tim Ballard's way of thinking as a well-intentioned but ultimately childish route to go around solving child trafficking; a good guy vs bad guy trope, an individualistic battle against a greater evil. I feel this is personified in our current cultural zeitgeist with the existence of a "morally superior" ideology between the left and the right, liberalism and conservatism, etc., Nonetheless, each "side" is persistently attempting to prove the other wrong whilst losing focus of the conflicts that truly demand action. It is this last part that your video greatly captures. I love how I can perceive your passion for a better world by actually highlighting the issue at hand, which really means solving the intersectional causes leading to this inequality and injustice. I know your video it's mainly discussing and analyzing a protest film and the marketing behind it, but man, I really liked the quality and effort put behind it. Great to hear you got a sponsor! Please keep up the work on your delightful videos :)

This was very interesting, you made a lot of very smart and clever points that I wasn't quite able to follow since I was getting distracted by how still you can sit

I absolutely love your content; especially this longer format. Best video essayist on RU-vid.

God I love the breakdown in these videos, and seeing as I never want to watch that film, I appreciate you watching it and dissecting it for us

Really interesting video. Thank you for this. Looks like I was halfway thru that fundie fridays video on this topic, so I'll finish that now.

Thank you! I'm surrounded by people that almost worship Tim and OUR and have a childish black and white view of the world. Glad to know there are plenty of better informed people out there.

I had a very interesting experience watching this video. The targeted ads were a combination of ai generated gibberish about one secret trick to making money investing, ads for cleaning products that were very long and told a whole story about why somebody made this device while directly claiming it’s strong and American made rather than cheap Chinese products, and weight loss and fitness supplements for the over 50 crowd. Sound of Freedom being in the title is unrelated I’m sure. Great video! I’ll be sharing this around to a few friends

As much as I hate the term virtue signalling, filming a random child in public to show people on TikTok that you care about human trafficking is surely the textbook definition

The problem is that it will always feel and look better to save 5000 abused and tortured children at gunpoint, rather than implement social policies that would save hundreds of thousands of children from ever getting abused and tortured in the first place.

The fucking pause about the release date was actually fucking horrifying

My dad and step mom accused me of being a pedophile because I saw Barbie instead of this movie lmao

Imagine filming a child alone in a PUBLIC BATHROOM & then putting that child's face on the Internet (without their parents' knowledge or consent) all while acknowledging the child is vulnerable & claiming to be woke to child trafficking. The irony is astounding!!

I investigated child abuse, most often sexual abuse, for over a decade. I worked a fair number of trafficking cases. One of the most tiring parts of the job was listening to people perform their morality and outrage when they found out what I did for a living. I found this entire analysis vindicating and cathartic. Thank you, sincerely, for taking such time and care to explore the hollowness of Sound's soul and why our culture is such fertile ground for this delusion.

That trump interview is so funny he sounds like a kid in school that didn’t read the book being put on the spot to talk about it.

It was fun trolling people in social media comment sections by saying, “I liked _The Sound of Freedom_ better when it was called _Taken_ and starred Liam Neeson.” 😅 Good times.

Judging from that pause it wasn't God, it was a stroke

This was one of the most obnoxious eras in recent culture. If you dared to question the sincerity of this movie, you were called a pedophile/human trafficker. And the most ridiculous notion was people going "this film is telling us THE TRUTH and you're too blind to see it!!' as if we didn't know human trafficking was a thing???? That was the worst part of it all. Everyone pretended they had no idea this went on until they saw this "life changing" movie.

I’m from Colombia: Sound of Freedom is a bad depiction of the issue. There has been American agents helping to solve some issues in our country, but in contrast, a huge scandal in the 2000’s was American soldiers doing despicable things to Colombian women and child. Colombia is a land of contrast, it’s up to us to depict ourselves: but stories coming directly from us are rarely listen. A Colombian artist could be listened or seeing and being respected, but then, the imaginary rounds again over narcoculture and war. Then, they used exactly the same marketing tools to Colombian evangelical folks, and we are depicted again as an spoiled tutifruti. It’s sad, TQG was also a media product of 2023 Edited to solve typos

The biggest clickbait of this movie is they loudly promoted and said that it would expose all the elites and dark secrets of celebrities. Im still waiting

Reminds me of a recent stand up special where he says "did anyone else trick themselves into thinking they were getting smarter by following politics when in reality politics were just getting dumber?"

"Disgust doesnt do anything. The only thing disgust succeeds in is in locating yourself within intolerable and unpredictable conditions." Perfect way to summarize performatism. This was absolutely amazing. The effort and passion you put into this really shows. I would eat up any long form videos like this in the future, too.

Imagine how many kids would be saved from trafficking if everyone watched this movie in IMAX

Holy shit, I'd say that someone who says describes pornography like a gateway drug to CP needs watching very closely. That absolutely blows my mind, that someone can not only say that but say it publicly, without any awareness of how bad it sounds.

I remember being in a trans self-help discord channel and one of the transmasc folks there was trafficked to Northern Europe. He was somewhat aware of his situation, but he had been groomed into learned helplessness and it was incredibly hard to explain to him what he has to do next. The whole group chat was gathering information on how to help him and where he'd have to go to be safe. I remember viscerally the moment when I talked to a friend about this, and I had my roommate chime in like "what are you guys talking about, an action movie?" and when I told him this was real, he would barely believe it. Of course, the question was "why is the family not concerned about this person?". Well, he's trans and got kicked out, and his only financial support is the abusive man that kidnapped him. The fact that we, as a society, have fictionalized abduction to a point that it seems almost a fantastical story about Saving The Kids rather than a real thing that happens to predominantly marginalized people, that happens to people that society has decided are not worth looking after, is truly harrowing. And knowing that a trafficked trans guy would probably not "count" to conservatives as a "good victim", makes me feel a whole other way around this topic

Listening to Jordan Peterson describe basic storytelling building blocks like they're some Profound Insight that he discovered is peak comedy. "I've found that when you have a main character facing a problem it makes it easier for audiences to understand that problem" no fucking way Kermit the Fraud

This dude needed GOD to tell him to release his conservative propaganda film on July 4th?

For the record, Tim is being sued by one Kely Johana Suárez Moya for defaming her by having accused her of trafficking children. By her own account, she (a legal adult) accepted an acquaintance's invitation from Tim's team to a party for minors who would be paid to attend and be paid more if they engaged in explicit deeds. She arrived at the party and pretended to be a minor herself so that she could get paid, and she's not the only adult who was doing this at the party. Whether you accept her explanation or not, the fact still stands that Tim actively increased the demand for trafficked children in Columbia with that party stunt by providing explicit monetary incentive. This is why such strategies aren't used. You may get lucky and rescue a few kids, but this method creates a cascade of consequences that leads to more being trafficked.

Maaaaan for a second there I almost felt empathy for Tim considering all he’s seen - until I remembered he has live-streamed rescue missions and offered viewings for like $30,000. He didn’t seem to grasp that this was also…child exploitation.

1:06:45 Amazing how his first response to hearing something that doesn't align with his own personal worldview is "they're just being silly, they don't know what they're talking about"

I can definitely relate to what Tim Ballard is saying re: superimposition of my children onto victims. When I worked as a paramedic, this happened to me, with some dead children. My child's face was superimposed onto theirs, and I hallucinated his voice talking to me, as I performed CPR on these dead children. Unfun for me, though obviously less fun for the parents of the children who had actually died. The wails of the mothers of dead and dying children still echoes in my mind, all these years later. The unimaginable agony in those screams

If you want to watch an actually good film about child trafficking, watch Lilya 4-Ever. It's loosely based on the true story of a girl who was trafficked to Sweden from Lithuania in the late 1990s, being told she was going there for a job as a berry picker. It's an extremely tough watch and doesn't pull many punches, but it portrays the reality of how people and especially how children fall victim to trafficking. Hint: it's nowhere near as simple as Sound of Freedom portrays it.

Imagine if someone made a movie about how murdering is bad, it flopped, no company wanted to make it a movie, and then they claimed that Hollywood supports murdering :)

It’s the movie THEY don’t want you to see. Whoever THEY are they must be incompetent because this movie was readily accessible

This woman is way too level-headed for RU-vid

God can’t stop child trafficking, but he can give you inside tips on when to release your movie. Got it!

BEN SHAPIRO WANTED TO FORCE FEMME A SPORTS TEAM?!?

Saw this blind, didnt even know what it was about, just that my MIL was taking us to see it. Im a CSA survivor. I had to leave after seeing the photos they showed from the pedos stash. I came back and had to leave again at one point for good. My MIL and partner knew my triggers and brought me to see it anyways. Im still upset by that.

LGBT people are about 7 percent of American population, but LGBT youth is 40 percent of homeless youth. Homeless youth is one of the most vulnerable populations for trafficking, but I will bet actual money that Tim and his cohorts would turn a blind eye on these kids.

My favorite fallout of the “Pay it forward campaign” is that because people were buying so many tickets for others that didn’t even want to go theaters were getting booked out but no one was showing up meaning people going to see the movie in nearly empty theaters then creating conspiracies that they were getting bought out by a secret group to prevent people from being able to see it

I remember when _American Sniper_ came out and the right tried to convince everyone that watching it was a patriotic duty. Seeing it all happen again with _Sound of Freedom_ gave me serious deja vu

"...because the kinds of conservatives that produced and enthusiastically consumed this movie are people for whom the word 'freedom' means the right to abandon reality; that you should be allowed to say whatever you want about anything, and when whatever you're talking about becomes too difficult to understand, when it requires action that might be inconvenient for you or doesn't really fit in with the character arc you've got planned for yourself, your responsibility for your own words is over." That is so unbelievably on point. That whole last part of the video really. Add this one to the list of GOAT video essays.

"There are no solutions, there are only trade-offs." The human condition requires an unobtainable catharsis.

I don't wanna bash Americans too much, but I'm 100% sure the reason why this movie did so well is simply because a blonde blue-eyed super agent saved some uncivilized niños Also the movie has the word "Freedom" in its title so that's huge

In short: people get trafficked because they're POOR. So make them not poor.

"A simple world, where reality is exactly what it looks like through their eyes: devoid of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right, and their enemies are silent. They are trying to build a flat Earth." ~Dan Olsen, In Search of a Flat Earth If I could bring a modern invention back in time, it would be a bottom-up view of the universe. Humans are complex things, and we create complex things, so when we look at the complex world around us, we reasonably assume that the complexity probably came about from some other complex thing creating it, and therefore that things are the way they are by design. It's a top down view of the universe. But, it's wrong. Complex things are almost never the result of a designer designing something to be complex. From quantum mechanics to astrophysics to economics or sociology, the world is complex because it's made of trillions of ultra tiny things all doing their own thing, bouncing around and into each other. The way they talk about child trafficking like it's an inhuman monster from outer space reminded me a lot of the recent legislation that screwed up in vetro fertilization. The legislators had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, and they had no interest in learning or understanding it. They don't want to think about the icky gradient between human and non-human where gestating fetuses sit, because it's a scary place where philosophy meets biology. But instead of trying to square their beliefs about life with the messy reality that there is no single point at which a thing can be described as Alive, they just shoved the problem away as hard as they could as quickly as they could. There's no James Bond villain responsible for Human Trafficking, like as a concept. You can't end the drug war by beating up all the drug cartel bosses. Killing Osama Bin Laden, while still a good thing, didn't end all terrorism forever. There is no Devil creating evil where there wasn't any before. By insisting that there is, conservatives can pretend the world is flat and simple enough that they never have to lift a finger to make it any better. That's just the way things are. It is what it is. God will provide. Conservatism, and indeed Christianity, are tools of mass self infantilization, as a means of deferring responsibility. And when you tell them they need to make an effort and do something to actually help, they get extremely uncomfortable, not because they're lazy or apathetic, but because it challenges their entire top down view of the universe. Amazing video.

For me, the start, the ending, and maybe the result of this video essay might be what I love so much about it.

Only 30 minutes in and this blows all the other media critiques I’ve seen of this film out of the water. Good god damn job!

Why do so many Christian media personalities look like they're about to cry?

Holy shit, the unabashed "we boldly let you spend your money on our movie again by buying another ticket for someone" was bonkers

I thought i was having a stroke the length of time harmon took recalling hearing voices ahem i mean spoken to by god

Something I feel is worth mentioning, when it comes to the movie's fans swearing that no celebrity speaks out on child trafficking, is that when conservatives say "how come nobody talks about [topic]", they haven't actually looked to see if that's the case.

This essay is _wayyy_ too smart to hold the attention of the average Sound of Freedom fan for longer than a few minutes.

Should I assume Angel Studios donated the $250 million they made on the movie towards saving children who are trafficked? (lol, that was rhetorical)

I'm not a victim of human trafficking, but I am a victim of the proxy issue of CSA, and I found this video extremely cathartic to watch. The conservative narratives around CSA, why it happens, where and who does it has always been to be a constant reminder that despite performance people put on, they're more concerned with how uncomfortable the reality I actually dealt with makes them than me. They don't care why what happened to me did or what they can do to stop it from happening to others, they care about how upset the idea of it makes them. So man it is everything to just see people willing to talk straight about it. Be pragmatic about what really needs to happen for it to change. Holy shit how little I care at this point how much it upsets people on a personal level--- it needs to start upsetting people on a systemic level for it to stop.

So, i watched this movie since my grandmother gave me the tickets, and i thought it would be interesting for me to watch as someone who was kidnapped and technically human trafficed (she had money for keeping me in the home, but did not pimp me out or anything like that) and i found it a really... strange story. Mostly because it didnt feel real in the slightest. It made me emotional, sure, but i found myself wondering more about what was actually happening to the children. How they got so many, how they survived their day to day lives. But i didnt get that. The kids in this movie are the most innocent naive things that seemingly do nothing, ask for nothing, and have very few actual opinions on what is happening to them other than the fact it makes them sad. But the strange thing is, a story like this is going to be believed way more than a story like mine. My story isn't someone snatching me up in a van. I didnt have that popertially sad look, i didnt even realize that I should be sad about what was happening to me. And i could tell you a hundred different stories about the abuse i suffered, but they wouldnt feel like the stories shown in the movie. Mine are just much quieter, much more feasible than a big bad child stealer. Every time i talk about it i have at least one person say im lying. And i think i know why. Its because law enforcement didnt do anything about it. I didnt have a white savior, or a good guy with a gun. I didnt have a social worker come and take me home. Me, and the three other children that were there, all fell through the cracks. I was just lucky that my mom could afford a private investigatior and go through the long years of legal battle it took to get me back home. My mom had rich parents to take me home. This is all to say, a story like mine is so much harder to fathom than a story the song of freedom tells. Song of freedom is willing to pat you on the back for watching a film, for tweeting about a film, but not for actually doing anything. It awards you for the basic human instinct of outrage at what happens to these children, and the joy that comes from knowing they are okay. And that is an amazing feeling, its a useful feeling. But only if you let that feeling motivate you to actually do something. To actually write a check. To actually reasurch. To actually join an organization, to actually advocate for a world where children like me dont need to be rescued in the first place. No one is actually ready to do that, no one who watched this movie and came away with the idea that all we need to do is send some agents out of the country and it will be fine is actually willing to do that. It speaks volumes to me, that they'd rather imagine a world where human trafficking is an isolated problem, than to actuality look me in the face and understand that the reason i was kidnapped was not because of evil people wanting to evil things. It was as simple as my mom couldnt afford to have me at the time, so she sent me to live with someone who had ulterior motives. And no amount of good guy with a gun will stop that happening to someone else.

I had to wipe my phone and glasses off….because you, my friend, ARE SPITTIN!!!!!

the fact that the failed drama kids of the daily weirdos gets dunked on by their own fans for being woke gives me just enough life to see the light of tomorrow and not alleyoop this mortal coil once and for all (after learning fart of freedom is one of the highest grosing movies of all time, playing in nearly empty movie theaters)

it's insane how they really can't understand that child trafficking should be stopped by minimising the criteria traffickers look for in these children, and that is inherently politcal

So good. An hour and a half+ essay with an actually tight script that doesn't lose focus throughout is impossible to come by. Real academic level shit

The moment where Caviezel goes, "I played Jesus" and just freezes is... really concerning. Because given what I've read about about his time on Person of Interest, there is a non-zero chance he _actually thinks_ he was/is Jesus. Like, the man is does a weird kind of reverse-method acting - he doesn't try to "become" the character he's playing, he just thinks he _is_ his character.

The thing about this movie got me was one, apparently millions of people had no idea this was going on. And two, the same people crying about 'our children' are the same people that throw a fit about migrants trying to escape the kinds of situations that lead to this.

Political scientist here, and your linking to our previous bout with the last revolution in communication (mass media) to our current (social media) was spot on. It's something I constantly worry about, especially as bad actors like authoritarian states, non-state actors (terrorist organizations, global organized crime), and multi-national corporations continue to exploit it to a startlingly effective degree. As the kids say, it's my "Roman empire". The fact that social media is interactive in ways that traditional mass media could never have been only adds more variables to humanity's ultimate calculation. On a more upbeat note, this goes both ways; good actors still exist (excellent video btw), and the body politic is far from flat-lining. And who knows: maybe we'll skip the world war and mass genocide this go around?

Getting struck by lightning twice, while pretending to be jesus, really did a number on Jim.

It’s hilarious that the film’s fans think that they’re shining beacons of morality for taking the stance that child trafficking is bad. Like, being against child trafficking is the default stance for anyone with a shred of decency. You’re not exceptional, you’re normal.

The discourse with this movie was so exhausting

“Because the kinds of conservatives who produced and enthusiastically consumed this movie are people for whom the word ‘freedom’ means the right to abandon reality.” 😤😤😤

Trump’s response when asked about his take on the movie is the funniest thing I’ve ever seen. It’s the same response I would give my teachers when they’d ask me about the assigned reading that I, “definitely read.” Dude was not paying attention in that theatre. Was on his phone the entire time, I guarantee it.

The amount of research that went into this video is extremely commendable. I think this might be one of the best video essays on this app/website. I went to see The Sound of Freedom with my mom when it came out and my problems with the film and controversies surrounding it were wrapped up perfectly in this video. It’s crazy how people started pointing fingers and saying “So you support child trafficking?” if you gave this film and its crew any sort of criticism. Well done!

“We had a bishop this morning, and what do you think he said? "The most beneficent promise made us in the Bible is this, 'The poor ye have always with you.' They were put here in order to keep us charitable." The poor, please observe, being a sort of useful domestic animal.” - Jean Webster, ‘Daddy-Long-Legs’ You know, I hadn’t heard of this movie and came in with no expectations. But seeing just how much those weepy influencers were admiring their own tears, I knew exactly how it would all pan out - and yes, your excellent analysis was exactly what those tears forecast. And they call leftists virtue-signalling.