“Let’s say you wanted to control a country… Let’s say you wanted to control how people think … like a god would. In that case, you need to take charge of society’s taboos.”
“Before recently, it was taboo in this country to attack someone on the basis of their race … that made sense … but apparently we no longer believe it. Punishing people is now mandatory … as long as their skin color is white.”
“Adultery was considered disqualifying for office … [for example,] Clinton was very nearly derailed over his relationship with Jennifer Flowers. He went to elaborate lengths [to cover for it] … because he had no choice… [But] by 2008, it was obvious to anybody who was paying attention that Barack Obama had a strange and highly-creepy personal life, yet nobody asked him about it… It’s Barack Obama’s business, not yours.”
“One by one, with increasing speed, our old taboos have been struck down. Those that remain have lost their moral force. Stealing, flaunting your wealth, striking women, smoking marijuana on the street, shameless public hypocrisy, taking other people’s money for not working. All of these things used to be considered unacceptable in America; not anymore.”
“So it probably shouldn’t surprise us that the greatest taboo of all is teetering on the edge of acceptability: child molestation. A generation ago, TALKING to someone else’s children about sex was widely considered grounds for a thrashing. Touching them sexually was effectively a death penalty offense. When [child rapist] Jeffrey Dahlmer was bludgeoned to death in the bathroom of a Wisconsin prison in 1994, the Milwaukee district attorney had to caution the public not to turn Dahlmer’s killer into a folk hero.”