As of 2025, 15 states do not arrest and prosecute children for
prostitution, while seven states allow a minor to be arrested but not
prosecuted for this charge, according to my unpublished research. As a
result, sexually exploited minors can be criminalized in 35 states for their maltreatment because they can be charged or prosecuted for prostitution.
These laws determine how courts identify commercially sexually exploited minors, as victims or criminals.
In a very real way, the three shifts identified in the essay are really
just different aspects of a single, enormously consequential change in
human society: the ability to curate our preferred realities. Americans
no longer have a common understanding of our physical or social
environment. The ability to choose our “news”–to seek out “authorities”
who will confirm our biases, to “cherry pick” from an infinite supply of
facts, half-facts and outright propaganda–enable Trump and his
administration to lie repeatedly, knowing that a substantial portion of
the population will willingly accept and parrot the disinformation.
So, you people are as nuts as I was when I was in the deepest throes of despondency? But, at least, I only meant to harm myself.
I have been sick - if you have been following, you may have wondered about the slacking of my posts.
When I did have the energy to get my writing done, I checked out some new literary magazines and I do that by sampling the works onlines.
One was Litro with Illinois by Desmond Fuller - a short story with emotional impact.
Chelsea Lebron's The Neck reminded me that Americans have different folk tales, and mad eme feel the weight of this one from Puerto Rico by way of New Jersey.
I have the halftime show on my Watch Later list on YouTube. What I have encountered, so far of the reaction appalls me. But should we expect anything less than inane blather from our President?
I know that Donald Trump is depraved and venomous, irredeemably evil
and disgustingly cruel. He is unworthy of his office, and a blight on
decency, but I worry that millions of our children are being marinated
in his sins.
It is grotesque and shameful.
Yet, even the
racism was outbid by the sick reality that Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine
Maxwell’s close friend, who is mentioned more than 38,000 times in the
child rape files dared to suggest that children were endangered by a
musical performance in Spanish.
Anyway, last weekend’s sports may not have been super thrilling, but the culture war aspects were entertaining. Bad Bunny’s Spanish-language halftime show led Donald Trump to denounce him. And when some of the American Olympians said a few words distinguishing their love of their country from support for the Trump administration, MAGA-types attacked them (more on this below). Samuel Johnson, call your office: Patriotism has become the first refuge of scoundrels.
The president of the United States is That Guy
– except instead of getting beaten up by a bunch of small kids who he
tried to fight, Donald Trump is getting his ass handed to him by the
very culture wars he so confidently started. And last night’s big game
underscored precisely why.
Trump didn’t show up at Super Bowl LX in California, in part because his White House had determined that if he did, he would get booed so very lustily on live TV, in front of tens of millions of viewers. But his flailing, increasingly unpopular
presidency still managed to loom large over Sunday’s events. The two
main musical acts – Bad Bunny and Green Day – are both avowedly against
Trump and his ethnic-cleansing campaigns. Green Day performed “American Idiot,” which they routinely play to protest Trump’s “MAGA agenda.”
Puerto Rican megastar Bad Bunny’s halftime show was a cinematic,
Spanish-language celebration of ethnic and cultural diversity in
America. During the show, he prominently displayed the message, “The only thing more powerful than hate is love,” which is almost verbatim what he said at his recent Grammys “ICE out” speech.
If
anyone wants to argue Bad Bunny avoided partisan politics during the
Super Bowl, he sort of did – on paper, with the thinnest veneer of
plausible deniability. His message couldn’t have been clearer, and it
joyfully spat in the face of what Donald Trump, JD Vance, Stephen
Miller, and the rest of the gang running the federal government stand
for. But if the NFL wants to pretend its halftime show didn’t have an inherently anti-Trump message to it, the Trump administration is already showing it’s not willing to give them a pass.
The only thing Kid Rock ever
did was steal samples of Sweet Home Alabama and Werewolves of London and
throw some lyrics on top. I saw the video, he’s not even trying to hide
the lip sync.
Bad
Bunny is arguably the biggest pop star in the world right now. His music
didn’t bother me- then again I’ve been immersed in Portuguese and
Latino culture for three decades now.
Also,
portrays his stage character as gender fluid, and they really hate
that. Of course, most magats don’t get that Puerto Ricans are American
citizens.
BTW- a number of country artists backed out of that debacle.
And this was my reply:
Gender fluidity? Haven't we lived through that?
So what if you don't know the words - can you dance to it?
For Donald J. Trump, and the rest of MAGA, a concise explanation of American music:
All in-person sessions will be held in downtown Muncie and last approximately 60 minutes.
Tuesday, February 10
12:00–1:00 p.m.
5:30–6:30 p.m.
7:30–8:30 p.m.
Wednesday, February 11
12:00–1:00 p.m.
5:30–6:30 p.m.
7:30–8:30 p.m.
Online Focus Groups
Wednesday, February 18
6:00–7:00 p.m.
8:00–9:00 p.m.
Community members can express interest in participating by completing the focus group interest form at https://form.jotform.com/260225399669066. More details about session locations and registration will be shared with participants upon sign-up.
I do like either/or situations—they strike me as showing a lack of imagination—but to me, you are either antifa or you are not. I am on the antifa side.
Therefore, I knew when I found Not A Pipe Publishing, I knew I had to feature them here. They are a book publisher, not a magazine publisher.
Not a Pipe Publishing is a small, independent publishing company founded
in 2013 in (fittingly) Independence, Oregon. Working with groups like
the Community of Literary Magazines and Presses, the Society of
Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, Willamette Writers, the Oregon
Poetry Association, Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association, Literary
Arts, the Alliance of Independent Authors, and Project GirlSpire, Not a
Pipe Publishing is committed to supporting fine literature in our
region, across the country, and around the world. Focusing on high
quality poetry and genre fiction for young adult and adult audiences,
Not a Pipe Publishing seeks to both entertain and enlighten readers by
bringing diverse voices to the market, engaging in the struggle for
human rights, and giving voice to deeper truths best expressed through
fiction and poetry.
The Lord's Prayer says we are to forgive the trespasses/debts of others. What has troubled me for the past few years is not forgiveness, but if forgiveness means I must let a person harmful to me back into my life after forgiving them.
I often remind people that forgiveness does not have to mean a
reconciliation. At its core, forgiveness is internal: a way of laying
down ill will and our emotional burden, so we can heal. It should be
seen as a separate process from reconciliation, and deciding whether to
renegotiate a relationship.
***
Forgiveness is also confusing, thanks to the way it is typically conflated with reconciliation.
Forgiveness researchers tie reconciliation to “interpersonal
forgiveness,” in which the relationship is renegotiated or even healed.
However, at times, reconciliation should not occur – perhaps due to a
toxic or unsafe relationship. Other times, it simply cannot occur, such
as when the offender has died, or is a stranger.
With this in mind, I offer four steps to evaluate where you are on your forgiveness journey. A simple tool I developed, the Forgiveness Reconciliation Inventory, looks at each of these steps in more depth.
Talk to someone. You can talk to a friend, mentor, counselor,
grandma – someone you trust. Talking makes the unmentionable
mentionable. It can reduce pain and help you gain perspective on the
person or event that left you hurt.
Examine if reconciliation is beneficial. Sometimes there are
benefits to reconciliation. Broken relationships can be healed, and even
strengthened. This is especially more likely when the offender
expresses remorse and changes behavior – something the victim has no
control over.
In some cases, however, there are no benefits, or the benefits
are outweighed by the offender’s lack of remorse and change. In this
case, you might have to come to terms with processing an emotional – or
even tangible – debt that will not be repaid.
Consider your feelings toward the offender, the benefits and
consequences of reconciliation, and whether they’ve shown any remorse
and change. If you want to forgive them, determine whether it will be
interpersonal – talking to them and trying to renegotiate the
relationship – or intrapersonal, in which you reconcile your feelings
and expectations within yourself.
Either way, forgiveness comes when we relinquish feelings of ill will toward another.
Okay, I see it is okay to refuse any ill will on my part towards another without inviting them over for dinner.
When systems strain and stories harden, we’re told, quietly and
repeatedly, that there are fewer options now. Fewer paths. Less room to
experiment. Less permission to change our minds. Creativity is reframed
as indulgent, impractical, or dangerous at exactly the moment it becomes
most necessary.
This is why we can’t think of creativity as a luxury. It’s a necessity. It is a survival skill.
Creativity
is how humans adapt when the old maps stop working. It’s how we test
alternatives, imagine exits, and keep meaning intact when familiar
structures fail. Without it, we don’t just lose art. We lose
flexibility. We lose ourselves.
Reclaiming our reality begins by
rewriting over some of the most corrosive rhetoric we’re fed as
creators… especially the idea that this work isn’t “real,” that it can’t
sustain us, that it should be done only on the margins of a life that
matters.
The truth is simpler and more dangerous: when we are creating, we are living. The return on that investment isn’t abstract. It’s survival.
We are all creators, and creativity is fueled by curiosity
***
When we reclaim our own reality, we help keep reality itself
flexible. We keep imagination alive as a shared resource, not a private
indulgence. Creativity is not something we do after we survive. It is how we survive.
Once
we see that clearly, it becomes impossible to pretend this is a solo
endeavor. Survival never is. Creativity doesn’t just help us navigate
what’s ahead. It creates pathways others can follow.
