In the Arms of Moloch

Forget boiling the frog slowly to death as the water temperature rises.
We’ve taken a blow torch, held it the leaking gas tank inside Moloch and placed our children on top.

Ancient followers of the god Moloch would lay their children in the arms of the idol in hopes he would ignore what they were doing wrong. They didn’t want to give up whatever it was that made Moloch mad. It was easier to just sacrifice the kiddies and bang the drums loudly to cover the sounds of their screams.

We sacrifice our children in many arms: Abortion, child abuse, pedophilia, gangs-instead-of-parents. But a new, overpowering stench is filling our society. It’s acrid and caustic and burns the eyes. Sex–not the lovely, exciting, blessed gift from God, but smutty, grimy, leering sex–has become the heart and soul of, if nothing else, our entertainment culture. We aren’t the first culture or first millennium that openly flaunts crassness. But it still stinks like burning flesh.

Our consciences, blunted and dull and smothered as they are, still convict us. We’re doing something wrong, right? But we can’t give up our contaminated delights. No. Out of the question. We love our dirty comedians and their grubby jokes and the constant barrage of cheap and easy and no-strings-attached copulation and excusable adultery that fill stage, screen and TV.

What to do, what to do.
Say, let’s corrupt our little ones! Put them in TV shows and movies and commercials that feature implicit and even explicit sexual situations. Have little girls perform dance moves that only a few years ago would have been performed around a pole in a ‘gentleman’s’ club, and wearing costumes that would make a pro blush.

Books for children are only slightly sanitized versions of the filth adults are reading. Singers who were teeny bop idols just a minute ago are now singing soft porn and their little fans sing right along. The ‘True Love Waits’ movement is mocked and children still struggling to figure out what a hormone is are told that condoms are as vital a part of the growing years as acne cream.

Maybe if we can make our children just as filthy as we are, Moloch won’t notice the blackened soot polluting us. We kill their pure joy, substitute sly titillation and then bang our drums loudly so we can’t hear the hissing death gurgle of innocence.