Leaders Matter

Over a month ago, on the night of March 30, Jonathan Hoang disappeared from his house near Seattle. He’d gone upstairs to bed on Sunday evening, but when his mother went to wake him for school on Monday morning, he was gone. There are no known suspects yet. 

Jonathan is autistic, with the outlook and capacity of perhaps an eight-year-old, but he is chronologically 21, making the case harder to pursue. Law enforcement approached it as though it was just another young adult gone on a walkabout. They didn’t understand that Jonathan can’t function at an adult level, or even close. His family says he would not even know his own address. 

Like many autistic children, Jonathan has fixed habits, with which his family is well acquainted. They knew from the beginning that his disappearance was not voluntary. The very quality that makes Jonathan so lovable—his trusting, helpful nature—was likely used to lure him away from his home.

In this 40-day interval of terror for the family, Pope Francis died, FBI Director Kash Patel announced that the entire FBI is engaged in hunting down child predator networks, and a new pope has been chosen. Huge events that will affect billions of people for better or worse run parallel with one little family who only wants one thing: the return of their son. 

The contrast between good and evil grows clearer all the time. Evil expands, predators cover for each other, and the good are so busy with daily obligations that they can only hope that someone, somewhere, has the might and the will to do battle on their behalf. The battlefield will be children. Children are the last thing that will inspire our jaded society to fight, and children are the primary thing the demonic wants.

In this run-up to war, there are gatekeepers. Elected into powerful positions, they can advance their side substantially by subtle means that can be sold to the complicit media as social programs for the disadvantaged. Woe to those powerful. They have everything they want now, but their cries for a drop of cool water when they are in the fires of Hell will be unanswerable from across the great chasm (Luke 16:26).

While we are individual moral agents, each responsible for our own actions, we all create bubbles of influence. By our words and behavior, we wordlessly tell people around us what is tolerable. A person who simply never participates in gossip “tells” those around her that gossip is unwelcome. A man who never cusses causes those around him to be more careful with their words. 

Conversely, those who laugh at crude jokes, dress immodestly, or drink a little too much are sending a wordless signal to those around them that they will allow low levels of behavior without reproach.

For people with influence over others, there’s a multiplier effect. When drag queens were welcomed into the Biden White House and Senate staffers felt empowered to perform deviant sexual acts in the Chamber and film them for social media, when perversions were celebrated not censured, the whole society suffered. Those agitating to make sexual relations with children legal and acceptable came out from the shadows and progressed in removing the stigma from “minor-attracted persons.” Children at the southern border evaporated into sexual slavery networks with a wink and a nod.

It is becoming more and more apparent that members and agencies of the Biden administration allowed, encouraged, assisted, and profited from child sex trafficking. With the backing of the federal government, they could scale up to monstrous proportions, and (almost) no one would dare to ask any questions. (Kudos to Lara Logan, James O’Keefe, HHS whistleblower Tara Lee Rodas, and Elizabeth Yore for their courage and investigative reporting.) Add into this poisonous mix the “Christian” NGOs who put a respectable patina on the whole operation and you have a decent approximation of Hell.  

Pope Francis—who welcomed and fêted notorious pro-abortion politicians and activists, protected known predators, and professed to not know the Church’s position on homosexual activity—created an “atmosphere of permission” (a useful term coined by R.R. Reno in First Things) in the Vatican that mirrored the one in Washington. The Lavender Mafia (predatory by definition) had nothing to fear; and they showed themselves around the world, with rainbow banners in churches and “pride” Masses and smug photo ops with the pope. Whether or not Francis was one of them didn’t matter; he created an atmosphere in which no bad actor feared reprimand. Indeed, bad actors prospered. 

Back here at home, Battleship Trump is now engaged in cleanup after the Biden bacchanal, resetting the barricades that keep wrongdoers at least somewhat nervous about being caught. Opening Alcatraz for the worst of the worst sends a clear signal that the free pass to criminals has been revoked. Last week, the FBI snared over 200 child sex predators, some of them in positions of public trust. Influencers on 𝕏 have been seriously discussing the death penalty.

If the Trump administration can successfully rein in, punish, and hammer down child sex marketers and consumers, then the president can re-meme himself with the papal tiara till kingdom come, as far as I’m concerned. 

And so we come back to Jonathan, who, by all practical measures, is a child. Is it all connected? Is the person holding Jonathan someone emboldened by the atmosphere of permission and freedom from punishment? Is Trump’s team contributing to an atmosphere of justice that will slow down the predators? Will the new pope draw the ancient lines around what is and isn’t morally permissible? Is it all too late?

Leaders matter. By virtue of their visibility, popularity, and bully pulpit, they can make this world substantially safer or infinitely more dangerous. 

The atmosphere of permission created by leaders of the recent past is going to take time to reverse. We can create our own bubbles of decency, though, by minding our own words and actions and fraternally correcting poor behavior around us.

Personally, I have appreciated my obviously “seasoned citizen” appearance because I can say things now that were harder to say when I was younger: “Please take your conversation outside the chapel”; “There’s a leash law in this park”; “Kindly watch your language; there are children present.” If someone calls me an old biddy, or worse, I don’t really care, Margaret, because whatever small thing helps build an atmosphere of accountability helps children in the long run.

The “broken window theory” transformed New York City in the 1990s. It was proposed that visible signs of misbehavior left uncorrected—like graffiti, street trash, and broken windows—lead to an increase in both incidence and gravity of crime; the lack of order itself encouraged more disorder. When the Guiliani team addressed these very symptoms, rectifying minor crimes like stowaways on the subway, New York became one of the safest megacities in America at that time. It was proposed that visible signs of misbehavior left uncorrected—like graffiti, street trash, and broken windows—lead to an increase in both incidence and gravity of crime; the lack of order itself encouraged more disorder.Tweet This

In short, we can throw little bomblets into the atmosphere of permission, helping break it up, while our leaders work on the larger scale, where influence is vastly multiplied. Meanwhile, please pray for Jonathan, his distraught family, and all families who have been hurt by the atmosphere of permission. 

Note: Familiarize yourself with the signs of trafficking, which is literally going on all around us. I stay on high alert when traveling, as trafficking is heavy along the interstate highways, but you can just as easily see someone who needs help in the drugstore. Watch the video 31 Times You Saw a Trafficked Child but Didn’t Know It to learn how to recognize signs of trafficking.