Know what I see? All you people are just
way too hung up on trying to divine other people's motives and thoughts.
For some people, the help for troubled and troubling parents industry
must be motivated primarily by money or they're.... what, harmless? Same charges keep flying against everyone from the hopeful book authors, documentarians, movie producers and journalists, as well as anyone who someone else wants to smear.
Well, before I get busted with the goods and drawn and quartered, I think I'll just confess to my own crimes and save you the trouble. I'd love to make lots and lots of money! Piles of it, in fact, big enough for my whole family to gleefully roll in before investing it in the local real estate market. Most of what I do either plays into my diabolical plan to prosper financially or has to fit in around the edges somewhere. If you think that makes me a bad, evil and untrustworty person, shoot me now. I'm not looking for help or therapy or reform for my "problem".
Everybody here has multiple motivations for doing everything we do. The media want to sell stories, win acclaim and, hopefully, contribute in a meaningful way to the public dialog. The lawyers on all sides want to get filthy rich, become celebrities and, hopefully, make some contribution to their clients' benefit as well as case law.
The movie makers want to tell a compelling story. The factual details are simply not at issue, those are only important to documentarians. The story tellers want to tell a story that grabs people by the heart and draws a strong emotional response to the facts on which their fictional story is based. That's what they do. God bless them, too. Roots turned out to be entirely fabricated and plagerized. Does that take anything at all from the plight of African slaves in the New World economy? I just don't see how.
Carey, it is entirely unreasonable for you or anyone to stomp your foot and insist that everyone see everything just exactly the way you see it. Not only is it never going to come down that way, it wouldn't even be desireable if it did. Unless you're omniscient, you don't understand all viewpoints. Have just a little faith in the truth and let all the different perspectives compete on a level playing field.
Would the teen gulag industry be just okee dokee with all of ya'll if their intentions were pure? Well guess what, a good many of these people are beyond sincere and dedicated. They're religious zealots who would lay down their own lives and the lives of their children for their cause. That's not a big secret, either. Just press any of the dedicated parents to justify the proven abuse and most of them will state it outright that, because the kid was smoking pot, having sex, pissing off cops, skipping school or whatever and, therefore they would have been dead anyway.
They truely believe they're acting to save their kids' very lives and they will do anything, pay all they have and borrow more to that end. Does that make it alright with you? It doesn't wash with me. Not a bit.
To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of people always possess arms, and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them...
-- Richard Henry Lee, 1787