Pond scum

Despite my best efforts.
"Pond Scum"
A reasonably accurate way to describe the human race.

We learn nothing. Despite knowing it for years. Example? Oh I don't know, take the recent UK paedophile revelations. Looks on shelf. Yeah. Lets take the Leveson report and Murdoch as well.

What's going on here then? Well. A bunch of people did illegal, immoral and wrong things. Raping children, hacking a dead girl's voice messages, bribing the police and so on and so on.

This happens because as a species we already know that if 49 people in the room say "Ah just do it. Press the button, give the guy a 240v electric shock and then we can all go home". The chances are the guy on the button, whether he wants to or not, will fry the victim. Peer pressure. We all suffer from it.

Where we excel at being pond scum however is:

We naively assumed that our governments and officials in places of power were somehow better than that. Wrong. Actually, if you give people power and opportunity to cover things up, they'll tend to go with that. Stop wagging your finger at the government. I'll bet you're just as bad. I am. It's just my lies and cover ups tend to extend to covering up for forgotten appointments, instead of forgetting to mention to anyone about this guy raping small children or taking a bribe as a police officer.

Thing is. The government and the police get the chance to cover up *really big things!* for years and years and years. Better yet, they can get fairly wealthy at the same time. It's win win.

The other factor in our pond scum skill is:

We have no culture at all for dealing with it. There is no incentive for anyone to break rank and reveal wrong that they've been a part of. First, they'll get victimised by everyone else that's still in on the cover up. But being a brilliant bunch, the general public, despite being better off for the knowledge will lynch them as well. Maybe 2% of the population will be smart enough to go "Hey thanks! You're a bit of an asshole for all that, but at least you did the right thing in the end".

Leveson is pond scum gold. Corruption upon corruption, with only the corrupt investigating the corrupt, to find that they don't need to change anything because that would annoy the corrupt people that started the need for Leveson in the first place.

Paedophile cover up. Same deal. Huge public swell in demand for enquiries, some credible queries and evidence of very notable public figures being involved. And what do we get? Lord McFuckingAlpine. Sorry. Lord McAlpine (fucking), in my opinion deliberately trying to stifle public debate about allegations. To my knowledge, not one single case of libel has been heard or proved. Not one. NOTHING. McAlpine is 100% bluff and bullshit and the only reason that I can see for that is HE IS PROTECTING KNOWN PAEDOPHILES. They might be live, they might be dead, I don't know. But that appears to be his aim as determined from his own actions. Not one thought of "Maybe we should do the right thing here". Just pure denial, concealment and cover up.

Pond scum.
We excel at it.