NoneOfUrBusiness

No, I've just thought about the trajectory America is on for more than five seconds, so I put the "did the right thing" bar higher than voting blue. The self-defeating stupidity and willful ignorance of most of the "good" half of the American political spectrum leaves very little room for sympathy. For the exact same reason that MAGA thinking everything they don't like is a liberal hoax isn't an excuse for their stupidity, the liberal center thinking everything they don't like is a Russian conspiracy isn't an excuse for their stupidity. I mean hell, did you see how people here were talking about Uncommitted in 2024? That's not "doing the right thing;" that's being a useful idiot, and there's not much reason to distinguish between blue useful idiots and red useful idiots. I do feel bad for the non-idiots, but the past year and a half have proven that that demographic is distressingly small.

There's one critical difference between these two things: Your vote affects the whole country, not only yourself. Someone who decides to use that power based on vibes and willful ignorance while there's no shortage of people telling them the truth can't later claim innocence; we as people have a duty to at least try to be informed on the consequences our actions have on other people. MAGAs would deserve some sympathy if their stupidity only affected themselves, but there's certainly no party affiliation filter to being thrown in Alligator Alcatraz.

I'm not sure how much, if any, this applies to Brexit, but Trump 2 was also the result of the inaction, complacency and outright complicity of plenty of people who "did the right thing." This goes way beyond the fascists, so I'm still pretty comfortable saying Americans did this to themselves.

Australia sells weapon parts to the Israeli government some irreplaceable, so at the very least stopping that.

Many people do avoid knowingly buying products made with slave labor. Buying products from a company does encourage them to continue their practices.

Yes, many do, but many don't. My point isn't that it's okay because many people do it, but that we accept the same sin when we do it, but when a certain group of people does it it's suddenly the end of the world. Just putting things into perspective.

Pedophilia is a symptom of a disorder that needs treatment, but if your morals include "Children should not be sexually abused," enjoying pictures of it would be wrong under that moral framework.

That would imply that doing bad things in video games or watching bad things happen in movies is wrong. It doesn't follow logically.

Some people compulsively lie and steal and as well, it doesn't make those actions any less wrong. A reason isn't an excuse.

If someone can find a safe outlet for their compulsive lying or stealing without lying to or stealing from people, I'm going to actively encourage that for the same reason.

Looking at them isn't helping anyone become any less of a pedophile

Is there something such as becoming less of a pedophile? This is one area where research is necessary before statements can be made either way, but I find it hard to believe that out of all sexual preferences pedophilia would be the one you can abstain out of existence.

and may lead to seeking out more extreme and realistic images in the future.

It might, or it might be the one thing they can do to keep their urges under control. This is going to come down to individual difference, and since there's basically no research on the subject we're forced to resort to blind speculation, and while I get your caution given the stakes, I want to note that the stakes are high either way. If you're right, then virtual child porn is a gateway drug to child rape and should be treated similarly, but if you're wrong then you're denying sick people a way of protecting children from themselves. There's no side of caution to err on here.

That's very knowingly incentivizing the people who post such things to do it more.

That's exactly the point of the comparison. Drawings and AI images don't harm anyone, so frankly they're non-issues. And if anyone wants to disagree, please explain why they're issues. CP encourages child abusers to abuse more children, just as buying chocolate with slave labor cocoa encourages slavers to enslave more children.

Not like unknowingly buying clothes that were made with slave labor at all.

I think many people know that their chocolate, clothes and almost everything is made with slave labor. You certainly seem to, so pretty much any bar of chocolate (or anything with chocolate in it) you buy is knowingly supporting child slavery. The point being: Watching child porn is certainly bad for the reasons you stated, but it's also not the end of the world. It's not like she was out there raping kids. This is a place the OP's daughter can turn back from, so the focus should be on doing that and getting her life back on track. OP can live with this thing without diddling kids and without living in her mother's basement for the rest of her life, so the doom and gloom of the OP's post struck me as immensely counterproductive.

Okay here's the thing: Say something of substance or shut the fuck up. You managed to write so many words yet say fucking nothing. See? I can swear too. Now actually make a fucking point goddamnit.

Suggesting that pedophiles are on the same moral level of buying fucking clothing is beyond fucked.

I'm sorry that you have trouble accepting that slavery is bad.

It founds the Bolshevik Party and starts to recruit enemy pieces.

but now we have a few users saying pedophiles are harmless...

Pedophiles aren't harmless by default, but they can be harmless with proper support from their loved ones, just like with any other mental illness. Do you want to stop children from being raped or do you want to virtue signal about being real upset when people who have no support community give in to their darkest desires and rape kids? Tough on crime nonsense doesn't work for anything else, why the hell would it work when the crime is diddling kids?

That aside, the problem with child porn is that it supports or encourages the abuse of kids. How is that any different to supporting child slavery by buying chocolate farmed on slave plantations? If you have a well-thought out point I'd be glad to hear it, otherwise your blind moral outrage is not helping anyone.

OP's intention is to let Europe and Western democracies look bad.

Uh... again, your Europe and Western democracies are literally funding a genocide. You're Israel's biggest trade partner, still have a preferential trade agreement with them after almost two years of genocide and you think you don't already look bad? And that's before we even get into all the other crimes against humanity Europe has assisted or quietly observed in the past few decades.

I'm pretty sure I already addressed that.