“Crush” videos are a subset of films that involve usually semi-nude women in high heels stepping on live animals until they die and then rubbing the blood and organs on a surface with their feet. They can be found quite easily on the Internet.
To his credit President Trump has passed a bill that bans the production, sale, and distribution of these videos.
“Passing this legislation is a major victory in the effort to stop animal cruelty and make our communities safer,” Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., said earlier this month when the bill, which Toomey sponsored along with Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., passed in the Senate. “Evidence shows that the deranged individuals who harm animals often move on to committing acts of violence against people. It is appropriate that the federal government have strong animal cruelty laws and penalties.”
The bill, introduced in the House by Rep. Ted Deutch, D-Fla., and Rep. Vern Buchanan, R-Fla., is an expansion on the 2010 Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act, which made the creation and distribution of “animal crushing” videos illegal.
The underlying acts, which were not included in the 2010 bill, are part of the PACT Act.
It will make it a federal crime for “any person to intentionally engage in animal crushing if the animals or animal crushing is in, substantially affects, or uses a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce,” according to a fact sheet of the bill. (source)
It is a disgusting practice, and while I cannot criticize the passage of the bill in itself, I do question how effective this is going to be in a practical context and outside of building political support from his enervated based.
Note that the bill does not ban the consumption, possession, or purchase of these videos. It is not going to be treated like child abuse material, which is illegal in its entirety (consumption, creation, distribution, possession, purchase, and sale).
Since most of the websites that feature this material are not based in the US, this law does not apply to them. As such a person could watch, download, and order such videos with no legal consequence. The only time that he might find himself in trouble is if he was caught distributing, and this would likely be through a torrenting service, which is still difficult in most cases to catch. Thus one could download this material and it is not a crime, but one would have to prove intent to distribute, something that is much harder.
Crush videos are largely a foreign phenomenon too. Most of them are produced in either Japan or Brazil, but there are operations that exist in other parts of Latin American or Eastern Europe especially Ukraine or Russia. The reason for this is due to the highly disgusting nature of the actions that are being performed, most people do not want to do them unless they are getting paid decent money, and for desperate people in severe poverty, they do things such as this at times. This is also why there are many videos of bestiality, “scat” (sexual acts involving feces), vomit, and other disgusting things that have been coming out of these areas as well.
The biggest exception to this is Japan, who does this because of deeply-rooted perversions that can be traced back centuries through Japanese society and art. Germany and Sweden are similar but generally not to the same level as that which one finds so commonly in Japanese culture.
Finally, there is no real way of enforcing this outside of monitoring people’s Internet activity in a systematic way. Given how there is a tremendous amount of other kinds of material that is in need of being tracked, the ability to strongly enforce this law is also questionable.
This brings a man back to one assumption, which is that this bill, for all of the good it intends to do, has nothing to do with actually stopping people who do things such as this save for putting on a show in the courts to justify government power and the existence of the current mode of operation. It is about making Trump appear as though he is actually attempting to do something good for society to cover for his many and obvious scandals.
If one wants to take on the disgusting filth that is the “adult” industry and her related branches, one would attempt to see Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition (2003) reversed. This was a major ruling in which the “Free Speech Coalition”, a group that is disproportionately filled with Jewish pornographers, won a lawsuit against former Attorney General John Ashcroft which allowed for the distribution of cartoons and images of babies and children being raped. It was for the “adult” world something close to what the infamous court ruling in 1973 that legalized abortion, Roe v. Wade.
For those who may not have known this, in the US it has been since 2003 completely legal to consume, create, distribute, possess, purchase, and sell child pornography so long as it is animated, and regardless of how realistic the animation looks.
This is a major ruling that needs to go into the funeral pyre of history because it is being used right now by the “Free Speech Coalition”, pornographers, sodomites, and pedophiles as evidence for why the age of consent must be lowered and, as it appears, possibly have it completely abolished.
Let no one say that what Trump did with this law was a bad thing or is of criticism in itself. However, his actions are far from being worthy of much praise, for his actions are largely dealing with a problem whose roots are not in the US and which the law itself will have difficultly finding a person to convict.
If Trump does want to do something, then go after one of the very easy and major issues advancing the continued perversion of the culture. Ashcroft v. FSC is just one of them, for there are so many that he has a virtual luxury of choice.
America is having many issues because while immorality has been promoted in order to justify further means for establishing government control, it also rots a people, and if too much rot happens, a society will fall apart. This is what is happening today. The moral issues, especially on perverse things such as this, need to be dealt with, but because there is so much, it is best to hit the highest value targets. Trump’s choice was not a “high value” target, but only a politically advantageous one, and while a Christian can praise him for doing this, the act is not praise worthy where there are so many targets that would yield better results objectively if taken out.