It's On Us!

Last night at the Grammys Obama decided to announce the launch of a new campaign against domestic and sexual violence. Well, there's an idea. This is a very pervasive problem in our society. So what's the plan?? 
 The strategy here seems to be a long term shift in cultural values, designed to bring about a society where that kind of violence is "not tolerated" (drones are still ok though) To achieve this the president enlisted the help of the country's most popular performers. 
The idea here is if popular entertainers spend long enough telling us this is bad eventually we'll get the message and phase this out of our society. In the meantime, you can take an online pledge. Yep, take the pledge, not to be a violent womanizer.
 How many future rapists do you think signed up? Well, if he reached MTVs target demographic probably quite a few. Because where are rapists congregating these days? In our universities, it turns out, but who knows maybe Katie Perry's seal of approval on this message will change the mind of a lot of drunk, overly aggressive, insecure, college males. 
What about domestic violence though, you know the wife beaters? Some counties in the United States are so bankrupt they no longer prosecute these cases due to lack of funding. Are we going appropriate funds for this? Of course not all that money has been spent on the pentagon and given to Wall Street. As soon as the president said we're celebrating "artists whose message and music shape our culture" we should have known some bullshit was about to follow. If these so-called culture shapers are wielding their influence on the culture then how come there has been a consistent uptick in rape and domestic violence among the MTV demo? 
What Obama did here was unbelievably crass, but also rather clever. He's a politician, theoretically a very powerful one so wouldn't it make more sense to put forward some kind of policy or legislation to solve a problem? No, because this is simply a problem that is not solvable by any social media campaign or the office of the president. Hey, though he told us its bad we were told to knock it off so if it continues it's on us right? Never mind the continuation of policies that have bankrupted whole cities, never mind the culture of violence he is helping to cultivate with endless wars.
 This is a campaign where there are no results and there is no measure of accountability for its success or failure. We can try harsher punishments for these crimes, and I would be ok with that. After all justice is something that is delivered in one form or another after an infraction has occurred to it is really closer to revenge, and revenge for something like rape is quite ok in my book. I'm sure things like "education" and "prevention" will take a back seat to punishment once the prison system in places where domestic violence is most pervasive, poor communities is privatized then it will present a nice business opportunity to political donors.