News with Nuance: Nov. 4, 2022

Your Friday dose of News with Nuance: the week's biggest stories, unpacked + more ..

Welcome to News with Nuance. My plan for this post is, every Friday, I will break down some of the week’s top news stories and put them into context, with special attention to the impact of these stories where I live: Middle America; and also an analysis of these stories with historical, political, and spiritual context. This is the kind of work that breaking news journalists often simply don’t have time to do — and I’m hoping it supplies the needed nuance and context that’s often missing from our news cycle, humanizing the people and places behind the headlines.

I almost missed writing this post this week, as it has been an absolutely nuts past few days. I was scheduled to be at a long-awaited continuing education workshop in North Carolina this week, but after multiple canceled and/or delayed flights, a Lyft ride that ended up lost in the rural woods, and then an oversold retreat center without enough regular rooms when I arrived late, I am back at home — now with a child sick with influenza. So I’m going to keep this one short - and just cover a couple of essential stories. Look next week for a bigger post following Tuesday’s midterm elections. And, solidarity with anyone who has done a few sleepless nights in a row. Really wreaks havoc on the body and brain.

Now, here are the biggest stories of the week - with nuance - plus an update on the week in Christian Nationalism …

The Headline: ‘I was a slave’: Up to 100,000 held captive by Chinese cybercriminals in Cambodia

The Internet has, for a long time now, become an inescapable part of nearly all of our lives. It’s how we find recipes, connect with friends, get directions, find employment, fill out necessary documents. We rely on it in the background of our everyday lives.

Part of that background are the omnipresent scams we see all over the internet. It’s the spoofed email messages claiming you’ve inherited millions. It’s the text messages warning you to secure your accounts immediately. It’s the explicit photos and messages that seem to come out of nowhere.

Even while providing fertile ground for protest movements and connections between all sorts of different people, the Internet has also proved to be a source for organizing of evil. Multiple mass killers have attempted to live-stream their murderous rampages. “Revenge porn” has been a threatening and silencing attack on millions, especially young women or LGBTQ people. Anonymous accounts allow people to post and share hateful content that they’d likely never feel comfortable saying out loud. The Internet enables harassers and abusers and grifters.

Scams are often seen kind of like an annoying and amusing joke for people in the U.S. on the receiving end. Too rarely do we really think about the conditions of those who are sending the scam messages.

This article, though, lays out in horrifying detail the origin of some Internet scams. People sending phishing messages were imprisoned in front of their computers and tortured by mob bosses, the ones who were actually profiting from the scams. Rural and impoverished Cambodians were lured to the worksites with promises of increased pay. Once there, they were not allowed to leave and forced to run scams online all day, every day, being tortured when they did not submit to the bosses’ instructions. Some young workers were told they’d be sold to other gangs.

They told of conditions under which they were physically tortured and forced to do push-ups, while willing scam participants were rewarded with extra food and privileges, sometimes themselves turning to inflict torture on their fellow prisoners. Evidence suggested that the Cambodian and Chinese governments were complicit in allowing these operations to take place without legal oversight or consequences.

Many of the victims entered into these conditions by replying to ads from major American social media companies, like Facebook.

I think part of the tragedy of our world today is that while we are more connected than ever, we are also more vulnerable than ever to the sin of depersonalization. It’s easy to forget that behind countless computer screens exist real people, with challenges, hardships, love, and loss in their own lives.

Instead, money continues to flow through the dehumanization and destruction of these real human lives. Victims recounted that their Chinese mob bosses were wearing luxury brands like Gucci and Louis Vuitton. Our interconnected world means that we are likely contributing to the dehumanization and subjugation of others without even knowing it. But after reading this article, you can’t un-know it anymore.

Photo of Malaysian youths rescued from human traffickers in Cambodia

Photo by Vincent Thian / Associated Press

The Quote: “I’m traumatized. I’m too ashamed to even leave my house,” said Dedek Mulyana, 25, who was tortured with an electric baton and forced to run a scam in which he pretended to be a woman selling pornographic images of herself.

Article by David Pierson, Los Angeles Times

The Headline: CVS and Walgreens announce opioid lawsuit settlements totaling $10 billion

I was glad to hear that major pharmacy chains, who profited handsomely from the opioid epidemic that fueled huge sales of pills across America, were settling lawsuits against them that would give money to communities ravaged by the death and destruction of opioid abuse.

What frustrated me about this story, though, was this little line right in the middle of it:

Neither CVS nor Walgreens is admitting wrongdoing.

After reading several books about the opioid epidemic (Empire of Pain, Dreamland, The Least of Us, among others), and also after seeing the devastating effects of the opioid epidemic among communities, families, and churches I know well - what struck me over and over again was how those who profited from all this suffering were so unwilling to admit culpability.

I keep thinking about that line from The Great Gatsby:

“They were careless people, Tom and Daisy- they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

It’s so easy today for so many to retreat into their money, and let other people clean up the mess they’ve made. It’s understandable that people like the Sacklers and corporations like Walgreens and CVS are hesitant to allow themselves to look in the mirror and acknowledge the damage they’ve done. Throw some money at the problem. But never admit wrongdoing.

For family members who’ve lost loved ones to opioids, though, this kind of convenient forgetfulness is impossible. They’re the ones who carry the guilt and grief of our national trauma.

I kind of wish the courts would stop supporting these kind of settlements: this stipulation over and over again that allows responsible parties to shirk responsibility. It reminds me of the non-disclosure agreements that were forced upon victims of sexual assault and abuse by powerful people or institutions like the Catholic Church, and how that inability to publicly accept responsibility while paying out settlements allowed abuse to fester and continue.

I think this inability to accept responsibility is a stain on American society right now, and it’s allowing wounds and trauma to fester much longer than they otherwise would. This is a problem money alone will not solve.

The Quote: Most of the 500,000 opioid-linked deaths in the U.S. over the last 20 years initially involved prescription drugs. As governments, doctors and companies took steps to make them harder to abuse and obtain, people with opioid-use disorder increasingly switched to heroin, which proved more deadly.

In recent years, opioid deaths have soared to record levels of around 80,000 a year. Most of those deaths involve illicitly produced versions of the powerful lab-made drug fentanyl, which is appearing throughout the U.S. supply of illegal drugs.

Article by Geoff Mulvihill / Associated Press

This Week in Christian Nationalism and Religious Extremism