What if?

I had a dreadful thought. I was mentally replaying a conversation I'd had with a woman yesterday. We were talking about the Rotorua incident. She was very scathing of Bradford's bill asking, as others are, why didn't that stop them? These groups aren't connected to society, I responded. They aren't interested in the law. They aren't interested in gaining society's approval. In fact, the very opposite applies. They enjoy society's disapproval. They provoke it.

Then I stopped in my tracks. What if this horrible business is the very result of not smacking the child. Imagine for a moment a bunch of stoned or drunk people gleefully thumbing their noses at the anti-smacking bill. They didn't say we couldn't hang her on a clothesline eh? They didn't say we couldn't put her in a tumble-dryer eh? They didn't say we couldn't put her outside in the freezing cold or on the roof eh?

Some hold that these types are so disconnected they wouldn't have known about the bill. I very much doubt that because the TV rarely goes off. When they've run out of money for DVDs and X-box games they have to watch something. If I was anywhere near the truth there would at least be some reason behind such senseless acts.