I’ve got bad news for everyone. There’s no Shidduch Crisis or Molestation Crisis in the Frum world, the only crisis we’re really suffering from is Crisismania. Political Correctness has hit the Frum world in the form of Crisismania.
Crisismania is imported from the secular media’s way of dealing with problems, ratings problems, by taking a limited problem and blowing it up into a crisis and getting ass thumpingly self-righteous with it. Crisismania lets everyone be a victim, play one on TV or “speak out” on behalf of the victims (buy my T-Shirt).
Newsflash. There is no Shidduch Crisis. There were always people who can’t seem to get married or take longer to get married. There will always be people in that boat. It’s not a license to whine endlessly or play the victim. And I’m saying this as a single guy. Not getting married is not a crisis, it’s life. If you’re not happy with your life, change it or change the way you go about doing things. But you’re not a victim or a martyr.
Newsflash. There is no molestation crisis. Pedophiles will always go into teaching because it lets them be around kids and there will always be institutions that will cover up for them. It happens in every religion and time and it will keep right on happening.
Now I’m not saying we shouldn’t try to help individual people. What I’m saying is that the Crisismania has very little to do with helping people, and a whole lot to do with messed up people who want their own bandwagon or bullhorn.
Crisismania doesn’t help anything, it just enables a lot of bad behavior. Whatever good it does fades in the wake of the nuttiness it brings out and the nutty people it enables. If you don’t believe me go look at any Crisismania problemfrom the secular world and tell me that Crisismania made it better, like the child molestation hysteria in the secular world back in the 80’s and then look at whether all that made the problem go away or even reduced it that some Jewish bloggers are busy emulating.
What declaring a Crisis does is get everyone worked up, kickstarts fundraising efforts for organizations created to deal with the problem and then accomplishes jack. Placing a problem in proportion and looking at it realistically can solve it a lot better than screaming and giving self-righteous idiots the chance to strut around and other idiots a chance to play the victim because they’re 23 and not married!!!
Enough already. Stop declaring crisises and work on solutions.