The news that a false police report was filed targeting the children of Pete Buttigieg is a chilling portent. It speaks not merely to the decline of public discourse but to the rise of a new, digital barbarism where the most vulnerable are weaponised for political sport. The United Kingdom’s call for global child safety protocols is a welcome, if belated, gesture.
Yet one must ask: are we not merely applying a bandage to a gangrenous wound? We live in an era of intellectual decadence, where the mob’s appetite for destruction has been given unprecedented reach through social media. The Victorian era at least had a veneer of civility; today, the mask has slipped entirely.
This incident is a symptom of a deeper rot: the loss of shared moral boundaries and the triumph of tribal savagery. Until we confront that rot, no protocol will save us from ourselves.
