This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Given that nobody was brave enough to submit a top level comment, I figured I would start off the games this week.
I'd like to talk about the Epstein files, and general pedophilic corruption amongst the world's elite. I wasn't that surprised that Trump didn't end up releasing the full document, given his history of promising things will be declassified (like the JFK files) and then failing to deliver. (I still want to see those JFK files dangit.)
I have to admit though, I have trouble understanding exactly how this conspiracy works. I would imagine if there were a genuine sort of sex cult with underaged teenagers, demon worship, etc going on amongst the world's elite, we would have at least some hard evidence, some video footage, or some audio recording to point at, no? Common wisdom about conspiracies in rationalist circles is that it's too difficult to cover up a leak, especially over decades and with thousands of people. When the stakes get this high I would imagine it's even harder.
Then again, if the files aren't all that bad, why the heck aren't the files released? Why hasn't anything changed after the investigations? I've always been skeptical of the 'kookier' conspiracy theories about Freemason Illuminati cults ruling the world, but I have to admit after this, the UFO kerfuffle in Congress, and just general seemingly bonkers decisions about classified info, I am quite confused as to what a reasonable explanation is.
Anyway, what are your thoughts Mottizens?
My intuition has always been that the Epstein scheme was far less elaborate than is often claimed online for several reasons.
The most incriminating quote is the alleged suggestion by Acosta that Epstein “belonged to intelligence”, meaning the CIA or some allied intelligence agency doing business with the CIA (implicitly Mossad). But is that actually the case? There are countless powerful or semi-influential figures who exist in the gray area where they sell intelligence or have a business relationship with the agencies without their operation being “an intelligence operation”. My own interpretation of that quote is that it meant Epstein was powerful enough that someone brought his name up with someone senior enough to hint that the investigation should be light-touch. That might be because he was an asset, or it might be because Epstein had collaborated with intelligence on occasion or knew powerful people, which we know he did.
All the evidence we have suggests that the scheme was primarily for Epstein’s own sexual gratification. He had a penchant for schoolgirls going back to at least his time teaching at Dalton. All of the victims were primarily victimized by him. An industrial-level scheme built around selective extortion of super rich men to whom Epstein pimped out his child prostitutes might see a dealer dabble (as most pimps do) in his own product, but they’re never the primary consumer. No drug dealer consumes the majority of their own supply.
Maxwell’s Mossad connections are overstated. Maxwell was a rich half-Jewish British girl (her mother was a Huguenot Protestant) and dilettante whose father bought her into Oxford and who had by all accounts little ambition. Her father, as a publisher, con artist and Labour MP, used his connections to expedite arms deliveries to Israel during the critical period in the Cold War where it transferred its primary allegiance during from the Soviets to the West. This made him a hero among some in that generation at Mossad, but a purported connection with his daughter’s on-again-off-again boyfriend’s involvement in a sex-trafficking scandal thirty years later is relatively spurious; there is no good evidence Maxwell senior ever met Epstein. Epstein himself was born to an American Jewish family with zero Israeli connections whose own charitable instincts were much less Israel-centric than peers of his generation. If the Mossad was organizing a sex trafficking scheme to target American billionaires from the ground up, why not pick a substantially more loyal and equally well connected rich person?
You don’t need to blackmail rich American Jews into supporting Israel. This, to me, is the single most obvious argument against the entire alleged scheme as a Mossad project. The absolute majority of the important alleged co-accused were Jewish. For every Clinton (who was post-office at the critical time), Trump (random real estate developer at that time) and Prince Andrew (powerless) were at least as many Blacks, Dubins, Dershowitzes and so on, if not many more. Wexner himself (the source of pretty much all Epstein’s wealth) was and is a Jew and a Zionist. If you’re Mossad, you really don’t need to blackmail these people with videos of them fucking 16 year olds to get them to support Israel; they’ll do it for free. The whole point of blackmailing someone is to get them to do something they don’t want to do.
Epstein killing himself doesn’t mean anything. Many people would kill themselves in a similar position. That the prison was supposed to prevent suicide doesn’t change anything either; many people kill themselves while on suicide watch; he may well have paid his lawyers to smuggle something in. He was going to jail forever, had lost everything, would be in solitary confinement for the rest of his life (and/or get stabbed like Chauvin) and was never going to touch a woman ever again. Why wouldn’t he kill himself?
The fascinating thing about Epstein isn’t his fall, it’s his rise. This is the curiosity, and it’s something that will always fascinate those who are interested in this story. He was a real life Gatsby, he truly did come out of nowhere, he parlayed seducing a student into getting a job with her father on a trading desk, parlayed that into doing business in London at the height of the first Arab oil boom with Khashoggi, parlayed that into ripping investors off in a Ponzi scheme that he escaped by tattling on everyone else, then seduced a closeted billionaire clothing tycoon into letting him manage his money, skimming off hundreds of millions plus a mansion on the upper east side and rinsing him for the best part of a billion dollars. Then he set out to become a socialite and a friend to the super rich, indulged his philia for teenage girls by funding a couple of seedier modeling agencies, and merged the two in a wide-ranging pimping operation with his brother that nevertheless had him at the center, because even the richest men in the world will be friends with you to fuck hot teenagers. Did he do a little business with intelligence on the side, when he had something to trade for his continued liberty? I’m sure of it. But that’s not the heart of the story, which is one man’s almost unimaginable audacity and determination to gain wealth and power by any means necessary.
Other arguments are valid, but I'm not sure if this is a particularly good argument on its own. Sure, rich Jewish Americans (and a lot of other Americans besides) will revert to supporting Israel even without blackmail, but there's levels of support; someone who will offer Israel basic support might still balk at giving considerable proportions of their property, offering support in any and all cases including Israel committing a genocide (exceeding current actions at Gaza) or nuking something, committing potentially criminal acts etc.
Also, someone being powerless or low-powered now does not mean they'll be so in the future, at the alleged time of the acts Trump had already expressed interest in presidency, Bill Clinton was a very potential first husband of a future president, and Prince Andrew was a plane crash away from the throne. If you WERE an intelligence agency amassing a blackmail file, of course you'd benefit from a wide trawl among the elite class in general.
None of them gave the majority of their property to Israel, Mossad is broadly aligned with less extreme factions in the Knesset (certainly compared to the most extremist religious zionists), and if anything the kind of existential threat that would prompt Israel to use nukes would supercharge Jewish-American support for it in financial and political terms. Lastly, blackmailing your biggest supporters is also liable to backfire when it comes to their support, word still travels, and Mossad has a general and only occasionally and carefully violated policy of not targeting Jews to preserve broad Jewish support for Israel, and even when it does usually only committed anti-Zionist activists, not people who mostly support them.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link