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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 14, 2025

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New poll on Trump and Epstein:

Republicans are split with 40 percent approving of the way the Trump administration is handling the Jeffrey Epstein files, 36 percent disapproving and 24 percent not offering an opinion.

This, along with Operation Warp Speed, is the only time they are willing to break with Trump. The heart and soul of the thing seems to be conspiracy beliefs.

Trump said:

“He’s dead for a long time. He was never a big factor in terms of life. I don’t understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody," Trump told reporters after being asked about frustration from his supporters over handling of the case.

"It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring, and I don't understand why it keeps going. I think really only pretty bad people, including fake news, want to keep something like that going. But credible information? Let them give it — anything that's credible, I would say, let them have it," Trump added.

Maybe the reason Trump doesn't understand why it keeps going is because he doesn't have an inferiority complex about class that drives him into fantasy about elite pedophile rings.

  • -20

Or maybe the inferior people just want to know what the frick is going on up there and is there any chance anybody there is listening and any consequences are going to happen even for the most vilest shit imaginable. And Trump isn't very interested in it because he's already up there, and figuring out what was going on when he wasn't is much less interesting than using the time he is for whatever he wants to. You can call it "inferiority complex" but there was a time when it was called "representative democracy". A long time ago, in a place far, far away... Of course, a lot of people - it looks like including you - think that only some people deserve to be represented, smart, reasonable, decent people that agree with you. And all those other people certainly shouldn't get anywhere near it. They are too dumb and wrong for that.

any consequences are going to happen even for the most vilest shit imaginable

People will not be punished for imaginary crimes.

  • -17

First of all, people are punished for imaginary crimes all the frickin time. Starting with the sitting president, who has been punished (or there was an attempt to punish him) for imaginary crimes at least half-dozen times, maybe more. And downstream from that, down to declaring parents who want to know not even what happens in the upper regions of the system, but in their own local school - domestic terrorists, and making a task force to find some imaginary crimes they can be prosecuted for. This is part of the deal too - while the patricians virtually never get prosecuted for anything - unless they cross another, more important, patrician - the plebeians are getting prosecuted left and right for utter bullshit.

But second of all, the crimes of Epstein are not "imaginary". He was known as a convicted criminal since 2008, and the exact nature of his conviction was also known since then. Moreover, the materials of his and Maxwell criminal cases strongly suggest that his operation was not uniquely tailored to satisfy one single person, but was wider. And also common sense suggests that at least some people who associated with known criminal who did not exactly hide his proclivities used his criminal services. One can not claim, obviously, just having any business with Epstein means they were part of the criminal business too, but at least it is plausible that there is more than one person that consumed those services. And there are witnesses that claim they know for a fact such persons exist.

And if it is plausible, the inferior people would like the people who claim they are there to protect them (or at least The Law), and given enormous powers to do so, will actually do at least a proper investigation on the matter. We know they can do that - this happens in drug cases, this happens in terrorist cases, this happened on Jan 6 where the FBI deployed immense resources to find every last grandma in Alabama who were in the vicinity of the Capitol on that day, and put her into jail. They have the powers. They are not using them. The inferior people are wondering - why? What is happening here? You answer is "you are just a bunch of dumb idiots and nobody is going to explain you anything because you are dumb". This answer is not very satisfactory.

'Elites' are more likely to be punished for imaginary crimes (like fucking 16 and 17-year-olds) than real ones.

To a point, they have qualified/sovereign immunity from prosecution when they commit the real crimes, that's why you have to get them hard on the public morals stuff.