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How much more suspicious activity and lucky coincidences would there need to be to convince you (if you're a current denier) that Epstein was murdered/"allowed" to kill himself?
Because from what I see there's a lot of weird things already. The cameras for in front of his cell are down, guards apparently failed to check in on him (apparently both of them fell asleep despite this being their job), his roommate he's supposed to have for suicide watch is moved out earlier that day without replacement, and two staff members get accused of falsifying records only for the charges to get dropped silently two years after over new years.
Now the one camera that was working has footage released from it only for it to be likely edited video that doesn't even provide a meaningful perspective even if it wasn't edited (so why is it changed and had parts removed? Was something incidentally caught on one of the cameras they didn't shut down?) and a full minute missing along with the other smaller possible cuts, a cut that was completely unmentioned in the inspector general's report but suddenly shows up now. With an excuse that the "missing minute" is a standard reset and the recordings aren't operating at that time yet it now appears to exist according to government leakers.
That same day Epstein was also allowed to make an unmonitored call on a line intended for attorneys only to a non-attorney, with the regional director saying "We don't know what happened on that phone. It could have potentially lead to the incident, but we don't - we will never know" which is another oddity. He claimed he was calling his mother ... his mother has been dead almost two decades before then.
Then afterwards, Epstein's own lawyers contested the official finding and hired their own pathologist who said the injuries were more indicative of homicide by strangulation than normal self hanging.
Then of course we have things like Epstein's sweetheart deal maker Alex Acosta being a literal high level member of the government stepping down only a month before the suicide. Was he distancing himself? Cause that's a mighty odd coincidence too to leave right around that time.
And we get told all sorts of things about having files ready for release, only for them to apparently not actually exist like all the files sitting on Pam Bondi's desk. We have leaks of multiple high level politicians (including the current president refusing to release the records who also resigned over the federal government when Epstein died and hired Acosta earlier) with close connections to him. We have intelligence operatives and high level officials trying hard both directly and indirectly as anonymous sources to deny accusations he was working for them which many powerful people are trying to tout as evidence. Which fair, I expect them to deny if it's not true. But also I expect them to lie if it is true.
Like oh really spy agencies, half your job is to be skilled liars and we're just supposed to take your word for it. People can't be this lacking in self-awareness right? So why do so many of the powerful people with connections to Epstein apparently lack this understanding and think it's compelling counter evidence by itself?
Like obviously none of these things in their own are proof by themselves. If they were, we wouldn't be having a discussion like this we would just say "look at the 100% proof it happened". But a lot of truthful things don't have 100% proof. I'm pretty sure OJ Simpson is a murderer despite not having seen it myself and him being found not guilty. I'm pretty sure Casey Anthony killed her daughter. There's a really strong likelihood Micheal Jackson molested some children. Carole Baskin (although a bit weaker of a suspicion) might have been involved in the disappearance of her husband. None of these have hard conclusive evidence, yet none of these are odd to believe.
And just like those examples, there's a whole lot of weird oddities and coincidences and suspicious behavior around Epstein, his death, and the information on him and his connections that it seems pretty reasonable to suspect his supposed suicide wasn't entirely legit. Outside of 100% proof, how much more would be needed before it stops being "just a conspiracy theory"?
I wonder if I can take this as an opportunity to just start from the top?
I have very little prior investment in Epstein. I had never heard of him before he became famous on the internet - for years literally the only thing I knew about Epstein was that he's the guy who didn't kill himself. "Epstein didn't kill himself" was a meme I saw in a range of places but I didn't know what it meant or its significance. Eventually I did get curious and looked it up, and what I got was basically that Epstein was a rich asshole, that he had social connections to a lot of other rich assholes, that he liked sex with underage girls, and that he was eventually caught, went to prison, and probably killed himself there. There are theories that he didn't kill himself, ranging from those that seem superficially plausible (e.g. a sympathetic guard helped provide tools and opportunity for him to commit suicide) and those that seem a lot more implausible (e.g. a wealthy or influential person organised an assassination to prevent him revealing damaging information), but I did not bother looking into it much more than that. Either suicide and what we might call the motte of EDKH could be true, and either way it's inconsequential. The bailey of a large elite conspiracy to kill Epstein before he can reveal something dramatic sounds so much less likely that it would take significantly more for me to update in that direction.
So the questions I would ask you, as presumably an EDKH-believer, are:
What do you think is likely to have happened?
Why is this important?
As far as I can tell from the outside, the EDKH theory is largely circumstantial - here are a bunch of odd things that happened around Epstein's death, it is implausible that these were all just coincidences, here are some other plausible explanations. There doesn't seem to be any truly solid evidence of foul play; just a lot of things that seem suggestive. Is that much correct?
Right now where I am is more or less, "probably he killed himself, there's an outside chance that some sympathetic guard or other staff member helped him kill himself, anything larger than that gets Basic-Argument-Against-Conspiracy-Theories-ed away, and I don't care very much which of the former two theories is true". So, why should I update in the direction of anything more significant, and more importantly, why does it matter? Why should I care about this?
The biggest argument in favor of EDKH, and the reason I endorse a (mild) version of it, is that it was predictive, and already existed prior to its occurring, giving the authorities every opportunity to prevent it. Almost all conspiracies are post-hoc rationalizations that look at the facts and then concoct a theory to retroactively explain the events. But EDKH predicted it ahead of time. Everyone knew that Epstein had dirt on famous and powerful people. We still don't know exactly who, you can't point to any one specific person and say for certain that they went to Epstein's island AND committed crimes while there: anyone who visited might plausibly not have known exactly the details (they might have come expecting sexy 18 year old prostitutes and been shocked and offended when offered an underage one, or Epstein might have known their temperment and offered exclusively legal and willing prostitutes to certain members.) In fact I would be shocked if there wasn't at least one person who physically went to the island and yet committed no crimes there. But there were lots who did, and some of them are probably politicians, and each has a large incentive to want him dead before he can spill the beans. And we knew this and they should have had him on extra super suicide watch as a result. He was one of the most at risk and most important prisoners in the last century. I don't care if they had to have a guard paid to literally sit outside his cell and watch him 24/7, it should have been completely and utterly impossible for him to die via any cause, even a heart attack, without immediate intervention.
The reason I believe EDKH conspiracy is because Epstein is dead, and if there wasn't a conspiracy he should be alive. Now, in a literal sense I think the most likely scenario is that Epstein physically did kill himself with some sort of deal with the powers that be regarding his legacy or heirs or something or other, and then they had the prison warden turn a blind eye. The reason I don't think this falls afoul of the Basic Argument Against Conspiracy Theories is exception D that scott points out in his article:
I don't think this requires a lot of people to actually be in on it. Possibly as few as three: one politician, one highly ranked prison officer (not necessarily the top, but high enough to pull some strings), and Epstein himself. Politician gives the go ahead wink wink nudge to the officer, officer arranges the schedules, residence, and guard patrols, and temporarily disables a camera, and then Epstein hangs himself with no witnesses in exchange for whatever the politician promised. It's likely that it was a little more involved, there were probably a lot of politicians on his list who gave tacit approval or wink wink nudge nudge when big politician says he'll "handle it". A bunch of guards might have been suspicious about the slightly unusual orders they received. But most of them don't need to be directly involved or have any incriminating details with which to whistleblow, just conspiracy theories of their own. Even the stronger version where Epstein was literally murdered only requires one additional person: the assassin, who has obviously strong incentive not to whistleblow themselves.
This is important because Epstein had important information. I firmly believe that the real Epstein list was in his head. Any physical list is going to be something like "visitors" to the island which is suspicious but not incriminating enough to act on. Without Epstein's testimony we have no way to distinguish stupid people who wanted to have creepy but legal fun with young adult girls, sex offenders who had sex with underage girls, and national traitors who had sex with underage girls and then got blackmailed by Epstein into abusing their political power for him. They're all going to get away with it. Even if his death involved no conspiracies at all I still want everyone we can possibly verify as responsible to at minimum lose their jobs, and probably go to jail for criminal negligence. He should not have died and we knew he would anyway, before it happened, and yet it still happened. That's why you should care.
That is a very good point. Think of Seth Rich's death. No one knew the guy until he died, and then retroactively a compelling narrative was made to explain how his death might have been convenient for, and arranged by, powerful people. But for Epstein, the same people who questioned the official narrative, were pointing out how he was going to get whacked to stop him from talking.
An average joe hitting a homerun in baseball or playing a hole in one in golf is unusual but it's going to happen once in a while. But if they call it right before they do it, there's likely more to this story. Is anyone really seriously thinking Prigozhin's death was accidental?
The main question though is whether they have been calling it (wrong) every time before.
I don't think there have been any prominent "calling it" moments like this. The four most similar cases I can think of where someone is/was crying wolf about their assassination and it didn't happen, but if it had died (or do die) there would definitely be retroactive conspiracy theories are Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Julian Assange, And Edward Snowden. So if you're being maximally harsh you could call it 1/5. But none of these have had quite the same level of strength. Everyone believed that Epstein had dirt on prominent politicians that he had not yet spilled, which made getting rid of him quickly a priority. People hate Trump and Musk for public reasons and while killing them would remove them as an annoyance, it wouldn't keep any politicians out of jail. Assange and Snowden already leaked their secrets and assassinating them would just be petty revenge, it wouldn't unleak the secrets. Assassinating any of those four would increase the risk of a politician going to jail, not decrease it as in Epstein's case (conditional on the probability of getting caught being less than the probability of him spilling the beans). Additionally, the U.S. government has never had one of those four in custody in a way that would provide such an easy opportunity to off them. And, while I don't pay a ton of attention, nobody has been warning about the potential for assassination attempts on these four except for Trump, who has in fact been the target of attempted assassinated multiple times (though not necessarily by a conspiracy unless you count stochastic terrorism). So depending on how you categorize it we're either 1/5, 2/5, 2/2, or 1/1. Personally I'd go with 1/1, since Epstein was (as far as I know) unique in circumstance of being in a prison with known incriminating evidence on (probably multiple) politicians.
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