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Notes -
Back in 2021, Reuters published the following about the Ghislaine Maxwell trial:
"not accused of wrongdoing," LOL, when the guy's a f***ing pimp. The Online Right could use this to dunk on the dishonest mainstream media and in defense of high-minded Western ideals like telling the truth and not putting much stock in the testimony of admitted drug-using pimps and hookers. Instead, the Online Right has gone in a very different direction, being convinced that it would severely disrupt the status quo if they could prove the Epstein murder/pedo ring conspiracy is true. ActuallyATleilaxuGhola asserts that the only reason people would doubt that Epstein was murdered is a desire to avoid a backlash against the status quo or Jews:
I think it's the "Epstein was murdered" people who are engaging in motivated reasoning, since the evidence for the conspiracy is very weak. Instead of another perhaps pointless argument about the evidence, let's look at the underlying assumption that "exposure" of the supposed conspiracy would "disrupt the status quo." Would that actually happen?
Suppose the Clintons, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, Prince Andrew, Jean-Luc Brunel, a few Democratic Senators and governors and a bunch of celebrities go to prison for "pedophilia."(more on that later) Throw in some top FBI/CIA people responsible for the Epstein murder.
Here's what won't happen. They will not go to white separatists, revolutionary communists, trad Catholics, and the Nation of Islam and say "your hands are clean, now it's your turn to exercise power." Governors will appoint replacements for Senators. Minor actors will receive major actors' roles. The bank's vice president will replace the imprisoned CEO. Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris, and Pete Buttigieg, who were too unimportant at the time to be associated with Epstein, will still be there. It might even benefit the Democrats by clearing out the gerontocrats.
You may say that, over the long term, voters will be more open to anti-establishment voices. I wouldn't be so sure. Won't take long for the establishment to come up with its equivalent of "the Soviet Union failed because it wasn't communist enough." They'll point out that the vast majority of the accused/convicted individuals are men, so we need more control of male sexuality. Most of the Epstein victims were 16 or 17. "Pedo ring" people don't talk about this fact, gambling that fear of being called a pedophile will dissuade people from bringing it up. But if you want there to be a "reckoning" over this, it's unavoidable. If it's your position that attraction to 16-17 yo girls is "pedophilia" and there's a national emergency of "pedophiles" in positions of power, why not just bar heterosexual men from positions of power? After all, most are "pedophiles" by that definition. Indeed, the establishment might use the necessity of preventing further pedo rings as justification for Patriot Act-style restrictions on civil liberties. You might not fall for that, but what about the average 55-year-old woman who gets all her news from the MSM?
Thankfully the pedo rings don't in fact exist. Hopefully Rightists will grow more comfortable in saying so. Epstein conspiracism is not only wrong on the facts, it's a pointless political dead-end.
You are again purposely ignoring and denying what people mean when they talk about the situation. It's a ring of geriatric men trafficking and abusing a bunch of underage girls. Most people would agree that such a thing can be described as a pedo ring.
Nobody cares that technically, abusing 16 year old girls does not meet the criteria for a DSM-5 diagnosis for the mental disorder. People are still going to call them pedos.
It's not pedophilia, but we should still call them pedos anyway. However, there's only so far you can push this socially useful equivocation before it starts backfiring.
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