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It's not about Trump actually having sex with 16 or 17 year olds, it's about spreading the message of guilt by association. He and Epstein were best buds. Epstein arranged underage sex slaves for his rich friends and contacts. Lurid claims of "I was raped by both of them when I was thirteen" just help that along. Nobody (except the dwindling number of people who do care about distinctions like "underage means under 18, not 12 years old" and "did this really happen?") cares if it's true or not, it's just convenient mud to throw.
He's a racist. He's a transphobe. He's a sexist. He's a rapist. He's a paedophile. He's a Nazi. He's a convicted felon (36 FELONIES!!!)
"Knew Epstein was a pedophile and still palled around with him" is pretty bad in and of itself, making him an accessory through inaction. Conversely, "somehow missed all the red flags about Epstein being a pedophile despite palling around with him" would be pretty damning for Trump's intelligence even if it's ethically exculpatory. So if you establish a sufficient degree of regular association between the two that it has to be one of the two, you have a pretty tight case for Trump either being complicit, or incredibly dumb. Your only way out is to argue that Epstein was so good at covering up his sins that an intelligent man could genuinely hang out with him repeatedly without ever suspecting a thing; and does anyone seriously believe that?
I hate to nitpick but "paedophile" is doing a lot of work blurring things here. If we're talking "under 18 but around 16 at the lowest", then properly it's ephebeophilia and technically it's attraction to young but sexually mature individuals. Paedophilia proper is pre-pubescent children.
But since "minor child" can refer to "this girl was 17" as well as "this girl was 12", then charges about minor children can be weaponised to mean "Trump etc. were raping twelve year olds" and not "Trump and Prince Andrew etc. were having sex with 17 year olds whom they thought were willing or at least paid-for escorts doing a job".
And it's the Trump was raping thirteen year olds version which is the one being used in online spaces, because Orange Man not alone Bad, he is Most Evil of All Evils and MAGA is most evil and we're fighting Nazi fascism and if only this time we scream loud enough, the normies will finally turn on him.
I don't know what age of girl Epstein himself was personally attracted to, he does seem to have liked them very young. But that does not mean that everyone who went to his parties and his island liked them that young. If you know Jeff from his parties where hot nubile young girls hang out and pay attention to the rich men, you don't necessarily know he likes to fuck fourteen year olds, you think he's like you and every other guy who likes hot nubile seventeen to eighteen to twenty year olds. Maybe some of his "special close friends" also share Jeff's interest in fourteen year olds, but that is not going to be common knowledge for the circles he moves in. Only those who need to know will know and will be invited to the island stays where the fourteen year olds are.
So Musk may well have been one of those deemed "don't need to know" and even "not important enough to cultivate, not in the circles I want" which seem to have been established finance and old money, as well as Big Names in science and the arts. Musk may simply not have been a big enough name or the right kind of big name for Epstein. Maybe it was simply personal dislike. Who knows?
That depends, do you think Noam Chomsky is intelligent or not? 😁
I think you've misunderstood me. I never argued that Trump was himself attracted to underage girls. What I view as pretty likely is that Trump knew that Epstein was in that business, and yet did nothing to report and expose him; not because he was himself interested, but because he didn't care/couldn't be bothered/preferred enjoying the other perks of being pals with Epstein to doing the right thing and getting on Epstein's bad side in the process.
I'm not sure why you went off on the tangent about Musk and what he knew, as I never brought him up. I agree that Musk probably didn't know, but then it's not clear that he ever even got as far as the island. I feel like it would be considerably more difficult to have actually attended one of the "wildest parties", and still not realize that there were sketchy things going on. Wouldn't there be an interaction somewhere along the way of Epstein making it clear what range of girls he had on offer, to let the guest have his pick? And judging by all the leaked material and reports, does Epstein sound like he would couch such an offer in such carefully-guarded terms that an uninformed, intelligent man genuinely couldn't pick up on the scandalous age of some of the options? Maybe I'm picturing this all wrong, but that's where I'm coming from.
And no, I don't especially expect that this will have real consequences for Trump. It's just that it should. If your buddy is an unrepentant rapist then you have to turn him in, it's not enough to politely say "not for me, Jeff, thanks" and keep sleeping with the adult prostitutes he fetches for you. "The President knew about a serial statutory rapist and did fuck-all about it" should be a scandal to rock the nation all on its own, never mind whether he personally partook, and it's very depressing that it isn't (though yes, certainly the muted response is downstream of the boy-crying-wolf dynamics from the Left lobbing spurious accusations at Trump every Tuesday such that when a genuinely outrageous one arises it barely registers).
I think he might very well be morally complicit, in the sense described above ("knew Epstein had unsavory hobbies but couldn't be bothered to do anything about it").
I don't really care to defend Trump but surely any fixer is going to propose what's on offer pretty opaquely if anything so specific as a request is ever even made. Stuff like conversations that come off as just idle curiosity:
Epstein: "What do you like in a woman?"
Trump: "I've always been a big fan of the Russians, great people, wonderful people, and so affectionate"
Epstein: "I knew you were a man of good taste, I have a party I'm throwing for some Russian Oligarchs in a few weeks and they're bringing many girls with, would you like to come?"
Trump: "You always throw the best parties Jeff, I'm always telling the staff you throw the best parties. Of course we'll come, I bet you can get a lot more people coming if they know I'll be there."
Epstein: "I think that's true, I'll make sure to invite some more girls who would love to meet a famous television star like you, are there any particular types of Russian girls you like the best so I know who to invite?"
And if Trump goes on to describe prepubertal Russian gymnasts then Epstein goes down that path, but if he starts talking about mature matriarch types Trump needn't ever have been informed of the other offerings.
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That's the entire point of the whole "Trump and Epstein" publicity, and thanks for putting it so succinctly. It doesn't matter if Trump was himself fucking underage girls, what matters is his morality. He knew and did nothing, hence he is a bad person.
The question of course is, did he know? Did he know about the fifteen year old masseuses? Did he know they were doing more than giving regular massages?
Side A says of course he knew, because Orange Man Bad. Side B says there's room to doubt he knew.
This is what, in the end, it comes down to: not a question of paedophilia or the rest of it, but political mud-slinging. And it all depends on how we gauge the honesty of those involved: is Lawrence Kraus telling the truth or lying here? Should he have known about the fifteen year olds?
As to why I included Musk, because he's been in the comments as well as to "did he know or not?" Ditto with Chomsky, where the more interesting question is "Okay, attempting to hob-nob with the likes of Chomsky was all part of the rehabilitation effort after the Florida court case, but what was Chomsky getting out of it?"
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No, that is not how being an accessory works in the slightest.
I meant in the moral sense (and, as FttG said, the reputational sense), not in the strict legal sense. I thought describing the alternative scenario as "ethically exculpatory" made this clear and I didn't need to specify both times.
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Not in the legal sense, but absolutely in the reputational sense.
Only if you accept the basic guilt-by-contagion premise of the left side of the Culture War.
I disagree. Knowing that an acquaintance of yours is a pederast (or "merely" an ephebophile) and refusing to report him or cut ties with him reflects badly on you, even if it's not legally actionable, and this social convention long predates wokeness.
What crimes does this extend to? There are crimes of a whole range of severity. At what point does it become severe enough that you are obliged to cut ties or report? And what if you have less than 100% confidence that he committed the bad deed?
I haven't thought about this in a systemic way, but if I knew for a fact that a friend of mine had done one of the below (without having been punished), I think I would have no choice but to cut ties with him:
I'm sure there are others that one might add to the list, those are just the first few that come to mind. If I knew for a fact that a friend of mine had stolen someone's wallet or defrauded someone out of a significant amount of money, I would probably cut ties with them as well (although in that case it would be more out of concern that he might do the same to me).
What if I don't know for sure? If my friend has been publicly accused of one of these serious crimes, but I personally think he's innocent, then I don't think I have any obligation to cut ties with him (indeed, probably the worst thing about #MeToo was the number of men who lost their livelihoods and entire social circles on the basis of allegations which were implausible on their face). If he hasn't been publicly accused, but rumours are starting to circulate, then I think one ought to do one's due diligence, investigate if the rumours sound credible, and escalate if so.
I was thinking more "has done racist things". Does blackface, or a couple of racist remarks, mean you need to cut ties? What if it's less than 100% certain that the racist remarks were in context?
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Are you really saying that there is no such thing as a moral duty to report or otherwise act upon knowledge of evil deeds committed by others? If you're a passive witness to a murder or rape, and could identify the culprit, it's not at all immoral of you to move on with your life and keep the secret? Really?
When Epstein first got arrested, the investigator reached out broadly to Epstein's social caste for information. Purportedly, the only person to take the call and speak with him was Trump.
My google-fu is failing to find a cite for that; the current doc dump is obviously clogging the search results. But pretend for a second that it's true. In that hypothetical, would you say that such an action would make Trump uniquely righteous?
There's also the line from Trump saying Epstein likes women "on the younger side". It's hard to be sure without hearing the tone, but that seems like a polite, faux-friendly knifing, similar to the comments people like Seth McFarland made about Weinstein before his behavior came fully to light.
Do you think McFarland is more or less "guilty by association" than other celebrities who knew about Weinstein but kept silent?
This is an interesting point. I would hesitate to say "uniquely righteous" with no qualifications, insofar as providing information about evil deeds you were privy to if and when investigators reach out is considerably less virtuous than proactively volunteering it. If he did Know Things, then sitting on the information for that long isn't great. But it certainly casts Trump in a better light than not speaking out at all.
I doubt we'll ever get precise confirmation either way. My guess was that it was less privy to knowledge and more "broken stair" type rumors, and that the decision to take the call was heavily motivated by personal dislike.
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None of what you said is about "Knew Epstein was a pedophile and still palled around with him".
Perhaps I should have specified "was an active pedophile", but I should have thought context and common sense made it obvious that I was not speaking about hypothetical preferences on Epstein's part. Granting the implicit "active", active pedophilia is a type of rape and so the post you're replying to does in fact cover this case.
Okay, let's say you know your buddy Bill likes seventeen year olds and has dated a few and slept with them. So far as you know, those have been consensual relationships. Technically, though, that's statutory rape.
Do you:
(1) "Gosh Bill, you're thirty-five years old, you're way too old for those girls and besides they're legally underage. I wish you'd stop, man, it's not good" and quietly distance yourself from the friendship
(2) "Hello, police officer? I wish to report a serial rapist, name of William Jones, address 63 Greenwood Lane, 85th Street, Middletown"
I think a lot of people would go for (1) and if that makes the majority of humans immoral, well duh man, this is the Fall and Original Sin.
We're making assumptions there that Trump knew Epstein was having sex with way too young girls and that this sex was coerced and was indeed rape, not just the murky area of "paying for sex with sex workers". He knew all about it, and there was no way he could not have known, and because he never called the cops then all the rest of it.
Do we know for sure all parts of the above follow? Did he know Epstein liked them age fourteen not seventeen? Did he agree that seventeen is not 'old and mature enough to know own mind' and so statutory rape, or agree that "what is the difference between seventeen years and three hundred and sixty four days as opposed to eighteen years"? I've seen the arguments over 'if a thirteen year old is mature enough, they can indeed decide to be sexually active', so let's not get too precious there over "but he should have known that girl was not eighteen!"
I don't know what anybody knew for sure, and the waters are now so muddied I don't think anyone will know unless we get someone's diary with "Today my good buddy Jeff got me a fresh little fourteen year old high schooler to rape, heh-heh-heh" entries.
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