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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 9, 2026

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Firstly, just as a general rule, we should expect crazy people are going to come out of the woodwork and make insane accusations (probably in many cases easily-disprovable) about pretty much any public figure. Some people are crazy and will grab the spotlight any chance they get. The fact that spurious accusations have been made of Epstein does not mean that there's no fire here, necessarily. (It does mean, imho, that we should take the numbers ("1200 victims" or whatever) with a grain of salt.)

Secondly, it should surprise no one if savvy operators arrange for such a scenario to be made, although I've seen no specific evidence of that here. But if there was actually worldwide conspiracy to do illegal stuff, would you not come up with trivially easy ways to undermine any case that could be made against you? Basic misdirection techniques are, well, basic, and I don't think pointing to what could be a pretty trivial misdirect that any competent conspiracy could put together and use it as slam-dunk evidence against a competent conspiracy is actually very persuasive.

The real thrust of my comment here is less about Epstein specifically and more the drum I keep banging on in here, which is how to evaluate how conspiracies (can) work. And while it's not clear to me that Epstein, who seems to have been pretty cavalier in his emails, bothered to take such defensive measures I think anyone who is contemplating the possibility of a competent conspiracy ought to at least consider that such things might exist.