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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   25915 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026

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If I can speculate uncharitably here, that would put him in close proximity to a lot of young women who believe in his cause, but aren't really attracted to him personally at all.

Did you read the linked NYT article? This does not sound like the case at all. For instance, it quotes a letter written by one of the girls to Chavez:

But the paper trail of some of Mr. Chavez’s misconduct involving young girls can be found in the very archives built to preserve his legacy.

In one handwritten letter on girlish stationery imprinted with roses, Ms. Rojas wrote to Mr. Chavez in January 1974 at the age of 13, shifting between childlike school updates and swooning devotion. She said she wrote the letter more than a year after he first kissed and fondled her in his office in 1972, when she was a 12-year-old seventh-grader. “I’m really glad I got to see you & spend time with you, well not like that, but just to know I was near you was enough,” she wrote, adding, “I think of you all of the time. Do you think of me?”

And the article ends with

Looking back on it now, Ms. Rojas said she believed then that Mr. Chavez wanted her to be a real part of his life. He would tell her that they would move together someday to Mexico. He told her to stay away from other boys because he’d get jealous. He told her that the Flamingos song, “I Only Have Eyes for You,” was their song, and that every time she heard it she should “just remember that I love you.”

“I had love for him,” Ms. Rojas said. “He did his grooming very well. He should get an Academy Award for all he did.”

To take the Devil's Advocate position, the "paper trail" proves nothing. It's a note 13-year-old Rojas wrote which describes no inappropriate activity on Chavez's part, and reads like a crush on her part. The part about kissing and fondling is not in the paper trail; it's a recent claim.

I'm still getting up to speed on the details of this. But uh... grooming a 12 yr old is wildly different from winniing the attraction of an adult woman. What he did there was horrible.

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