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Joe Rogan continues to provide some of the most interesting conversations in the world. Yes he seems to have gone down some conspiracy rabbit holes, but he gets interesting people in a seat and has a long ass conversation with them.
Recently he had Vance. A few things popped to me.
-You'll never convince me Vance isn't part of the SSC/Rationalist diaspora, when he goes off of politics he just oozes it.
-For the UFO fans he says he'll keep looking into it but he doesn't have a lot of hope.
-He did a good job defending some of his more questionable personal and political actions (the demon comment, election issues, the current Iran tactics). Less good with some other things like quashing the filibuster.
-Vance states he is an Epstein conspiracy theorist (but not in the popular way), in the interview he focuses more on the financial aspects of whatever Epstein got up to and focuses away from the pedophile stuff, hard to tell if he really believes nothing is there on that end.
-Joe Rogan's haters continue to be annoying and non-credible, he pushes Vance more than I remember seeing him come at most of the political guests I've watched (but is accused of being glazing).
I've been fortunate to be around for or involved in private conversations with "notable" people, it's fascinating. At the same time I'm not a notable person, so even when that's happened I have to just accept the circumstances and hang back. We live in a time where JRE and other things like "In Good Company" (and even smaller things like the brief podcast Enes Y did) give unprecedented access to the thoughts and plans of the profoundly powerful. Previously you had to sit for a public speech or pay for a dinner, now we can really get a bit of a slice of what Vance is about.
What a wonder.
Phil Mogg is 78 and has heart problems that already put the kibosh on their last tour. It sucks that he said the band was pretty much done during an election year, but I don't think there's anything the administration can do about it.
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If Vance wants to actively investigate the Epstein case, doesn't he have the political power to do just that?
Apparently Vance said: "[Epstein] clearly had connections to the upper, the highest levels of American intelligence. He clearly had connections to the highest levels of Israeli intelligence".
Does the Vice President of the United States really not have the power to discover and communicate concrete specifics about something like this?
I hate to be gauche, but he probably enjoys having a non-dead wife.
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For a long time it was political suicide to go against the Israel lobby. I don’t think that’s the case anymore, but maybe Vance still feels that it is.
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The stance he describes in the rest of the interview is basically that something fishy may have been going on but at this point literally decades later (and Vance seems to assume after the first series of legal events everything dried up) no further evidence is around.
We do know various intelligence agencies have done a good job at throwing out documents and "forgetting" about things which complicate matters.
Vance also argues that even for things he wants to look into he doesn't necessarily have time to go knock on doors and be like "hey 20 years ago did you know this Epstein guy?" He also uses this excuse on the UFO thing.
I suspect if pressed a bit more Vance would argue that there wasn't an organized conspiracy, just that Epstein knew people in intelligence and leveraged those relationships. This would be certainly be consistent with the way he knew a lot of people, and if you believe the court stuff is above board it would explain things drying up after being acquittances but discovering the malfeasance. If you think the court stuff isn't above board it would explain him using relationships to get out of trouble but then being burned afterwards. Both of those require a lot less conspiracy stuff (in contrast with an organized operation).
Who knows what Vance actually believes, it's entirely possible this is just him politicking for various reasons.
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This has always been about my view on it. Been aware of Epstein since around 2007 (grew up in Palm Beach County, where he got prosecuted).
My nuanced view is that the pedo-ish stuff is bad, very bad. But it was never the end goal or the raison d'etre of the conspiracy. It created leverage, and the leverage was used for... WHAT? Financial shenanigans was certainly part of it.
Hence why I'm a bit annoyed (not surprised) that everyone wants to string the folks on the epstein list of specifically for sex crimes, rather than possibly more broadly impactful activities that would be very interesting to uncover.
I mean do we have any actual evidence of third party sex crimes? All the actual evidence seems to involve Epstein's personal consumption, the rest is inferred.
Like we've talked about before their's enough rumoring about Bill Gates and a few others to suggest something but there isn't really a lot of evidence.
I do know there are some alleged victims but as we know with Kavanaugh that's not reliable unless someone skeptical actually thinks they are a victim.
We have evidence. Nothing I've seen would be quite sufficient to convict anyone of note.
The one that raises my suspicion is the so-called Lolita Express. If you were going to either pressure a VIP into a compromising act or reassure them there was no chance of getting caught in said act, 30,000 feet up on a large Boeing aircraft is pretty ideal.
My apologies if I have missed any information to the contrary but what that is evidence of is the guy having "sex parties*" not of arranging for child sex or underage sex.
Which makes sense.
The vast majority of the value of such a service comes from providing something safe and legal**, working the margins of legality for blackmail tremendously increases risk without much actual proposed gain (considering the guy clearly was doing well with money and connections and pissing people off is unhelpful in that even if its lucrative).
*Where sex party means social activity where women who will want to have sex with you will be, without you needing to go out in public to make it happen or for money to exchange hands. This is a thing that clearly happens in finance and entertainment and likely has a well known process for those who are in the know.
**Safe and legal has value. I'm sure Robert Kraft is not alone, but he only got nailed because he made the mistake of going somewhere that made the government uncomfortable for unrelated reasons.
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I feel like the Epstein political/business links are a way more interesting thread to pull than quibbling over whether he hired 16, 17 or 18 year old girls to act as Escorts at parties. Anybody trying to claim Epstein was sacrificing 4 year olds to Satan is clearly on some galaxy-brain nonsense and is going to float into the air sharting themselves if a civilized discussion emerges. Who was paying for Epstein, how many other whoremonger types have his sort of network and how'd he manage to ascend so explosively strike me as actual questions worth getting answers to.
Epstein is the same as Pizzagate. It is the natural continuation of Franklin, or Bohemian Grove. There are sex trafficking networks that operate all over the world to bind public figures through shared perversion and blackmail. You can see the tail, or the trunk, or the foot all by itself, every once in a while. If you pay attention, you noticed it's all an elephant.
Franklin was boy prostitutes in Franklin Oklahoma connected to high level politicians, including visits to the HW Bush white house. Hunter Thompson filmed a snuff film at Bohemian Grove.
All of this stuff has been around for those with eyes to see for years.
No, look -- I have friends in the Bohemian Club and the Family (which split off) and have spent some time on campus. There are many interesting things I could tell you, but nothing like that. They're just summer camps for extremely successful men who want to goof off with each other without dealing with the public. They're more interested in forming cover bands and putting on silly stage plays than conspiring about anything. I mean, I'm sure they do plenty of that elsewhere, but not at the Club. That's just not what it's for. And they don't even seem to get any slack on regulations. For example, a little creek wandering through the woods got designated a 'navigable waterway' (absurd) and so they can't rebuild a cabin that slid down into it.
The food is very nice though and the best part about it is that it's an extremely high-trust environment. You can just walk up to anybody and he's gonna be very interesting and capable of a great conversation and happy to talk to you because if you're there you're pre-filtered for talent, success, and urbanity. Politics vary much more widely than you'd think, though due to the average age most people are fairly boomerish and mainstream. From my perspective they mostly come off as naive neolibs and have the same sensibilities (re: race and sex) you'd find anywhere.
Anyway the instinct to mistrust the elites is good and right, but they go to the Club to re-live being teenagers at boy scout camp and have a good time, not to discuss work or, uh, kill people? Yeah I'm pretty sure that never happened. It's all much, much more normal, and even boring, than I expect you to believe.
ETA: Something that might help illustrate the vibe is that if a member has his cell phone out in public he's kicked out of the club for two years. If he brings a guest and the guest has his phone out in public the member is still kicked out for two years! This has nothing to do with secrecy. It's about creating a pleasant, relaxing in-person social setting away from the world. Scrolling or taking work calls there would be totally contrary to the point of the place and they're serious about maintaining the vibe.
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The problem with this thesis is there’s a baseline rate of sexual crimes, and despite all conspiritard claims to the contrary, I do not actually see evidence that the rate for powerful people exceeds the baseline rate—especially given the obvious misincentive to accuse powerful people of things in hopes to score media views or even extort settlement money.
Sex crimes are likely bimodal. A lot at the low IQ/limited options side and a lot for the very rich. The rich have power and run casting couches and the poor just do weird stuff.
But the middle class people fear getting in trouble so far less degeneracy.
The casting couch isn't a rich people thing, it's a theatre thing. Theatre has been associated with promiscuous behaviour for millennia.
In general, I see no evidence that the increased capacity of the wealthy to buy access to sex results in their doing so any more than their capacity to buy unlimited Doritos and Mountain Dew results in their doing so.
I think athletes are the exception? Probably because most wealthy need to become wealthy or inherit the expectations of the wealthy so they make better decisions.
Athletes are constantly caught in prostitute scandals, rape scandals, even ordering underage women via text message.
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I think the problem is with the organization.
It is possible that there is a small town where a group of wicked people meet up at a local business and abuse their children together, all covered up by the local head of police.
It's a different matter when that same structure is reproduced at an inter-continental scale, with private islands, officials with enough access to allow border crossing, organizations whose overt purpose provide plausible deniability ie modeling agencies, fashion companies, NGOs...
Then we can expect child abuse not to be a matter of opportunity but of sourcing.
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Don't call me conspiratard.
How do you think underage callboys got into the white house? Why were they there? Who brought them, and why?
Or do you simply deny that it ever happened?
We see glimpses, from time to time, but if you're waiting for a grand reveal you'll never get it.
To what does this refer? Google isn’t helping.
Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush
Craig Spence
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It feels like the entire internet has been taken over by the sorts of people who used to make videos on Illuminati conspiracy theories.
The internet is made of words (spoken or verbal) and thus belongs to the people who produce words. Schizoposters produce a lot of words.
Most of What You Read on the Internet is Written by Insane People
It was the case as long as internet was open to general public, but the age of AI can finally put it to end. Machine can schizopost 24/7/365 without need to eat and sleep and easily outschizo the craziest crazies out there.
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Very much agree, if you actual read the primary source documents (and some of our users have and passed the knowledge along) it really doesn't look like what the conspiracy theories say.
He even has a good excuse for all the connections and relationships. However - some shady financial business happening at least some of the time would make a ton of sense in a way the sex stuff never did.
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