domain:mattlakeman.org
Thank you for the solid feedback. I guess I should've made a stronger argument.
The reason I didn't make a more substantial argument is because it's been two years since I last watched Destiny, and I didn't want to spend hours looking through past debates and effort posting about Destiny to justify a minor point I made. I still don't feel like it. If I felt like it and I had the goal of trying to convince people something about Destiny I would've made a top level post with the appropriate amount of effort and evidence.
But I'll acknowledge you have brought up some valid points, and perhaps I was too charitable in assuming Destiny's motive around 2022/2023 when he was engaging in debates with popular figures from the other side, which caused me to react more negatively to his subsequent behavior within the last year than I would've if I hadn't had that charitable impression of him. I'll adjust my parent comment with an edit.
Are Crowder, Shapiro, and even Kirk trying to change people's minds via debate at their events on college campuses? No, they are there to rile up lefty college students that have never in their life actually had their beliefs challenged and completely fail to defend them to clip farm. I think Destiny approached it more honestly and wanted more real engagement than they normally do, but I see this as very weak evidence of Destiny's persona and ethos.
Kirk founded an organization with the purpose of advocating for conservative politics amongst a younger generation, and you don't accomplish that without changing young people's minds about politics. Even if I were to grant you that they are there to primarily clip farm, that does not constitute evidence that they are not trying to change people's minds via debate at their events.
I disagree that Destiny approached it more honestly on the grounds of his attitude towards the people he is engaging in. Nothing Kirk has said comes remotely close to the inflammatory description of the regular people of the other side that Destiny has. If there has been, then it would've already been used as ammunition in the current campaign to bring down his image. I don't know about Crowder or Shapiro, but I doubt there's anything to the same degree either. Why do you think Destiny approached it more honestly and wanted more engagement than Crowder, Shapiro, or Kirk?
MadMonzer
Epstein Files must have done something really awful for so many libs to want him released.
18m ago
The other claim is that his friends in the bank intervened when some transactions were flagged (for what, no one really explains) but this only deepens the original question: even if he was guilty of sex crimes, that doesn't imply that his financial dealings weren't in order.
If Epstein was as rich as he claimed to be without any of the wackier conspiracy conspiracies being true, he got the money by embezzling from Les Wexner. If any of the wackier conspiracies were true, he had a lot of foreign income he was being dishonest about the source of.
I personally think that Epstein's finances were above board and he simply wasn't as rich as he claimed to be (his lifestyle was consistent with the amount of money he could have made scummily but legally by charging Wexner 2-and-20 without providing alpha). But if I was the Feds I would have been going over his finances with a fine-tooth comb.
2D3D
19m ago
I only know Kirk as the smallface meme of a smugfuck conservatard parodied as dunking on strawmanned liberals. In otherwords, a modal mottizen. Which is why the reaction of liberals to basically be gloating that Kirk is dead is one part personally impactful since I'm not that far removed from Kirks relatively anodyne willingness to entertain novel arguments and impatience with devoting too many brain cells to argue into infinity against categorically bad faith opinions. The end state of that difference in opinion should be 'fuck that guy', not 'cap that fool'. Frankly, most liberals don't really know Kirk either. He's a totem, a standin for Trump and all the men they hate. The bad taste jokes of Kirk dying doing what he loved aren't funny they're schaudenfraude (understandable) escalating into wishcasting for every other conservative to die (bad). Political violence when its social is corrosive to a country. Culture arms races for privileged access cripples any measure of prosocial cooperation. An actual arms race cripples cooperation while also destroying whatever makes the spoils have value in the first place.
Indeed, and that also explains why the banks (in particular JPM) were so keen to maintain his business, because he did nothing with the money except hand it to them to ride the booming 90s equity market, so everybody got their cut. In Maxwell’s recent testimony they asked her about the house (legally transferred for almost nothing) and at last there was an answer there, too, namely that it was in lieu of “fees”. Epstein seduced Wexner, “invested” his money (unlike the Madoffs of the world for the kind of boring, safe returns best suited to that task) and then charged hedge fund fees. Why didn’t Wexner measure his returns against the market? Hard to say, maybe he was in too deep, didn’t care, assumed Jeffrey was a genius, liked the attention and friendship, was a little in love, or was just under the thumb of an overbearing and domineering mother (which is the historical record) and didn’t really think of it much.
But either way, a combination of a couple hundred million in fees from Wexner, reinvesting his own money, some shrewd early-90s real estate purchases in Manhattan (a few apartment buildings, as I recall) and the $170m from Leon Black (Epstein’s only other client and the one case where I suspect blackmail is possibly central) and his fortune is easily explained even with some blunders along the way.
More options
Context Copy link