domain:asteriskmag.com
quiet_NaN
1d ago
I REALLY think you have to downgrade your belief that Trump actively prefers young teens.
I don't think he actively prefers them.
Suppose some elite socialite organized a hunt for migratory birds on their private island. From my knowledge, Trump is not much of a hunter and has never displayed any intent to break federal wildlife statues.
However, if he were to learn that the creme de la creme, including British royalty, is along for the hunting trip, he might still come along and shoot at some birds. He will probably not kill the most, but in my model he would certainly enjoy rubbing shoulders and doing something naughty with the rest of the elite.
Likewise, if it is an open secret that the rich and powerful enjoy banging underage girls on Epstein's Island, I do not think that Trump will go "too bad that is not my cup of tea, they will have to have their secret club without me". Instead, he is likely deviate from his usual preferences a bit to be part of the secret club. After all, few men are so much into MILFs that they would not enjoy a blowjob from a busty 16yo.
roystgnr
1d ago
I was thinking specifically about the camera system being flaky; you don't need a deliberate "change everything" for that, just "let's apply this firmware upgrade we've been postponing".
I wouldn't expect it to explain cellmate issues, but looking at those, it's not entirely off-base. They put him in with Bubba-three-kills (well, Nicholas-four-kills), but after an apparent attempted suicide they figured "better safe than sorry" and scrambled to find him a different cellmate, who then got transferred a couple days before Epstein's death, leaving Epstein alone in violation of prison suicide-watch protocol. Turns out that saying "give extra attention here" in a briefing doesn't actually guarantee extra attention. I could buy that he was murdered, and I could definitely buy that he was deliberately allowed to commit suicide, but either way they did a good job of making the failures look like the usual weird mixture of panic and laziness that happens whenever a gaping systemic flaw starts bleeding and people rush to fix it with a quick band-aid.
I think the entire game here is so obvious that it’s actually getting frustrating to me to even read people talk about this.
Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset. This should be as obvious as saying that the four legged furry animal that barks at the mailman, chase tennis balls, that lives in my house, and had two parents who were both dogs, is, in fact, a dog.
It should not be lost that this entire Epstein stuff made a 180 pivot about three days before The United States was needed to clean up yet another of Israel’s messes by bombing Iran.
Trump is also just obviously not a pedophile or whatever other cope term that Redditors from 15 years ago were using to justify their creepy interest in teenagers.
Jeffrey Epstein was a NYC and Palm Beach socialite at the same time as Trump. Yeah they shared a plane a few times, were at some of the same parties, and had some social overlap.
The people trying to tie this into the same vein as Clinton or Gates, who appear to have flown to Epsteins private properties a bunch of times and do seem to have creepy sexual interests are being obtuse.
This whole topic is so tired. It has been beaten to absolute death.
If you want an incredibly detailed and well sourced deep dive on this topic which also goes into pedophilic tendencies of the people around the levers of American Democrat power, then here is a podcast which does that:
https://www.martyrmade.com/featured-podcasts/the-jeffrey-epstein-series/ L
faceh
1d ago
Its complicated by the fact that women are attracted to power, so where I'd never characterize the leader of the free world as a victim, and Clinton in particular is obviously a horndog, an intern can still throw off tons of 'hints' that she's down to clown b/c the mere fact of having access to a powerful man can be enough to 'persuade' her to sleep with him.
Thinking about the Pence/Billy Graham Rule for avoiding the appearance of impropriety.
Avoiding the creation of these power imbalance situations is much simpler than trying to remove power imbalances.
Afghanistan is not Gaza though. The entire population was relatively indifferent to us. They're also on the other side of the planet, not next door neighbors constantly threatening our security. The Taliban also offered to surrender OBL almost immediately after we invaded and they didn't take a bunch of US civilians as hostages.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
No?
In 2005 I wouldn't hold them responsible for Gazans starving, because they backed off
In 2025 I do, because they are very much controlling the inflow of goods and also levelling the area/generally wrecking lots of destruction
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1d ago
it requires a lot more moving parts
Bribing guards to either kill him, let an assassin kill him, or assist him with suicide doesn't strike me as a particularly complex mechanism. At least not any more complex than the series of unlikely events that we are asked to write off as coincidences.
especially since no particular candidates for either ordering or carrying out the assassination seem to have been identified, or had any evidence pointing towards them.
Again, what evidence would you expect to be there when authorities are refusing to follow up on leads?
The government may not be always right or always truthful, but its hit rate is better than that of speculating internet randos.
This is only true if you count things like the daily weather report from the NOAA as "official statements". In cases where lying is in the interest of public institutions they have been found to lie deliberately and frequently, and cases where they opt to tell a truth that is inconvenient for them are insanely infrequent (unless you count declassifications that happen decades after a given fact, I suppose).
The entire case for EDKH is based on the idea that the official explanation is unsatisfactory.
This is only true if we grant the official explanation the status of null hypothesis. It's absurd to do so, and you haven't even attempted to justify why we should. EDKH is just as plausible, you haven't given any evidence that would falsify, and are demanding that it's proponents do all the work while you sit back and poke holes in it.
VoxelVexillologist
Multidimensional Radical Centrist
1d ago
If you're going to consider "coersion" and power dynamics in this context, the question of whether an intern (age 22) can consent to "sexual relations" (depending on the meaning of the word "is") with the de facto Leader of the Free World is going to come up at some point. And I don't think it's a question either side really wants to dig up and grapple with deep down: Clinton mostly won the issue, but modern leftist views on the issue look a lot more like Republicans in the '90s than either side would care to admit.
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
1d ago
"Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area"
I'd say we're basically there
Mihow
Lipstick on a guitar
1d ago
Explicit lack of caring about others is kind of what makes one a "bad person".
But it’s not ‘ others ‘ - it’s pieces of shit.
He doesn’t hate his gay or black or Jewish or Polish or Haitian neighbor, nor presumably any of these, or other, peoples.
He doesn’t care about the pieces of shit.
That doesn’t make him a bad person, it actually makes you a bad person for judging him based on him disliking criminality.
You think another person should feel like you do because of culture, or god, or morals, or something else.
But you’re actually trying to scold him for caring about living a peaceful and crime free existence.
That’s my take from your posts anyway.
yunyun333
1d ago
Trump digs himself in deeper with every new quote. Epstein "stole" young girls from him? Now why would he say something like that?
TowardsPanna
1d ago
Yep.
You can use a very inexpensive program called Lossless Scaling (available on Steam) to enable scaling and frame generation in games (or emulators) with caps or performance issues. Elden Ring doesn't have DLSS or frame gen or anything. I tried a fps unlocking mod to bring it above 60 fps, but that introduced serious issues. With Lossless Scaling I can just adjust the output to bring it from 60 to 120. Works a treat.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
So basically, maturity. That’s what I think at least you and I agree is more accurate than power in terms of what’s ickier. An immature child really doesn’t fully understand decision making, and sex is a big thing. An immature child is more persuadable and doesn’t have as firm boundaries. An immature child is more likely to have their sexual development harmed by unhealthy dynamics or acts. (And by the way most states already have a patchwork of laws and norms of enforcement that cover the gradients in age with some granularity, though it can be jagged in some areas).
But if you want something other than age, which is a good proxy for maturity but not perfect, I think it’s incumbent upon you to provide some test of maturity that would work. I am not sure I could think of one. Most historical rituals I’m aware of were in fact age based and were more symbolic in many cases than practical. EDIT: strike this paragraph. I didn’t check the link, looks like you have played with it a bit. But I will still say that historical precedent doesn’t seem that helpful.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
Honestly I think that the whole thing is to protect Andrew - probably UK has threatened to make a big stink. And some nice blackmail materials on all levels of USG and titans of industry.
What is surprising to me is that Trump would be willing to alienate a large part of his base for that.
My understanding of Trump is that he has a fragile ego and really needs to be popular. I think his refusal to believe that he might have lost to Sleepy Joe stems from that, ultimately. A more cynical power player might determine that two dozen influential people on the top beholden to him are worth more than ten million supporters, but Trump does not strike me as that kind of guy.
Lazuli
1d ago
they all flake out without explanation (and without asking for more money)
Maybe because they don't have nor are willing to pay for access to the databases holding the documents.
OliveTapenade
1d ago
I don't actually think assassination is plausible. At the very least it is less plausible than one of the other explanations - it requires a lot more moving parts, especially since no particular candidates for either ordering or carrying out the assassination seem to have been identified, or had any evidence pointing towards them.
Nor do I think it's ridiculous to say that, in the presence of multiple plausible scenarios, we should assign higher weight to the official story, if only because it is generally more likely for any given official statement to be true than false. I am not naively claiming that governments never lie about things. I'm saying that things the government says are true are usually either true, or in spitting distance of the truth. They are often massaged a bit, but outright lies are unusual. If nothing else, the government saying that something is true is not evidence that it isn't true. The government may not be always right or always truthful, but its hit rate is better than that of speculating internet randos.
The entire case for EDKH is based on the idea that the official explanation is unsatisfactory. But so far I don't really see a convincing reason to think that the official explanation is that unsatisfactory. The official explanation is pretty plausible. I don't assign 100% probability to it - as I said, I could imagine a minimum-plausible-EDKH being true - but nothing stands out that makes it clearly false. There's no smoking gun that makes me reject it.
quiet_NaN
1d ago
This is kinda what I figured. I think that the women being underage was kind of the point, every taboo is also a fetish, and "what we are doing would land a normal guy in jail but we are powerful men who are above plebeian moral and legal considerations" probably aroused them, but at the end of the day most of Epstein's guests were guys with pretty normal preferences (and evolutionarily speaking, "society permitting, have sex with any women who look healthy and fertile, no matter if they are 15 or 35" is probably the dominant strategy for men). Thankfully, raping toddlers, murdering them and drinking blood from their skulls is something very few people are into -- and even if some of Epstein's guests were into that, they likely had more sense than to share that desire with him.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
they would do everything in their power to deny that he's a "true American" and prevent him from ever having a position of influence.
Right wing complaints of voter suppression? Realistically this just looks like scolding. Not the scariest of threats even if annoying.
He frames social bonds as something that happens naturally with time within locales. The argument that social bonds are weaker because new people showed up seems weak and weird. Why I say he’s trying to have it both ways and it doesn’t appear to be a coherent worldview, not as presented.
I mean theoretically there’s a tipping point when it comes to immigration, where the new drowns out the old, or even “pollutes” it like Trump once said (gross language if you ask me). Maybe the point is subjective for many voters. At least when I lived in Miami a decade back, assimilation seemed to be doing just fine. Tons of kids refusing to speak Spanish even at home, for example. Historically I think we’re on the highish side but within norms (a backlash isn’t too surprising either at this point in time).
However we don’t really see this show up in the rhetoric is my point I suppose. It was my understanding that Republicans wanted any legal immigrants to be super woohoo about America, so it feels weird to see Vance say effectively the opposite. Unless I am misreading him here. The fact that the administration has done worse than nothing to make legal immigration work better, putting it off until later, also makes me feel like the pro-immigration stuff is lip service, and the speech more a stump speech to a smarter audience rather than a real attempt to lay out a coherent view of what America needs or should be.
pigeonburger
1d ago
The biggest argument in favor of EDKH, and the reason I endorse a (mild) version of it, is that it was predictive, and already existed prior to its occurring, giving the authorities every opportunity to prevent it. Almost all conspiracies are post-hoc rationalizations that look at the facts and then concoct a theory to retroactively explain the events. But EDKH predicted it ahead of time.
That is a very good point. Think of Seth Rich's death. No one knew the guy until he died, and then retroactively a compelling narrative was made to explain how his death might have been convenient for, and arranged by, powerful people. But for Epstein, the same people who questioned the official narrative, were pointing out how he was going to get whacked to stop him from talking.
An average joe hitting a homerun in baseball or playing a hole in one in golf is unusual but it's going to happen once in a while. But if they call it right before they do it, there's likely more to this story. Is anyone really seriously thinking Prigozhin's death was accidental?
The main question though is whether they have been calling it (wrong) every time before.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
So when pointed out that Israel actually followed your suggestion, you don't assign them "zero responsibility" as promised, instead you revert to "both sides" and assign equal responsibility.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
There's no ethnic cleansing.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
There are no settlers in Gaza.
I'm going to light my hair on fire here, but Israel is imitating how Germany decided to deal with its 'Jewish problem': can we get any foreign country to take them off our hands?
The Gaza Palestinians are not Israelis. Israel has never incorporated the territory they now occupy, though it has (and does) hold it under occupation. They tried, in 2005, leaving the territory entirely to the Palestinans. The result is that the Palestinians made war on them. Your stubborn refusal to acknowledge this does not make it not-so. If you care to make an analogy to Germany and its Jews, the analogs to the Jews are Israeli Arabs. Who, you may note, are not being expelled.
In general, I think that power discrepancy is why we have age of consent laws. Using the age is obviously a crude approximation, I can think of situations where a 15yo having sex with an 18yo would not be problematic from a power discrepancy point of view, and also of situations where two 18yo having sex would be problematic from a power discrepancy view without being criminal. But still, one has to draw the line somewhere, and age is at least something which can reasonably be verified, while "would a judge like the power dynamics in that relationship?" is much more diffuse.
Okay, second thread of thought, separate from the Trump issue below:
I'm never a fan of the 'power discrepancy' argument since 'power' is usually very hard to define in tangible terms. We know it when we see it, sure, but it comes in different forms. The person who holds financial power might not be the 'more powerful' person in a confrontation where the other party holds... a gun.
"Coercion" is a more tightly defined, and the law has pretty decent standards for recognizing where coercion has occurred. Power can be used to coerce, but it can also be used to 'persuade' in the literal "convince someone that it is good/right for them do to the thing" definition.
Should we differentiate between a rich/powerful guy saying "If you don't sleep with me I will make your life a living hell" vs. saying "If you sleep with me I'll give you a ride in my private jet"? Probably. Either one is the result of a 'power' imbalance.
And, finally, the existence of statutory rape laws can, arguably, invert that power dynamic, rather than eliminate it! A particularly sociopathic 15-17 year old can tell someone slightly older than themselves "Sleep with me/give me money or I will tell the cops you raped me."
I don't think that's a common situation, but you see the point, if we're worried about power imbalances it doesn't do to just hand more power to the alleged less powerful person in this situation.
What's my solution? Bring back literal rites of passage rather than tying things to a strict age-based formula.
Philosophically and psychologically, 'consent' is based on state of mind and understanding of the acts in question, age is only very loosely correlated with those factors. And we have the ability to measure those factors more directly. So why use the less reliable metric that is constantly being gamed anyway.
So I see the "what should age of consent be?" debates as a massive red herring. Understandable one since its the standard in place now. Yet everyone has secondary motives for what they'd prefer the age be. And there legitimately is NOT some 'one size fits all' answer!!
Just cut through that stupid knot and tie legal adulthood to some test or other obstacle that a young person must clear before they're recognized as full adults. Some will pass the test at age 15, some at 18, some at 25, and some never at all.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
1d ago
All the Japanese had to trust is that if they kept on we'd keep killing them until they surrendered, were all dead, or at least mere remnants scattered through the countryside with all the cities and industry destroyed. And that the alternative of surrender was better than that. And they were right -- the US didn't have any more nukes at the time so it would have taken more time and US lives than they may have thought, but they had no winning scenario at that point.
Gazans either think they can win because of some outside force making Israel back down to the point of ceasing to exist, or they don't care -- they prefer fighting uselessly against Israel to the alternatives. And given that the demonstrated alternative was living in Gaza, being fed by the UN and still being able to shoot rockets over the wall from time to time, that's pretty damned dumb. If they'd been willing to actually stop shooting rockets and stirring up trouble in Egypt, they'd have done better than that. But they aren't.
Bingo.
Double bingo. A person that doesn't fully grok that sex makes babies, what STDs are, and the other more subtle risks to intercourse with another person is, definitionally, less capable of consenting to it.
Of course, this puts the onus on the MORE MATURE person to NOT initiate the sexual relationship when they realize the other side isn't really ready.
I would be fine with a test in the same vein as that given to teens who want to get their driver's license.
A comprehensive exam that tests, for example, if a person REALLY understands the implications of a sexual relationship. Not on like a deep scientific level, mind, but at least the "ins and outs" (pun intended).
This means that young people can in fact study and prepare for the test, which is a GOOD THING, since it encourages them to learn the necessary information that will prepare them for adulthood. I would also include testing for, say, contractual rights. Maybe someone can't be give student loans unless they can prove they know how compound interest works!
Of course we'd have to have significant anti-cheat measures in place. Which is why I really would prefer there to be some 'objective' "test of willpower" element involved. If you force them to endure some sort of uncomfortable experience without giving in to temptation or dropping out before the finish, its MUCH harder to rig the system.
Yes, this could be the literal equivalent of The Gom Jabbar (but with less severe consequences). If you can't endure a couple minutes of excruciating (but not injurious) pain... I DARESAY you probably aren't 'mature' enough to handle real life. Note that this is LITERALLY how some traditional tribes do it.
I would like to couple that with a requirement that someone, ideally their parents, sponsor them for the test, in the sense that they're affirming "yes, this person is ready for adulthood, and if they screw up I am prepared to help accept the consequences for promoting them too early." So for the next, I dunno, 3 years if they screw up somehow the sponsor is also on the hook for helping fix it.
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