The Jeffrey Epstein case is why people believe in Pizzagate
theweek.com
theweek.com
I would suggest that people believe in Pizzagate because other people who knew better but had reasons to pretend not encouraged them to do so. Once you start from the premise that Hillary Clinton is the Queen of Night, and that clues to this truth are woven throughout the fabric of reality, then any old list of nouns--pizza, takeout, whatever--can be mapped to any other list plausibly enough.
(If I sound grouchy about this, I am--I sometimes shop or dine on the block where Comet Pizza is.)
To counter it, the elite has to be held to a standard higher than we hold other people. Otherwise the erosion will keep happening.
It's so infuriating when U.S. political pundits interpret the Impeachment Clause phrase, "high Crimes and Misdemeanors", as requiring ordinary criminal or even heightened criminal behavior. The qualifier "high" refers to the office, and reflects a notion that public officials in positions of trust should be held to a stricter moral standard than in private life--specifically, the moral standards we should expect of those entrusted with high offices. That is, behavior that would not be criminal for a private individual could be a high crime or misdemeanor for a public official.
See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_crimes_and_misdemeanors
It's mostly Republicans who push this interpretation (though Democrats made similar arguments, albeit less vociferously, during Watergate). But Democrats remain silent because the Impeachment Clause is worded in a way that gives Congress an affirmative duty to prosecute high crimes and misdemeanors, and for strategic reasons the Democratic caucus would prefer to shirk that duty.
It's a fundamental problem with liberalism and is part of the crisis that liberalism faces all around the world; people see our institutions failing and they start to wonder if maybe China has a better idea.
If you are in a position of authority (parent, teacher, manager, ...) one thing you should learn right away is that you need to model good behavior if you want to control bad behavior. That's because your subordinates will certainly model any bad behavior you do.
It's always shocked me how bipartisan the moral rot is. For instance, Epstein was close to both Trump and Clinton. Both Trump and Clinton had daughters who married the sons of convicted felons. Given that Chelsea Clinton might be interested in public life some day I can't for the life of me imagine why she married the son of this guy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Mezvinsky#Criminal_acti...
It's like projection, only not unconscious; it's deliberate deflection to make the real thing look less believable when it comes up.
What I am more certain of, is that in general in modern politics, disinformation has been weaponized to a high degree.
The second appears to have a variety of folks from both ends of the political spectrum (and internationally) entwined, including Bill Clinton, but balanced with Trump and his Secretary of Labor on the other side of things. I fully expect it to involve a variety of non-political folks, as well as internationally.
Trump's being dumb enough to publicly brag about the association is very on-brand, of course.
> Trump's being dumb enough to publicly brag about the association is very on-brand, of course.
Trump is playing the main street media like a violin. If you are thinking he is doing something because he seems stupid, it's just part of the plan.
Trump did say back in 2012 that the pedophiles had to go. [1]
And, since his inauguration, the massive crackdown on them has largely gone unreported.
1. https://mobile.twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/2552948836...
His Twitter pronouncements are so commonly contradictory to his actual actions or subsequent tweets that there's an entire subreddit of them: https://www.reddit.com/r/TrumpCriticizesTrump
1. https://www.churchmilitant.com/news/article/trump-busts-1500...
Debunking yourself in your own story is... special.
edit: Here's a thorough debunking of the core claim.
https://reason.com/2017/02/27/trumps-fake-crackdown-on-sex-t...
https://reason.com/2017/02/27/trumps-fake-crackdown-on-sex-t....
My favorite part of your thorough debunking article is where it was published a month before the one I cited.
Edit: plus, I wouldn't consider local TV stations, Breitbart and Townhall.com to be part of the MSM.
It's a debunking of the claim.
Church Militant's silly article was not the first to make the claim, nor was it the last. I can write a "the Earth is flat" article today with claims that've already been debunked for centuries.
An example is how the Squad of 4 started to attack Pelosi. Trump slammed the 4 on Twitter and caused Pelosi to jump in and start defending them. This had the effect of making these left extremist Dems the face of the Democrat party. How does that benefit Trump? It makes the Dem party unpalatable to a majority of Americans, which turns 2020 into a cakewalk for him.
Yes, this thread was a wreck to begin with, but it's still not ok to break the site guidelines.
As every such cabal would be much more effective than a lone politician, eventually power would entirely shift to competing cabals bound by child sex blackmail - making it impossible to dismantle externally, because both the executive, the judicial system and the biggest media would be controlled by people in such arrangements. Media in particular would have the main job - in case of any genuine leaks, mix the truth with outlandish claims to discredit it as a dumb conspiracy theory.
The game theory works out so nice I don't see any alternative, it's the stable state of the political system. I can see it being murder though, if disposing a body is much easier than my estimate.
In non-Western societies it could be something else. In North Korea, being filmed shitting on a photo of the current leader would work much better I guess.
Most people have morals and wouldn't have sex with an underage person, nor murder someone, just because their boss told them to. They would tell their boss to go fuck himself.
People have been blackmailed for scandalous actions long before video to record the incidents. No technology is required.
Visiting sketchy sex-related businesses or doing drugs is pretty par for the course in both Eastern and Western business culture as a form of trust-building between parties.
I can definitely see the level of "sketchiness" increasing as you climb the power ladder.
>the famous article from Sultan Mehmed II the Conqueror's Law of Governance states that "Any of my sons ascend the throne, it's acceptable for him to kill his brothers for the common benefit of the people (nizam-i alem). The majority of the ulama (muslim scholars) have approved this; let action be taken accordingly."
https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2015/08/07/the-history-of...