Trump’s conspiratorial base are hugely and reliably animated by stories about impunity for elite sex predators. As well they should be! Elite sex predators get away with all kinds of crimes – not just Epstein, but the whole universe of powerful men, from Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump, who systematically abused women for decades and got away with it – bragged about it, even!
But despite these very real abusers, the conspiracists in the Trump base are mostly concerned with imaginary abusers – Qanon’s shadowy cabal of adrenochrome-guzzling pedophiles, tirelessly freighting trafficked children from one nonexistent pizza parlor basement to the next, packed inside of very mid Wayfair home furnishings….
“ … we have a socioeconomic system that concentrates nation-state level wealth and power in the hands of a few individuals, with virtually no checks on what they can choose to do with it.”
"Indeed, one of the strangest things about the Epstein case is that it's the rare instance in which right-wing conspiratorialists care about actual people, rather than imaginary ones."
@pluralistic Care about actual people? Not really. I hear a lot of talk about the list and who's on it, not much about the victims and making life better for them. That's true for both MAGA and anti-Trump voices.
"Trump's conspiratorial base are hugely and reliably animated by stories about impunity for elite sex predators. As well they should be! Elite sex predators get away with all kinds of crimes -- not just Epstein, but the whole universe of powerful men, from Harvey Weinstein to Donald Trump, who systematically abused women for decades and got away with it -- bragged about it, even!
"But despite these very real abusers, the conspiracists in the Trump base are mostly concerned with _imaginary_ abusers -- Qanon's shadowy cabal of adrenochrome-guzzling pedophiles, tirelessly freighting trafficked children from one nonexistent pizza parlor basement to the next, packed inside of very mid Wayfair home furnishings.… "
where do TV shows get this idea that high school is constant drama, nothing even fucking happened to me in high school
I’m now remembering that my school got a slurpee machine and then had to get rid of it two weeks later after someone poured toxic chemicals into it that they stole from the science lab in an attempt to poison the entire cheerleading squad so like, maybe I was just boring
Not every day you find out youre a background character
… why I take Greyhounds, to meet people. Despite everything I wrote above, almost all of it which reads negative, sitting here now, looking back, I’m very glad I did this journey, because I met a lot of people I would have never encountered otherwise. Tough, troubling, but almost all genuinely decent human beings.
That’s why I encourage everyone to walk and take buses whenever you can, because you end up dealing with people who remind you what humanity actually is. Not the polished cartoonish version we’re supposed to aspire to, but the far more common messy, complicated, and resilient version.
It doesn’t matter if the MAGA movement dissolves. The country is only being partially run by Trump, there’s a new deep state we don’t know much about.…
Dave’s thesis might be dismissed as paranoid Bluanon ranting — but somebody was prepared on Jan. 20 with a fusillade of executive orders and coordinated attacks on Congress, the courts, media companies and universities. I find Dave’s theory of a New Deep State more credible than the idea that Trump coordinated it himself. Trump is a genius, but he has a very narrow range — attracting attention to himself — and he’s an incompetent clown at everything else. Trump is a man-sized toddler. He’s not running things. Somebody else is.
They know Trump is old and frail, and when the time comes they will make a deal with him to retire to Florida, immune from prosecution.… “
