This is gonna accidentally activate some old forgotten MKULTRA code-key in some poor fella’s amygdala and bang!, they’ve Manchurian Candidated Sonic the Hedgehog
I love this basically pointing out that racists call it "Hasbara" and regular people call it "lying".
Don't agree it applies in this situation, but it's nice to see someone break down regular people don't give a special jewish name to something that already has a common name/definition, and that the common name better communicates the intended concept so the purpose of using the word is to convey something different than basic understanding.
Grateful for your work, and sticking it out serving human beings while others hustle to secure the bag. There's nothing wrong with securing the bag, of course, but it just makes work like this even more impressive to me. Kudos!
The degree to which this is true is I think still underestimated, and comments like these need more upvotes.
You don’t need to appeal to shadowy cabals to explain why media professionals have been desperate for this stuff to not be true (and why, every day these days, you can still read examples of them absolutely writhing as they are obliged by public outrage to continue to report on it).
All you really need is to remember that a) they have mortgages to pay, too, so why rock the boat, and b) the people who end up writing for the WSJ and the people who end up in Jeffrey’s rolodex are by and large the same class of people. They went to the same colleges, they consume similar culture and media, they play the same games of keep up with the joneses, they read the Economist on their days off and fret over Gen Z slang and wonder whether the Chase card or the Amex will get them enough airline miles to fly to London for free with their spouse etc etc. They recognize themselves in the “Epstein class” — not in their crimes, but in their manners. So why would they be party to showing the world that class is so profoundly rotten? It’d give the lie to their whole lifestyle.
(And yes, to anticipate a critique here, of course there’s a difference between a producer at NBC and a billionaire! Not denying that. But they are cut from the exact same cultural and social cloth. The best proof of this is in the Epstein files themselves: not in the creepy or criminal bits, but in the mundane stuff. How he talks, what’s on his mind, the advice he gives, etc. It’s all American upper middle class humdrum stuff.)
You'd think this would be the story of the century, and that every news outlet would be running it 24/7 and falling all over each other to scoop new information. Child sex trafficking to wealthy and/or well known celebrities and government officials, including the actual president of the US! What news agency in the world wouldn't be salivating for something like this?
Yet, here we are, no media wants to report on it, and they all wish that we all just forget about it and go back to buying khakis.
> these suggestions let the real perpetrators off the hook.
This can't be said enough. It simply cannot be said enough. It cuts right to the heart of how we view the world in the west: as autonomous, separate individuals, with no communal counterweight and certainly no model of power (some entities in the world have vastly more power than others) We assume that because our constitutions grant us equal rights or whatever, we all have equal responsibility and equal power.
But polluters, the biggest sources of emissions, have way more power and way, way less responsibility. And yet we continue to tell ourselves to focus on our own individual behaviors to combat global heating. The effects are real, but tiny, and our elites continue getting away with our annihilation.
Yes, it is. They're committed to "Every molecule of hydrocarbon will come out". [0]. They keep saying this to us, and we don't seem to believe them. I like your optimism, and I'm not denying a lot of what you're saying -- renewables fast becoming the cheapest energy. But that's not deterring people: the far right here in the US are about to dismantle the government's legal rationale for regulating emissions. They're laughing at us right now, doing victory laps. They're telling polluters to take the gloves off.
These people are terrorists, extremists, and they're in charge of the world's single most powerful economy and military. They're obsessed with domination, with doing violence to the weak and the poor and to nature. It's pure Freudian thanatos.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by the "far-right", but you seem to be implying this 'every molecule' quote (or more charitably, the goal) is of the "far-right" in the U.S. In reality the quote is from Saudi energy minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Salman. I mean, I wouldn't be terribly surprised if Saudi Arabia is considered far-right governed but I doubt your wording is giving the correct impression to readers.
Yes, I know it's a Saudi quote. They're also far right. They're bosom buddies with the same right-wing (Democratic) and far-right (Republican) US economic and governmental elites for decades. I don't think anyone would dispute this. In fact, it's so humdrum a set of facts that I think the burden would be on someone else to show that "no, actually, US elites are not into the whole 'every molecule of hydrocarbon' thing". But their behavior doesn't indicate that they disagree.
It's thus, yes, the correct impression for readers.
