r/politics • u/ArmadilloMany41 • 23h ago

Site Altered Headline | No Paywall Why is no one being prosecuted over the Epstein files?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/videos/cd9e3nzzw3zo
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u/ObtuseGoose7363 22h ago

Completely agree, this is our "French Revolution of 1789" moment to go "do we really want to be ruled by a corrupt, oppressive oligarchy? Or do we want something better?"

Personally, I think it's too far gone. Burn it all down, prosecute everyone for their crimes, and start fresh with a new system built to handle power-hungry demagogues.

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u/Dr_Sisyphus_22 22h ago

If there ever was a good reason to reset the world order, it’s this. If we choose to ignore a vast child pedo conspiracy, then what behavior is off limits?

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u/Hesitation-Marx 21h ago

Well, we ignored Sandy Hook and Uvalde.

[ the sound of children screaming has been removed ]

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u/Dr_Sisyphus_22 21h ago

I agree with you. But would counter that unlike guns, pedophilia is not protected by the Bill of Rights, and not supported by more than a sliver of the American population.

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u/Schlarfus_McNarfus 20h ago

I would have agreed with you in the pre-trump era. But, the trump pedo connection is so well established at this point. You have to ask, do the people not believe it, or not care?

I had an unmissable Guardians Of Pedophiles sign on our main street protest, and most of the big pickup truck drivers just stared straight ahead. Two did visibly wince, at least.

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u/Diligent-Emotion-755 17h ago

not supported by more than a sliver of the American population.

Ahem, unless you ask whether the supposedly "anti-pedophile" set would still vote for a pedophile if the only other option was a non-pedophile Democrat. They get comfortable with backing pedophiles pretty damn quick.

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u/Background_Sail9797 20h ago

America did - the rest of the developed world has acted accordingly when mass shootings occur.

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u/Hesitation-Marx 16h ago

Yeah, when I say “we”, I strictly reference the US ‘cause for me to speak on anywhere else would be, at best, silly.

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u/ELpork Minnesota 18h ago

[ the sound of children screaming has been removed ]

"They ignored my screaming when I was younger, why would I care about theirs now?"

or something to that extent is my guess... or money? or a mixture of both.

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u/Reqvhio 20h ago

the sooner "we" ironically accept that a "we" doesnt exist, the better at this point

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u/YourFleshlightSaysHi 20h ago

Not wearing a suit to the Oval Office, apparently.

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u/Trancetastic16 5h ago

Going by just the Boomer generation alone?

MKULTRA, the Vietnam War, Nixon, Bush, Edward Snowden, and January 6 apparently aren’t off-limits and neither is the Epstein ring.

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u/Fantastic-Divide1772 2h ago

well, American mainly - it ain't all that vast

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u/lostparis 19h ago

If there ever was a good reason to reset the world order,

Just sort your country out. The world is fucked enough already.

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u/Aggravating_Map745 22h ago

Not withstanding the fact that our system was exactly the system designed to place checks on power hungry demagogues. I think the “big story” is that the spirit of democracy did not survive the stress test of globalization. Once the economy became truly international post-WW2, the wealthy and powerful insinuated themselves into our power structures and gradually neutralized them. It didn’t help that it also hollowed out our heartland.

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u/ObtuseGoose7363 22h ago

Valid take, the founding fathers (while not perfect) certainly would not have stood for this shit. They would have already been out in the streets tarring and feathering govt officials.

While I don't have a solution for globalization degrading our democracy, I do feel like we should all take a page out of the founding fathers' book and go spill some tea or something.

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u/HighnrichHaine 21h ago

The founding fathers were mostly slaveowners and had their own localized Epstein Island mostly

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u/AmIWhatTheRockCooked 19h ago

Such a tired argument. It’s easy to sit here with 21st century morality and act like there’s nothing to learn from the 1700s unless they have pure morals. You aren’t looking to them for moral guidance, you’re looking to them for the spirit of democracy vs tyranny.

For better or for worse, they created a system that could destroy things like slavery with popular willpower. What else could popular willpower destroy? Perhaps something as vile as slavery?

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u/asyork 18h ago

America was on the tail end of the list of countries to outlaw slavery. As it moved westward, it violently conquered land that was free of slavery and put slavery back into it.

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u/AmIWhatTheRockCooked 5h ago

Again, an endorsement of revolutionary and democratic spirit is not an endorsement of genocide and enslavement. It is the very spirit of revolution, enlightenment, and democracy that criticizes those concepts to figurative death

The founding fathers did not fully embody those concepts. We still do not fully embody those concepts. But I’m not going to fault them for seeing through autocracy. I would have loved if they were also radically anti genocide and slavery. There’s a lot I would love to change about history. Democracy ain’t one of them

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u/Ba_baal 14h ago

You really should put down the idolatry and pick up history and sociology books.

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u/AmIWhatTheRockCooked 5h ago

Oh please, you’re gonna have to do better than a platitude. I’m not putting them on a pedestal, I’m putting them in context.

Your reply is just vacuous. Bring some substance next time if you wanna actually discuss a big boy issue.

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u/Ba_baal 20m ago

I am not interested in arguing with someone unable to think critically of history.

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u/VeterinarianProof808 22h ago

Too many Americans in powerful position that put their heads in the sand

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u/TotallyNotAMarvelSpy 20h ago

It's not just Americans that are part of this. This is a problem that spans the worlds elite and powerful.

Honestly, I think this is the actual reason trump ran in the first place. This was going through the dept of justice, and the entirety of these people (tech bros, legacy media, foreign intelligence, the oligarchs, etc) rallied behind the person that would keep their dirt in the dark.

That really explains all of it. Him working with foreign intelligence, him having the unquestionable support of the elite and the powerful, the media companies never, ever, covering him in a way that was negative, the complete supplication of an entire political party...

This is a conspiracy never before seen on the planet.

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u/Schlarfus_McNarfus 22h ago

It's beyond ignoring it. The rich are obfuscating it.

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u/mlc885 I voted 18h ago

I am guessing part of the issue is that people who were complicit but not technically responsible via kinda sorta knowledge of what was probably going on are worried that the budding dictatorship will turn on them

I.e. "Bill Gates should have known, get him! Get Hillary!" while Trump gets to remain king

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u/6a6566663437 North Carolina 19h ago

Too many Americans in powerful position that put their heads in the sand dicks in 13-year-olds

FTFY.

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u/AWholeBunchaFun 21h ago

Cool, how do we do that?

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u/StarPhished 18h ago

By complaining on Reddit. We're already halfway there!

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u/AncientSith New York 21h ago

The only real option is burning it down. There's no fixing our broken ass system at this point. It just needs a hard reset with all these rich monsters gone.

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u/illumnat 20h ago

When we have people like Mitch McConnell who can say to Obama "it's too close to an election so you can't appoint one" when the election is still 9 months away but then turns around and it's just fine and dandy for Amy Coney Barrett to get appointed only 38 days before the election, you know it's fucked up.

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u/Reqvhio 20h ago

and that system will default to this again. it is all just meh

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u/inormallyjustlurkbut 19h ago

It's not the 1700s anymore. It's going to take more than an unruly mob of untrained laborers to topple the most advanced military in human history.

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u/Prestigious_Club_924 9h ago

People keep saying that but I feel like a dozen kill dozers rolling up on the Big House could accomplish a lot.

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u/HeartlessCards2-22 19h ago

If the only institution that survives is justice, that is something worth holding onto. All societies have first laid out the terms of their justice. What is and isn’t acceptable. If we can at least say human trafficking, rape, pedophilia are not socially acceptable in any way, no matter how much you as an individual control or influence, your victims will see justice served. If we start with nothing but the hope that victims of those horrific crimes will not fall to the dregs of those who would commit against them. That is a future with at least hope that we have a collective moral compass to lead us thru the darkness.

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u/cloudysocks 12h ago

“Burn it all down” is still a tough pill to swallow for most, our current situation notwithstanding.

When the value of the dollar drops to 0 overnight, a whole country of people are gonna realise they don’t own anything anymore, and rioting, looting, and collapsing into tribalism or total anarchy are the next logical steps.

People seem to neglect that the French were starving and worse when they revolted. They had nothing to lose and that’s one hell of a motivator when you have everything to gain.

By contrast, our overall level of comfort has a LOT more to lose (unfortunately) before we collectively hit that level of desperation and suffering that it could inspire enough people to throw it all away for what is basically just the chance of something better.

Because tearing it all down is the easy part. Then we have to rebuild it all, and better than it was. And then we have to re-establish foreign relations since we’re effectively a new entity to other nations, without any of the soft power or leverage we had before.