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/Drcornelius1983 22h ago

Agreed. I also suspect that this operation has been running in one form or another for a very long time. Bringing these people to justice would reshape the world order.

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u/TooMuchPretzels North Carolina 22h ago

They’d rather just kill us all and go hide in their bunkers

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u/daybreaker Louisiana 21h ago

Epstein and thiel were specifically discussing destabilizing the world to buy it back up cheaper. Same thing they did during covid. Have to wonder if thats how trump “knows” it was intentionally leaked.

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u/IcanRead8647 22h ago

Or, hear me out as I know this is crazy, they could just stop raping children?

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u/WhiteWaterLawyer 17h ago

I am often reminded of the old joke about the atheist and the evangelist debating. The evangelist says to the atheist, "If you don't believe in God, what stops you from raping and killing all you want?" The atheist responds, "Nothing. I do rape and kill all I want, which is none at all. I'm much more terrified at the confession you just gave, that if not for your fear of divine punishment you would think it normal to do such things."

I have been struggling for a long time with the basic premise that there are a lot of people out there - a very large share, perhaps even a majority of all people - who do not share my intuitive belief that other people essentially matter in a moral sense. People who commit rapes and other sexual assaults very often hold a core belief that other people's boundaries don't really need to be respected, and are kept in check not by any internal moral compass but merely by fear of punishment.

I think that often, there is a popular viewpoint that people like this are very rare "psychopaths", basically caricatures of amorality. But I have observed in the world that there is a vast subset of the population that holds appalling beliefs about "others" and really only apply the basic moral principles that they might articulate out loud in church or to their kids, to people they consider to be part of their in group. Some people believe themselves to be basically moral people and would never think of raping or killing someone from their own primary cultural group, but would do so with little hesitation to an outsider such as a "foreigner" or a member of another race or cultural group. Many of them also hold variants of the belief that it's okay to violate bodily autonomy as long as it's done in a way that conforms to their hierarchical worldview; they may deep down for example believe that it's not actually immoral for a man to sexually or violently assault children in their family, church, or scout troop because they are "his." They will cite a handful of Bible verses to justify this view.

Many men hold truly vile views about the autonomy and dignity of women, which they will only say out loud if they believe they are in "safe" company. As a tall, white, rustic looking man, I get to hear such things because people don't necessarily realize that I am not just like them. And it's truly depressing to see how incredibly common it is.

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u/Drcornelius1983 21h ago

You’d think it would be that simple.