I’ve long thought that the appeal of simple explanations underlies a lot of conspiratorial thing. But I’ve never seen such a straightforward example of unappealing complexity as the solution the problem of packing 17 squares — what an insightful way to open this piece!
Pour one out for r/conspiracy. Almost overnight, it went from being an entertaining place to read about hollow earth theory, lizard people, and samsquanch, to being an unbearable hive of political weirdness and paranoia. IIRC, it got particularly bad shortly after r/TheDonald got banned. Felt kind of like waking up to find your library had replaced its science fiction section with a wall of portapotties.
The 80-90s were a golden age for ironic conspiracy apprehension among nerds. A lot of it was driven by Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminati trilogy and the subsequent card game. A similar love of the fantastic and obsessive world building unite sci-fi/fantasy fans and conspiracy theorists.
It’s obviously not the worst thing trumpism has done to America, but I miss the days when I could enjoy reading about bat boy at the checkout line without worrying about the company I was keeping.
A few months ago a new co-worker asked if I liked conspiracies theories. I'm thinking coast-to-coast, X-Files, and replied yes. Got a lecture about how I shouldn't drink Liquid Death water because I'm letting satan into my body. Sigh.
I spent about a decade in the alternative medicine community, roughly 2008-2018.
When I started out, it was predominantly liberal groups, with a hippie vibe. There were lots of health conspiracy theorists in there, anti-vaxers, anti-corporate types. And in 2015 the community swung wildly to the right.
The cute girl who sold Kombucha went full MAGA, after being a Bernie stan.
I think for a lot of people in these spaces, they aren’t so much ideologues as they’re just against authority.
In the early aughts, republicans were “The Man” but after the Obama years, and Covid, democrats became “The Man” and the MAGA fever swamp became the counter-culture.
It also explains the dissonance between Rage Against the Machine and a good chunk of their fans.
Why wouldn’t he lie about this? He’s shown no compunction on anything before. He got his political start lying about Obama not being born here. Why not make a fake list of some people from the flight logs and some political opponents? Is he concerned that FBI investigators would come forward and contradict him, or is that a bridge too far?
Your warnings of caution for Democrats are spot on. There's potentially much political hay to be made of Trump's rank hypocrisy on this issue, but that doesn't mean there should be overpromises either. I guess the question is, what should Democrats do (if anything) about the moron/conspiracy block that is currently R+50? I suppose the answer to the question depends on circumstances that change regularly. By 2026 and 2028 elections, there may be clearer answers.
But on the narrow issue of why Epstein would keep material: isn’t it plausible that he would maintain a trove of blackmail-ready material? This is a person who might reasonably expect to need some pretty huge favours from time to time. His extraordinarily light sentence in Florida looks like the product of very favourable treatment.
Michael Tracey may not be the most popular guy in this crowd, but he makes a very convincing case that the entire Epstein mythology is a nothing-burger, and that there is no reason to believe that Epstein or Maxwell ever procured underage girls for any third party.
Generally I agree... but there must be *something* in the unreleased documents that worries Trump. It's clearly not a smoking gun proving he committed heinous sex crimes. If it were, he'd have been prosecuted. But there's something that concerns him, something that is motivating him to downplay and discredit the files. He's trying everything he can think of to convince people they shouldn't care or, failing that, that the contents aren't credible.
It might not be bad behavior, it might just be something that shows him to be weak, but there's something that he wants us not to see, or not to believe.
Ro Khanna is doing something good. Forcing all Republicans to go on record as opposing release of Epstein "Documents". There's no list but surely there are some documents. Savvy Political strategy.
"Likewise, I believe the Justice Department’s repeated insistence through several administrations that there is no ‘client list’ being kept secret."
The problem with this is that the kinds of people you'd want to convince with logic like this already believe the Democrats have been lying to protect influential party figures like the Clintons, so it just becomes more evidence of conspiracy.
Personally, I like unexpected results. Much more interesting when the correct answer to a question is not the intuitive one. There's something beautiful about the surprising messiness of those 17 squares.
I was reading about this on BlueSky a couple of days ago and it seemed to me that many BlueSkyers had interpreted this information very differently: they are saying that if Trump has switched his stance on the Epstein files, that's because he's seen those files and they must be saying something bad about *his* movement and so the issue needs to be pushed so that the information is actually revealed.
I find that implausible but what do you make of this tendency among the overwhelmingly left-wing BlueSky set? E.g. see the replies to this post: https://bsky.app/profile/katestarbird.bsky.social/post/3ltskzjnxjk2v. The replies, the post itself is making a different point, I think.
I’ve long thought that the appeal of simple explanations underlies a lot of conspiratorial thing. But I’ve never seen such a straightforward example of unappealing complexity as the solution the problem of packing 17 squares — what an insightful way to open this piece!
Pour one out for r/conspiracy. Almost overnight, it went from being an entertaining place to read about hollow earth theory, lizard people, and samsquanch, to being an unbearable hive of political weirdness and paranoia. IIRC, it got particularly bad shortly after r/TheDonald got banned. Felt kind of like waking up to find your library had replaced its science fiction section with a wall of portapotties.
The 80-90s were a golden age for ironic conspiracy apprehension among nerds. A lot of it was driven by Robert Anton Wilson’s Illuminati trilogy and the subsequent card game. A similar love of the fantastic and obsessive world building unite sci-fi/fantasy fans and conspiracy theorists.
It’s obviously not the worst thing trumpism has done to America, but I miss the days when I could enjoy reading about bat boy at the checkout line without worrying about the company I was keeping.
A few months ago a new co-worker asked if I liked conspiracies theories. I'm thinking coast-to-coast, X-Files, and replied yes. Got a lecture about how I shouldn't drink Liquid Death water because I'm letting satan into my body. Sigh.
I spent about a decade in the alternative medicine community, roughly 2008-2018.
When I started out, it was predominantly liberal groups, with a hippie vibe. There were lots of health conspiracy theorists in there, anti-vaxers, anti-corporate types. And in 2015 the community swung wildly to the right.
The cute girl who sold Kombucha went full MAGA, after being a Bernie stan.
I think for a lot of people in these spaces, they aren’t so much ideologues as they’re just against authority.
In the early aughts, republicans were “The Man” but after the Obama years, and Covid, democrats became “The Man” and the MAGA fever swamp became the counter-culture.
It also explains the dissonance between Rage Against the Machine and a good chunk of their fans.
Why wouldn’t he lie about this? He’s shown no compunction on anything before. He got his political start lying about Obama not being born here. Why not make a fake list of some people from the flight logs and some political opponents? Is he concerned that FBI investigators would come forward and contradict him, or is that a bridge too far?
Your warnings of caution for Democrats are spot on. There's potentially much political hay to be made of Trump's rank hypocrisy on this issue, but that doesn't mean there should be overpromises either. I guess the question is, what should Democrats do (if anything) about the moron/conspiracy block that is currently R+50? I suppose the answer to the question depends on circumstances that change regularly. By 2026 and 2028 elections, there may be clearer answers.
No argument with your political points.
But on the narrow issue of why Epstein would keep material: isn’t it plausible that he would maintain a trove of blackmail-ready material? This is a person who might reasonably expect to need some pretty huge favours from time to time. His extraordinarily light sentence in Florida looks like the product of very favourable treatment.
https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-idiocy-of-the-epstein-mythology/
Michael Tracey may not be the most popular guy in this crowd, but he makes a very convincing case that the entire Epstein mythology is a nothing-burger, and that there is no reason to believe that Epstein or Maxwell ever procured underage girls for any third party.
Generally I agree... but there must be *something* in the unreleased documents that worries Trump. It's clearly not a smoking gun proving he committed heinous sex crimes. If it were, he'd have been prosecuted. But there's something that concerns him, something that is motivating him to downplay and discredit the files. He's trying everything he can think of to convince people they shouldn't care or, failing that, that the contents aren't credible.
It might not be bad behavior, it might just be something that shows him to be weak, but there's something that he wants us not to see, or not to believe.
I would complain about your characterization of libertarians, but it's mostly accurate. Sigh.
Ro Khanna is doing something good. Forcing all Republicans to go on record as opposing release of Epstein "Documents". There's no list but surely there are some documents. Savvy Political strategy.
"Likewise, I believe the Justice Department’s repeated insistence through several administrations that there is no ‘client list’ being kept secret."
The problem with this is that the kinds of people you'd want to convince with logic like this already believe the Democrats have been lying to protect influential party figures like the Clintons, so it just becomes more evidence of conspiracy.
Personally, I like unexpected results. Much more interesting when the correct answer to a question is not the intuitive one. There's something beautiful about the surprising messiness of those 17 squares.
I was reading about this on BlueSky a couple of days ago and it seemed to me that many BlueSkyers had interpreted this information very differently: they are saying that if Trump has switched his stance on the Epstein files, that's because he's seen those files and they must be saying something bad about *his* movement and so the issue needs to be pushed so that the information is actually revealed.
I find that implausible but what do you make of this tendency among the overwhelmingly left-wing BlueSky set? E.g. see the replies to this post: https://bsky.app/profile/katestarbird.bsky.social/post/3ltskzjnxjk2v. The replies, the post itself is making a different point, I think.
The Dems don’t need to win over the nut jobs and morons, they just need more of them to stay home on election days, as they largely used to