Actually, the plan right now seems to be to portray Epstein as an agent for the other side, and downplay or ignore when someone on your side of the ideological isle is complicit.

The right wing media is doing a full court press on his Democrat ties, and the left wing/MSM is focusing on Acosta and the Trump relationship.

Of course both sides know this is all bull****, as both sides are extremely complicit in this cover-up, but they also know their ideologically possessed followers are only going to see what they want to see.

You can kinda see things shaping up along these partisan lines in this very thread, where the Trumpkins are focusing on his left wing relationships and the wokegentsia the right wing relationships.

Also, FWIW the way the Dem's have let slide the Fairfax rape scandal (and letting go less serious charges against Northam) indicates that after an initial willingness (one could even say exuberance) to sacrifice their own, they may have realized what the Republicans knew all along; that ideological possessed followers dont really care too much about right and wrong, it is all about whose team you are on and supporting your team no matter what.

I thought Acosta presented pretty well at the press conference. He didn’t answer as much as I would have liked but he did seem smart and thoughtful.

Agree that both sides are trying to tar the other with Epstein ties. Partially agree that wrong doesn’t matter. Wiener got a second chance but is now persona non grata to the left, and he was definitely a rising star. To argue that one party is better than the other on this point is painting with a very broad brush; examples can be found on both sides.

I am not arguing that. I am not even sure it is virtuous to being the party most willing to "sacrifice your own" on the alter of political correctness, especially for non criminal **** that happened years ago. For example, I have no problem with the left letting slide the Northam blackface and Gunn perversity stuff.

As far as Weiner, I am pretty sure even the Republican Party would take a "persona non grata" position with one of their politicians who pled guilty to sex crimes with a minor and went to prison as a convicted sex offender. So I find this exact example absurd.

https://www.miamiherald.com/news/loc...214210674.html

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/ne...iction-1223336

God, looking at the faces of those girls really hit home what a monster this guy is.
Most men are attracted to younger pretty woman, and there's nothing wrong with that. But these were just baby's.
As Hugh Heffner said, I was attracted to 24 year olds when I was 24 and I still am attracted to 24 year olds, but there's a huge difference between 24 and 14.

Thanks for the links Lapi

Sleazy. and if he was an asset that was allowed to continue this, they should all go down like the scum he was snitching on. That first article is like some Stephen King novel. He's a got a wall full of prosthetic eyes as soon as you walk in the house. The kind of creeps that dined with him and observed his behavior only to ignore it... Bring them all in and make them swear under oath they saw nothing.

Thanks for the info.

The last article there by Vicky Ward I thought was the most interesting where she recounts the whole process of interviewing Epstein and writing her original piece.
The story is basically that Epstein sort of came from nowhere and was flying Bill Clinton around and Vanity Fair thought he make for a good article. So here is Epstein who agrees to open up to a Vanity Fair writer and during that time he is straight up asking Ward, "what do you have on the girls?". Then when she finds out too much he uses his influence to get those parts removed from the story. There is a large amount of brazenness there.

What about the small army of lawyers, politicians and others who were all aware to some degree of what a monster he was, and actively worked in the cover up. Are they monsters also?

I actually find this interesting because it is a moral/political issue which can’t be neatly divided along partisan identity lines, despite efforts by some of the usual suspects to do so.

I actually expect the more ideological focused posters who are so quick to make partisan moral judgements to nap this one out.

This is what I was talking about when I said I didn't think your judgement on people was very good. I guarantee you Fly and Wookie (I think those are the two you talk about the most often as the Ideologically Possessed or whatever that is) are not napping this one out.

They have a combined 0 posts in this thread.

Post counts in threads in this forum seem like a dubious way of measuring this.

Also, just to reiterate something I've said in other places at other times, my view is that when conversations become more about the participants than the subjects they tend to deteriorate. So, again, I think it's best to avoid doing that as much as possible. People will of course form opinions about other posters, and it's reasonable that sometimes political topics get a bit meta. It's fine within reason. It's annoying when personal animosity derails every thread.

Ok. Without getting personal at all, I will say it is interesting how partisan issues where moral transgressions are clearly smaller by any objectives measure, seem to generate stronger condemnations and demonization Than huge moral transgressions with no partisan issues at stake, and I am sure I am guilty of this also.

Why do I even need to post when you already can predict all my positions?

It's clear that Epstein's lawyers litigated his case very aggressively. That's not a surprise. It raises interesting ethical questions about the extent to which criminal defendants deserve representation, and whether or not counsel should suffer criticism, outrage, or ostracism for representing a scumbag.

There isn't any question that a deep-pocketed criminal defendant with aggressive, politically-connected counsel and functionally limitless resources is going to get better results than the local public defender. I don't much like that fact, but I don't know what's to be done about it.

You can't recognize who is partisan and who is ideological, at least not on the left. Maybe you don't know the difference.

I think there are a lot of factors that go into explaining why people post about topic X but not Y, and it's going to be pretty chaotic. An obvious one is just that people will post in response to things that they disagree with, whereas they may not post when they don't see anything in particular that they want to argue with.

So, I didn't have any posts in this thread, and I doubt I'll post much about Epstein. It's not because I don't think the case is important. It's that I don't think I have much to say about it right now, but I'm paying attention to see what happens. On the other hand, here I am arguing with you about the inferences you draw about posters, which is certainly a less important topic in some grand scheme of things.

People also spend limited amounts of time and there's an element of randomness to what catches their attention. Basically, I think you're overextrapolating. Anyway. I don't want to further derail this thread, so I'll leave it at that.

Are you suggesting that Andy Ngo is being demonized more than Jeffrey Epstein at this point?

If so -- and I may be misinterpreting your position here -- I disagree. I'd imagine that Epstein is positively radioactive at this point, even more so than Weinstein.

Actually, I am very curious your opinion on moral issues that aren’t highly charged along partisan lines.

Do you think everyone involved in the cover up should hang? This seems like such an obvious moral position to take, but I Don’t see anyone really going there.

Which I think shows a lot how situational and arbitrary morality is.

I mean, this is a guy who raped little girls, and a lot of people who knowingly facilitated or help cover it up, and yet we are all so wishy washy right now.

Very interesting.

Kelhus,

Do you think that some people you are talking to here want Epstein to be handled with kid gloves because this might involve Bill Clinton?

There are definitely people on the left on this forum who are as much partisan and persistent with presenting only their views as legit, as there are on the right.
This is part of why the old politics forum was reorganized.
It became a very toxic environment.
I hope we have learned our lesson good people.

Sent from my LG-H820 using Tapatalk

Everyone on the lefts position is that everyone involved in the Epstein thing should get got. People don’t post about because it’s so obvious it’s not worth talking about. The left(posters here and pre-storefront lite) attempts to hold people accountable significantly more so than the right, this is incontrovertible.

Small things that are more gray are better debate topics. It’s a better debate to talk about the provocateur getting milkshaked than it is to see who wants to stake out the position that pedophilia isn’t that big of a deal. It’s also probably something to do with the fact that we have a rapist president and the storm front lite crowd is totally cool with that because 40dollar tax cut.

And there's no conflict of interest? Representing a scumbag is one thing, but his attorney was also one of his "clients", allegedly.

There's a huge problem here tho. Until you actually get to trial, and have actual cross examination of the evidence and witnesses, there is no other way to really know which defendants deserve the most vigorous defense.

This is more a criticism of society then it is the judicial system or processes.