I’m genuinely curious what you’re trying to accomplish by continuing to circumvent the rules, ignoring mod requests?
Now you’re resorting to posting a screenshot of a Der Spiegel article without the source or an excerpt. Again.
Perhaps you don’t understand why we do this: it is so people without ad blockers or using accessibility tools can read the article even if it is paywalled or was taken down after publication.
This is your 5th or 6th violation of our rules, resulting in a 7 day ban. The next one will be a permanent ban to this community.
People like you are why many mods on here permanently ban people upon the first violation.
How can they? @[email protected] banned them. Why let them defend themselves when you can be no better than the Epstein Class and remove them?
God forbid a community about exposing the Epstein Class and the Files aligned with them bans someone from checks notes exposing abuse from the Epstein Class.
Also make sure to upvote this post. Not only to share more horrible information about Trump and Epstein, but to expose the moderators from silencing people from sharing information.
You’re comparing a volunteer mod to people who build child sex trafficking rings.
You're comparing @[email protected] to... Just want to get this straight... As someone who is building sex trafficing rings?
Reread what you wrote and think about it.
I might suggest you do the same.
This is about a mod banning a user for sharing content about the Epstein Ring, publicly shaming them, and preventing them a public comment to defend themselves. The mod could have done this privately. They chose to announce their public censorship.
Believe it or not on Lemmy, a public forum, we can see you reply to another commenter and read what you said to another commenter.
But wait, people also can reply directly to you about what you said in that other comment.
A threaded reply structure, both marvelous and dangerous.
Epstein and the island being shut down does not in any way mean any of this has stopped. Zero other rich pedophiles went to prison about it, so they literally know they can get away with it.
The president doesn't have friends, there are people that have information and power that can hurt him, that is why he is protecting them, either they have dirt on him, the ability to harm his interests, or are paying him off.
Epstein had a bigger island, and ships never stopped coming and going from it. They literally just moved the whole operation next door and put someone else in charge of it that no one's heard of.
Who is Stephen Deckoff and what's he doing with both islands now? No one knows. He says he's turning it into a world class resort and that he never met or knew Epstein. His big public renovations so far seem to be adding a new fire pit and repainting a building.
Just wanted to add a recent local news source I found that confirms Deckoff has only done weird, shady things on the islands like building a big warehouse.
Given how buddy buddy he was with tech, a lot simply moved online. They were using modeling to find victims, but now they probably just stalk IG and tiktok.
Republican voters and officials will continue to push for that cover up. They're all complicit at this point, and they don't care what anyone thinks about that.
The article from the screen cap. It seems to be paywalled partway through, and no remove paywall option is working for me.
Edit: Okay, take these with a grain of salt, but I did find a few articles which summarize this article for those who can't read the whole thing. It's the best I've got thus far.
Probably why this isn't posted in !news. And then when it is posted there, people complain that the mods are pro Epstein because they removed the anti-Epstein image.
It's the worst part of Lemmy, and I constantly report it, and comment that OP "accidentally" posted an image instead of the link. It's such a useless post format.
So it is with great pleasure that I present you with the first of many revamps the “Revolution WOW” campaign will unveil over the next year. I give you the Buddy Mangione. Now that’s not the sanctioned term we’re using for the symbol, just something we’ve been kicking around the office, but look at it. Doesn’t it pop? Buddy Mangione!
I ran a small leather shop that sold hat/lapel pins. One pin said “stay the course” a slogan for continuing the Iraq war in 2006.
I started working in that shop in 2011. I left 15 years later. Never sold a single pin except to myself. I have it on my bag ironically. I’m
Nearly 40 years old and we have been In perpetual war my entire life.
Jesus. The grief I feel for that poor girl and her family too, discovering her name here. Maxwell, Trump & the rest shouldn’t be going anywhere until all these kids are located.
Unfortunately almost all of them are in places of control and they make rules with loopholes so they can protect themselves if they are ever discovered and now there is only one way to deal with them now.
A few years ago, I mentioned that the prostitutes here in Seattle along Aurora Ave, seem about the right age as if they were trafficked during trump's first term. They were about 16 to 19 years old. It used to be that the prostitutes weren't that young seeming, maybe in their 20s and 30s? The trolling was swift. Not as heavy as if I mention how evil Roundup/Bayer/Monsanto is, but still it was quick.
Serious question: Why is it often said "this or that appears on the Epstein files" and not in what context or what specifically is said about "this or that" in the files? Is it that everything else is censored where these names are mentioned?
Actually, not this time. I can only read the first part of the article due to paywalls, but she was 22 when she disappeared (probably she was still either abducted or brought into Epstein's network and then someone disappeared her, but I can't read far enough in the article to see the details about the mentions of her. Anyone here have a Spiegel subscription who's willing to share the relevant excerpts? Article here)
I believe the comment here is because a lot of news articles about the Epstein Files will refer to trafficked underage girls as "underage women" or "young women," a practice widely criticized for downplaying the fact that these victims were children. Kairos was asking with the expectation that this would be another of those cases, but this is one of the rare times when "young woman" is actually the accurate term, because the probable victim here was 22 at the time she disappeared. Human trafficking of anyone of any age is still, of course, awful.
Additionally, OP titled this "Human trafficking of little kids", which is blatantly untrue in this case (as the article OP should have linked to would have made clear).
We must continue to read the files until we have them in their entirety, with half of the remaining files released every year until we have completely finished them.
Doing anything to the people we know are responsible before then would be unconscionable.
The people responsible are getting have got away with it
Nothing is going to happen. Anyone who can look at what was already released and the complete lack of any consequences and still thinks there is any path forward where something comes of this is dumb as a fucking rock.
They won. That's it. They control all the media. They control all the money. They control all the technology. Maybe things will change in 50-100 years, but no adults alive today will be around to see it.
This isn't defeatism, it's fucking reality. There will be no revolution in our lifetimes. And I know that the dumber of you are gonna retort with some version of "Well not if people like you have anything to say about it!" and to that I say, it doesn't fucking matter. Whether I say anything or not will have literally zero effect on the Epstein class having a chokehold on every facet of society. I'm just tired of pretending anything is going to happen when every sign over the past 30 years points to that being an fucking fantasy.
It's an insane take, and let me tell you why. For as long as there have been people, there have been sexual crimes against children. For as long as there has been organized crime, there has been organized profiteering off the bodies of children. For as long as there have been individuals with power and means, there have also been groups of them satisfying their sexual tastes as a collective, using their combined means to both acquire and protect whatever it is they are into. For every group of people engaged in this, there are many more individuals acting alone to use and trade the bodies of the young for whatever they can get in return. For every girl or boy stolen by a group or even just malevolent individuals, there is another one sold by his or her own parents, and even more individuals and groups standing in line for the chance to buy and trade their flesh.
THAT is fact. THAT is the way of the world. THAT is societal and historical reality, not your tunnel vision of this one time and this one place and this one set of perps and how one corrupt justice department has thus made it all okay for every offender everywhere for all time. That's just willfully helpless bullshit.
And not only that, your view focuses solely on just one sort of justice, when in fact there are all kinds of justice meted out regularly, some by nature and some by people, some deliberately and some by accident, some by strangers and some by victims, and most of which happens in such a way that no one ever expected to see until it was all right there.
As for the legal system offering "justice" to the offenders and their survivors, I don't think it ever could and I don't think it will now. But that doesn't mean I'm going to bury my head up the ass of corrupt government obstruction and lack of political will to address it and mope for the rest of time.
The survivor I live with has had to grapple with even the concept of justice, and as someone who has had the actual facts explained to me I'll tell you something else you don't know: the survivor I know doesn't even believe justice exists. Even if this were a perfect world, and the perpetrators and their agents and proxies who trafficked them in their youth were all brought to trial today, that would not give a single day, a single hour, of their life back. It would not lift a single burden off the backs of those already dead because of what was done to them, nor how those evil, sick and malign acts irrevocably derailed that young life for the worse. Other survivors do believe in legal justice, but even they would be the first to tell you it won't give them their youth or innocence or time spent in self-destruction back.
Legal justice would vindicate many survivors, certainly, but not much else. Why? Because for as long as there have been people, there have been sexual crimes against children, and if you think it is limited in any way by stringent laws, you think wrong. Every society has members among them who do these things, both the people that have a taste for it and the people who sell it to them, every single society since time began, and to think they don't is to believe in some ethno-perfection fantasy, like the Russian who told me one time, "We do not have such things in Russia!" (Yeah, right. Pull the other one, lol.)
So it's not about the law. It's about society, and changing how we, as world citizens, speak and write and think of such things. That has nothing to do with one country's corrupt legal system, but hits much more closely at the source of the problem: society itself willing to turn a blind eye to the most perverted among us. And the perps can't shut that discussion down, no matter how much money and power they have. Look around: they're trying hard, and getting nowhere. Why? Because the discussion itself has changed. And why has the discussion changed? Because we, the citizens of the world, are talking about it and not buying the bullshit. And how has that happened? Because of survivors who wouldn't shut up and the people who refuse to be silenced. It's not about the law at all. That is entirely out of the law's hands.
And as someone now old who has seen a great deal of shit, I will tell you with absolute certainty that this situation will not end the way you expect it to, and if you weren't so enamored of your own tunnel vision you'd already be noting just how bizarre some of the turns are that this situation has already taken. I have a lot of unfortunate personal knowledge of this subject, but even I didn't think we'd be at war with Iran over it. The bulk of the files were released on Friday, January 30: not because they were trying to fulfill the EFTA law, but because people were literally pouring out of their homes in rebellion against ICE and it was the only thing the administration had that was big enough to take back the narrative. Jeffrey Epstein, believed untouchable, died in a jail cell. Trump ran a third time just to stay out of jail. Bill Gates and Les Wexner, both thought to be untouchable because of their immense wealth, have had to personally sit through Congressional interrogations; same for a president and senator/ex-Secretary of State. My personal money is on something entirely unrelated -- DOGE -- coming back to bite them all in the ass by the end of the year. More and more truths are coming out of the woodwork in ways that could not be foreseen and cannot be prevented, though the entire weight and will of the US presidency is behind doing just that. ALL of them are sweating balls. Nothing about this has been what the perpetrators of it wanted it to be.
You didn't see any of that coming. And I know you didn't because no one did. So who are you to insist that nothing will change?
Yet we are all changing it, now, collectively.
Every time an individual makes the effort to know the truth of what has happened, such as what happens in this online community and others like it, we honor and help survivors. Look around you: from Gisele Pelicot to Virginia Giuffre, the entire world is talking about sexual crimes in a different way. And even more importantly, as Mme. Pelicot noted, from the abused to the abuser, "Shame must switch sides." And it is.
Every time we personally and individually hold space for real truth to come out, in whatever way it comes out, instead of trying to fill it with our own uncomfortable and self-indulgent whine about how nothing ever changes because we don't like how the subject has made us feel, we honor survivors.
Maybe you're interested in being part of that, maybe you're not. But don't fool yourself that you are some kind of seer for the ages by whimpering about government inaction: for as long as this has gone on, society has mostly turned a blind eye, and whatever actions were taken against the offenders were taken by the local community of the offender.
So know that whatever happens, it already wasn't what you thought, and it won't be what you think, and secrets once thought safely submerged can and do pop right back up through the most unexpected means. Meanwhile, the real justice -- of allowing the deluge of revealed truth to change our collective beliefs and understanding of what these crimes really are and how they damage all of us -- is already happening all around us.
But you won't see it because you don't want to. You're laser focused on the one tiny little part of the whole thing that the perps and their proxies still control, and insisting it will be that way forever, as though the US legal system is The Good Ship Lollipop waiting right off shore, never to hove into view. If you're wise, you'll take your eyes off that mirage of legal justice. It's the lie the perps in power want you to believe, and right now, it's the lie you're helping to perpetrate by posting that hopeless and helpless shit.
Elon Musk is worth 2 trillion dollars. That is after the DOGE debacle. It's not just that I don't see these people facing consequences, it's not just that there is a lack of justice; it's that, if anything, they are being rewarded for their actions. They are more successful now than they were before the Epstein files released, and wildly more successful than when their actions in the files were actually taking place. Even if everything comes crashing down, they have made enough money that they can easily shuffle around and ensure their prosperity.
That is why I say they've won. All the lying, the child rape, the human trafficking, the open corruption; it has made them more successful than they ever could have dreamed. Everything we were taught about the importance of morals and it's relationship to success is a lie.
it has made them more successful than they ever could have dreamed.
Thanks for reading what I wrote; I half didn't expect you to, so thank you for that. That said, I agree with you -- except for this. Today, right now, they are more successful than they could have ever dreamed.
But today isn't forever, and this is not over.
Even if everything comes crashing down, they have made enough money that they can easily shuffle around and ensure their prosperity.
Maybe, maybe not. A thing about groups is that they tend to have weak links, and when one falls multiples fall rapidly thereafter.
Imagine, if you will, a post-Trump legal landscape wherein all those files he tried so hard to hide got wikileaked, many of the ones who are protecting him now have turned their backs and the ones who are left are overruled, and every one of his "deals" as well as those of everyone around him are being picked over with a fine-tooth comb. What will Musk have then? A lot of legal bills, a fading star, and not what he craves the absolute most: attention and plaudits that salve his massive insecurities. The money will bleed out too, but that will happen over time.
Imagine being on the highest of the high mountains like fElon, and then sliding down it foot by foot for the rest of your miserable existence, grabbing at tufts of grass and kicking at rocks to get back up to where you will never be again. These exalted positions will disappear as fast as they appeared, and we don't know how, and we don't know when, but they are not permanent.
And that's only one minor possibility: there are still infinite outcomes here, and far too many involved persons for the perps to control or even foresee.
And this:
Everything we were taught about the importance of morals and it’s relationship to success is a lie.
As written, well yeah. It always was. That's simple disillusionment, if your idea of success is limited to massive wealth. Our own is not, but to be honest the survivor I am with has transformed what I believe about success anyway, as I have watched them grab win after win on a personal level where I honestly thought further progress was doomed. I swear sometimes I think they are a phoenix, rising up from the ashes again and again just because their will to overcome is so immense, but then the days of pure exhaustion and defeat come as well, which is the place your first comment was written from. I am very familiar with it.
Now you've said who the perps are, and today, in this minute, you are absolutely right. Yet the really important question, another one I learned from a survivor, is this: who do YOU want to be? Because in the end, none of the perps matter past their crimes. As far as we are concerned they are over, less than, not worthy. But to your life, you do matter. So do you personally want to be someone who only practices morality for the promised gold at the end of its Johnny-do-good rainbow, or do you want to be a genuinely moral person who is moral wherever they find themselves, doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do and that's just the kind of person you are?
I ask this because, to borrow a metaphor, everyone who is bit by a vampire has the choice of becoming a vampire. Everyone who is abused has the choice of becoming abused. Everyone whose life has been hollowed out by evil has the choice of responding to that by becoming evil themselves.
To me, if you manage to retain your own innate goodness in spite of, and in active battle against, the evil that was done to you, that is no small thing.
And I guess that's what I am asking of you. In your frustration, stop perpetrating the lie that this is all helpless and hopeless and that the only forms of success or justice are the exact ones defined and -- for now, anyway -- withheld by the perpetrators.
@[email protected]
I’m genuinely curious what you’re trying to accomplish by continuing to circumvent the rules, ignoring mod requests?
Now you’re resorting to posting a screenshot of a Der Spiegel article without the source or an excerpt. Again.
Perhaps you don’t understand why we do this: it is so people without ad blockers or using accessibility tools can read the article even if it is paywalled or was taken down after publication.
This is your 5th or 6th violation of our rules, resulting in a 7 day ban. The next one will be a permanent ban to this community.
People like you are why many mods on here permanently ban people upon the first violation.
Have they responded at all?
I haven’t received any DM from OP.
Thanks, just curious.
How can they? @[email protected] banned them. Why let them defend themselves when you can be no better than the Epstein Class and remove them?
God forbid a community about exposing the Epstein Class and the Files aligned with them bans someone from checks notes exposing abuse from the Epstein Class.
Also make sure to upvote this post. Not only to share more horrible information about Trump and Epstein, but to expose the moderators from silencing people from sharing information.
I understand you’re pissed off.
Read the rules in the sidebar. You’re now breaking one of them too.
Note no posts of OP have been removed to preserve the discussion, hence no silencing.
Rules have been in place for a while and these particular ones were added after community consultation.
If you disagree with the rules feel free to make a meta post in this community to make your case for the change, not by being disrespectful.
Thanks.
Bro. Think about what you said.
You’re comparing a volunteer mod to people who build child sex trafficking rings.
Reread what you wrote and think about it. Maybe consider apologizing.
You're comparing @[email protected] to... Just want to get this straight... As someone who is building sex trafficing rings?
I might suggest you do the same.
This is about a mod banning a user for sharing content about the Epstein Ring, publicly shaming them, and preventing them a public comment to defend themselves. The mod could have done this privately. They chose to announce their public censorship.
I’m not talking about anyone but you bud.
You’re the one who said this:
Then why are you replying to me when I'm not saying a thing about you?
Maybe read my comment and try again.
Believe it or not on Lemmy, a public forum, we can see you reply to another commenter and read what you said to another commenter. But wait, people also can reply directly to you about what you said in that other comment. A threaded reply structure, both marvelous and dangerous.
Are we sure it's not a bot account?
It’s behaving too intelligently for a bot. After its last ban it started posting only memes, which is fine and then crossposts for articles.
They occasionally comment too, but the post pattern reminds me of a reddit karma farmer.
Epstein and the island being shut down does not in any way mean any of this has stopped. Zero other rich pedophiles went to prison about it, so they literally know they can get away with it.
One even got elected president.
And his friends know he's got their backs
The president doesn't have friends, there are people that have information and power that can hurt him, that is why he is protecting them, either they have dirt on him, the ability to harm his interests, or are paying him off.
Epstein had a bigger island, and ships never stopped coming and going from it. They literally just moved the whole operation next door and put someone else in charge of it that no one's heard of.
Really? You got sources for that? I haven’t heard that but I do not doubt it.
Wikipedia covers the island itself well enough https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Saint_James
Who is Stephen Deckoff and what's he doing with both islands now? No one knows. He says he's turning it into a world class resort and that he never met or knew Epstein. His big public renovations so far seem to be adding a new fire pit and repainting a building.
https://www.primetimer.com/news/who-is-stephen-deckoff-networth-and-more-about-epstein-island-s-new-owner-as-he-renovates-notorious-estate
Update:
Just wanted to add a recent local news source I found that confirms Deckoff has only done weird, shady things on the islands like building a big warehouse.
https://archive.ph/20260210042600/https://www.virginislandsdailynews.com/news/still-no-resort-plans-for-epsteins-islands-purchased-by-deckoff/article_84d776de-8427-4080-a1b5-6cf81418e23d.html
Given how buddy buddy he was with tech, a lot simply moved online. They were using modeling to find victims, but now they probably just stalk IG and tiktok.
Republican voters and officials will continue to push for that cover up. They're all complicit at this point, and they don't care what anyone thinks about that.
https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-mystery-of-michele-a-missing-woman-from-germany-reappears-in-the-epstein-files-a-835c0c91-620c-4fd0-ac49-9870fe160108
The article from the screen cap. It seems to be paywalled partway through, and no remove paywall option is working for me.
Edit: Okay, take these with a grain of salt, but I did find a few articles which summarize this article for those who can't read the whole thing. It's the best I've got thus far.
https://www.rawstory.com/epstein-missing-model/
https://www.straitstimes.com/world/europe/german-model-missing-for-11-years-named-in-epstein-files-report
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/missing-german-model-named-in-epstein-files/ar-AA25ofMg (This one has some of the most info, but is also an aggregate feed repost of the Daily Mail, so be extra sparing with your salt on this one.)
EDIT 2: As I was fetching these, u/OldBoy found a working paywall bypass link for this article: https://archive.md/20260612114906/https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-mystery-of-michele-a-missing-woman-from-germany-reappears-in-the-epstein-files-a-835c0c91-620c-4fd0-ac49-9870fe160108
Thanks. I don’t know why images alone are accepted when it comes to news.
Because people get a dopamine hit off of reading things that confirm their world view.
hey! don't attack me like this!
Probably why this isn't posted in !news. And then when it is posted there, people complain that the mods are pro Epstein because they removed the anti-Epstein image.
It's the worst part of Lemmy, and I constantly report it, and comment that OP "accidentally" posted an image instead of the link. It's such a useless post format.
So it is with great pleasure that I present you with the first of many revamps the “Revolution WOW” campaign will unveil over the next year. I give you the Buddy Mangione. Now that’s not the sanctioned term we’re using for the symbol, just something we’ve been kicking around the office, but look at it. Doesn’t it pop? Buddy Mangione!
Sweet Jesus do you have to use the whole can?
Who soiled your screenshot?
Here's the original gif if you don't have it
https://imgur.com/a/sxL3UmT
I only have the original link saved on my blahaj account (which is down rn) so I reuploaded it
I kind of want a print of this.
A shop in my neighborhood has this as those tall Jesus candles.
Not dozens. Hundreds or thousands.
WHY would we go AFTER the Epstein Class when we could ELECT them and use TAXPAYER Money to CONTINUE Kidnapping Children INSTEAD?
-Republican Voters LITERALLY!
I remember the very moment I realized that republicans were disingenuous, and far too numerous.
Shortly after the Iraq invasion, and the "support the troops" ribbons started showing up.
Me, being logical, thought it meant people wanted the troops out, like, support bringing them home from a pointless war in the desert.
It did not.
I ran a small leather shop that sold hat/lapel pins. One pin said “stay the course” a slogan for continuing the Iraq war in 2006.
I started working in that shop in 2011. I left 15 years later. Never sold a single pin except to myself. I have it on my bag ironically. I’m Nearly 40 years old and we have been In perpetual war my entire life.
https://archive.md/20260612114906/https://www.spiegel.de/international/world/the-mystery-of-michele-a-missing-woman-from-germany-reappears-in-the-epstein-files-a-835c0c91-620c-4fd0-ac49-9870fe160108
This worked to remove the paywall for me.
Bless you for this.
@[email protected]
In case you needed some help.
Jesus. The grief I feel for that poor girl and her family too, discovering her name here. Maxwell, Trump & the rest shouldn’t be going anywhere until all these kids are located.
Unfortunately almost all of them are in places of control and they make rules with loopholes so they can protect themselves if they are ever discovered and now there is only one way to deal with them now.
A few years ago, I mentioned that the prostitutes here in Seattle along Aurora Ave, seem about the right age as if they were trafficked during trump's first term. They were about 16 to 19 years old. It used to be that the prostitutes weren't that young seeming, maybe in their 20s and 30s? The trolling was swift. Not as heavy as if I mention how evil Roundup/Bayer/Monsanto is, but still it was quick.
Trump knows. That’s why that limo driver kicked him out and wanted to beat his ass, the conversation he overheard from trump about missing girl
No justice will be seen so long as Donald Trump and his supporters continue to cover it all up.
Serious question: Why is it often said "this or that appears on the Epstein files" and not in what context or what specifically is said about "this or that" in the files? Is it that everything else is censored where these names are mentioned?
Was this "young woman" under 18 when she was taken?
Actually, not this time. I can only read the first part of the article due to paywalls, but she was 22 when she disappeared (probably she was still either abducted or brought into Epstein's network and then someone disappeared her, but I can't read far enough in the article to see the details about the mentions of her. Anyone here have a Spiegel subscription who's willing to share the relevant excerpts? Article here)
Does it matter? Human trafficking is shitty no matter what age it is done at.
I believe the comment here is because a lot of news articles about the Epstein Files will refer to trafficked underage girls as "underage women" or "young women," a practice widely criticized for downplaying the fact that these victims were children. Kairos was asking with the expectation that this would be another of those cases, but this is one of the rare times when "young woman" is actually the accurate term, because the probable victim here was 22 at the time she disappeared. Human trafficking of anyone of any age is still, of course, awful.
Additionally, OP titled this "Human trafficking of little kids", which is blatantly untrue in this case (as the article OP should have linked to would have made clear).
Agreed. That's not what I asked.
Well let's not forget the real problem for them is finding another way to do this and better.
Hey man this is the country of dig deeper to make new lows.
What happened is not at all hard to comprehend. Fucking terrible people being terrible people. We need more rope
We must continue to read the files until we have them in their entirety, with half of the remaining files released every year until we have completely finished them.
Doing anything to the people we know are responsible before then would be unconscionable.
Trump probably knows what happened to her.
Then pull your head ls out of their pacifying media landscape and let yourself be angry without apology.
"young woman"
Nothing is going to happen. Anyone who can look at what was already released and the complete lack of any consequences and still thinks there is any path forward where something comes of this is dumb as a fucking rock.
They won. That's it. They control all the media. They control all the money. They control all the technology. Maybe things will change in 50-100 years, but no adults alive today will be around to see it.
This isn't defeatism, it's fucking reality. There will be no revolution in our lifetimes. And I know that the dumber of you are gonna retort with some version of "Well not if people like you have anything to say about it!" and to that I say, it doesn't fucking matter. Whether I say anything or not will have literally zero effect on the Epstein class having a chokehold on every facet of society. I'm just tired of pretending anything is going to happen when every sign over the past 30 years points to that being an fucking fantasy.
It's an insane take, and let me tell you why. For as long as there have been people, there have been sexual crimes against children. For as long as there has been organized crime, there has been organized profiteering off the bodies of children. For as long as there have been individuals with power and means, there have also been groups of them satisfying their sexual tastes as a collective, using their combined means to both acquire and protect whatever it is they are into. For every group of people engaged in this, there are many more individuals acting alone to use and trade the bodies of the young for whatever they can get in return. For every girl or boy stolen by a group or even just malevolent individuals, there is another one sold by his or her own parents, and even more individuals and groups standing in line for the chance to buy and trade their flesh.
THAT is fact. THAT is the way of the world. THAT is societal and historical reality, not your tunnel vision of this one time and this one place and this one set of perps and how one corrupt justice department has thus made it all okay for every offender everywhere for all time. That's just willfully helpless bullshit.
And not only that, your view focuses solely on just one sort of justice, when in fact there are all kinds of justice meted out regularly, some by nature and some by people, some deliberately and some by accident, some by strangers and some by victims, and most of which happens in such a way that no one ever expected to see until it was all right there.
As for the legal system offering "justice" to the offenders and their survivors, I don't think it ever could and I don't think it will now. But that doesn't mean I'm going to bury my head up the ass of corrupt government obstruction and lack of political will to address it and mope for the rest of time.
The survivor I live with has had to grapple with even the concept of justice, and as someone who has had the actual facts explained to me I'll tell you something else you don't know: the survivor I know doesn't even believe justice exists. Even if this were a perfect world, and the perpetrators and their agents and proxies who trafficked them in their youth were all brought to trial today, that would not give a single day, a single hour, of their life back. It would not lift a single burden off the backs of those already dead because of what was done to them, nor how those evil, sick and malign acts irrevocably derailed that young life for the worse. Other survivors do believe in legal justice, but even they would be the first to tell you it won't give them their youth or innocence or time spent in self-destruction back.
Legal justice would vindicate many survivors, certainly, but not much else. Why? Because for as long as there have been people, there have been sexual crimes against children, and if you think it is limited in any way by stringent laws, you think wrong. Every society has members among them who do these things, both the people that have a taste for it and the people who sell it to them, every single society since time began, and to think they don't is to believe in some ethno-perfection fantasy, like the Russian who told me one time, "We do not have such things in Russia!" (Yeah, right. Pull the other one, lol.)
So it's not about the law. It's about society, and changing how we, as world citizens, speak and write and think of such things. That has nothing to do with one country's corrupt legal system, but hits much more closely at the source of the problem: society itself willing to turn a blind eye to the most perverted among us. And the perps can't shut that discussion down, no matter how much money and power they have. Look around: they're trying hard, and getting nowhere. Why? Because the discussion itself has changed. And why has the discussion changed? Because we, the citizens of the world, are talking about it and not buying the bullshit. And how has that happened? Because of survivors who wouldn't shut up and the people who refuse to be silenced. It's not about the law at all. That is entirely out of the law's hands.
And as someone now old who has seen a great deal of shit, I will tell you with absolute certainty that this situation will not end the way you expect it to, and if you weren't so enamored of your own tunnel vision you'd already be noting just how bizarre some of the turns are that this situation has already taken. I have a lot of unfortunate personal knowledge of this subject, but even I didn't think we'd be at war with Iran over it. The bulk of the files were released on Friday, January 30: not because they were trying to fulfill the EFTA law, but because people were literally pouring out of their homes in rebellion against ICE and it was the only thing the administration had that was big enough to take back the narrative. Jeffrey Epstein, believed untouchable, died in a jail cell. Trump ran a third time just to stay out of jail. Bill Gates and Les Wexner, both thought to be untouchable because of their immense wealth, have had to personally sit through Congressional interrogations; same for a president and senator/ex-Secretary of State. My personal money is on something entirely unrelated -- DOGE -- coming back to bite them all in the ass by the end of the year. More and more truths are coming out of the woodwork in ways that could not be foreseen and cannot be prevented, though the entire weight and will of the US presidency is behind doing just that. ALL of them are sweating balls. Nothing about this has been what the perpetrators of it wanted it to be.
You didn't see any of that coming. And I know you didn't because no one did. So who are you to insist that nothing will change?
Yet we are all changing it, now, collectively.
Every time an individual makes the effort to know the truth of what has happened, such as what happens in this online community and others like it, we honor and help survivors. Look around you: from Gisele Pelicot to Virginia Giuffre, the entire world is talking about sexual crimes in a different way. And even more importantly, as Mme. Pelicot noted, from the abused to the abuser, "Shame must switch sides." And it is.
Every time we personally and individually hold space for real truth to come out, in whatever way it comes out, instead of trying to fill it with our own uncomfortable and self-indulgent whine about how nothing ever changes because we don't like how the subject has made us feel, we honor survivors.
Maybe you're interested in being part of that, maybe you're not. But don't fool yourself that you are some kind of seer for the ages by whimpering about government inaction: for as long as this has gone on, society has mostly turned a blind eye, and whatever actions were taken against the offenders were taken by the local community of the offender.
So know that whatever happens, it already wasn't what you thought, and it won't be what you think, and secrets once thought safely submerged can and do pop right back up through the most unexpected means. Meanwhile, the real justice -- of allowing the deluge of revealed truth to change our collective beliefs and understanding of what these crimes really are and how they damage all of us -- is already happening all around us.
But you won't see it because you don't want to. You're laser focused on the one tiny little part of the whole thing that the perps and their proxies still control, and insisting it will be that way forever, as though the US legal system is The Good Ship Lollipop waiting right off shore, never to hove into view. If you're wise, you'll take your eyes off that mirage of legal justice. It's the lie the perps in power want you to believe, and right now, it's the lie you're helping to perpetrate by posting that hopeless and helpless shit.
Elon Musk is worth 2 trillion dollars. That is after the DOGE debacle. It's not just that I don't see these people facing consequences, it's not just that there is a lack of justice; it's that, if anything, they are being rewarded for their actions. They are more successful now than they were before the Epstein files released, and wildly more successful than when their actions in the files were actually taking place. Even if everything comes crashing down, they have made enough money that they can easily shuffle around and ensure their prosperity.
That is why I say they've won. All the lying, the child rape, the human trafficking, the open corruption; it has made them more successful than they ever could have dreamed. Everything we were taught about the importance of morals and it's relationship to success is a lie.
Thanks for reading what I wrote; I half didn't expect you to, so thank you for that. That said, I agree with you -- except for this. Today, right now, they are more successful than they could have ever dreamed.
But today isn't forever, and this is not over.
Maybe, maybe not. A thing about groups is that they tend to have weak links, and when one falls multiples fall rapidly thereafter.
Imagine, if you will, a post-Trump legal landscape wherein all those files he tried so hard to hide got wikileaked, many of the ones who are protecting him now have turned their backs and the ones who are left are overruled, and every one of his "deals" as well as those of everyone around him are being picked over with a fine-tooth comb. What will Musk have then? A lot of legal bills, a fading star, and not what he craves the absolute most: attention and plaudits that salve his massive insecurities. The money will bleed out too, but that will happen over time.
Imagine being on the highest of the high mountains like fElon, and then sliding down it foot by foot for the rest of your miserable existence, grabbing at tufts of grass and kicking at rocks to get back up to where you will never be again. These exalted positions will disappear as fast as they appeared, and we don't know how, and we don't know when, but they are not permanent.
And that's only one minor possibility: there are still infinite outcomes here, and far too many involved persons for the perps to control or even foresee.
And this:
As written, well yeah. It always was. That's simple disillusionment, if your idea of success is limited to massive wealth. Our own is not, but to be honest the survivor I am with has transformed what I believe about success anyway, as I have watched them grab win after win on a personal level where I honestly thought further progress was doomed. I swear sometimes I think they are a phoenix, rising up from the ashes again and again just because their will to overcome is so immense, but then the days of pure exhaustion and defeat come as well, which is the place your first comment was written from. I am very familiar with it.
Now you've said who the perps are, and today, in this minute, you are absolutely right. Yet the really important question, another one I learned from a survivor, is this: who do YOU want to be? Because in the end, none of the perps matter past their crimes. As far as we are concerned they are over, less than, not worthy. But to your life, you do matter. So do you personally want to be someone who only practices morality for the promised gold at the end of its Johnny-do-good rainbow, or do you want to be a genuinely moral person who is moral wherever they find themselves, doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do and that's just the kind of person you are?
I ask this because, to borrow a metaphor, everyone who is bit by a vampire has the choice of becoming a vampire. Everyone who is abused has the choice of becoming abused. Everyone whose life has been hollowed out by evil has the choice of responding to that by becoming evil themselves.
To me, if you manage to retain your own innate goodness in spite of, and in active battle against, the evil that was done to you, that is no small thing.
And I guess that's what I am asking of you. In your frustration, stop perpetrating the lie that this is all helpless and hopeless and that the only forms of success or justice are the exact ones defined and -- for now, anyway -- withheld by the perpetrators.
The only thing that would make this comment more ironic would be a tipping address at the bottom.