Opinion | The Epstein Conspiracy is the Horror Story of Our Age
The conspiracy theory captures our anxieties about how power really works, but the boring version might say more.
go.shr.lc/40wx1co— Anne Grete (GoogeliArt) đŠđPD (@googeliart.bsky.social) July 25, 2025 at 7:58 AM
Dan Brooks, at Politico — “The Epstein Conspiracy Is the Horror Story of Our Age”:
… As a vehicle for our worst fears about the 21st-century United States, Epstein is our Dracula. You are probably familiar with Count Dracula, the blood-drinking aristocrat with a taste for virgins who is vulnerable only to holy water and garlic. Bram Stokerâs Dracula was published in the United Kingdom in 1897, but the vampire legends on which it was based emerged centuries earlier in Eastern Europe. It doesnât take a degree in folklore and mythology to notice that the count, who leaves his castle only to drain the life from peasants and corrupt young women, and who persists unnaturally from generation to generation until he is stopped by the power of the church, says something about how medieval Europeans saw their titled aristocracy. Dracula is what literary theorists call a big-time metaphor. His parasitic relationship with working people, his rivalry with priests, and his infamous horniness all reflect the anxieties of the late 19th century, when hereditary landowners vied with industrial capital and religious authority for control of Europe, and ordinary people exercised little power in proportion to their number.
The conspiracy version of the Epstein story expresses similar anxieties about power and who wields it in the 21st-century United States. This conspiracy narrative diverges from the factual version in two ways: (1) Epstein didnât kill himself while awaiting trial; he was murdered, and (2) he kept a âclient listâ of wealthy and powerful people to whom he had provided underage girls for sex, which he used to blackmail public figures…
The various Epstein conspiracy theories fill in the gaps between these facts with plausible but unsupported speculation: that Epstein used his private plane to fly public figures to his island, where they engaged in the kind of illegal sex acts he and his clients were rich enough to get away with. The theory holds that along with his Renfield, the British socialite Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein secretly videotaped these sexual encounters to use as leverage over his clients, giving them a shared interest in keeping him quiet that again trumped law and decency when they had him killed before his trial.
This narrative, like the Dracula story, says some obvious things about how our culture understands its ruling class. The most powerful figure in it is not an elected politician or celebrity but rather a financial adviser, a guy whose money and connections make him the real force behind the facade of representative government and impartial law. Although he did business in the United States, his company was headquartered in the Virgin Islands for tax purposes, allowing him to avoid the obligations the rest of us owe our country and communities.
The Epstein conspiracy theory describes two Americas, with two sets of laws and standards: the one most of us live in, where you have to go to work, abide by public morals and wait on hold when you call your congressional representative, and the one rich people live in, where statutory rape is an open secret and presidential candidates put aside their differences to hang out on tropical sex islands. In this world, the law, public opinion and party politics have power over ordinary people, but money has the power to transcend all of them. Financiers run the whole thing, literally and figuratively seducing political and cultural leaders in order to control them, while the various rules we democratically agreed on donât apply to anyone involved â as proven by their successful murder of the only guy with the secrets to bring them down…
The Epstein conspiracy theories are unproven, but you donât have to say the words âhyoid boneâ to read the Epstein story as a fable of how power works in the 21st-century United States. The non-conspiracy version of events says just as much.
In this version, New Yorkâs Metropolitan Correctional Facility, the jail where Epstein died that a court ordered closed in 2021, simply didnât work very well. The plumbing was leaking, and the building was falling apart. The camera system didnât work right. The guards were overworked and understaffed and sat in the break room browsing the internet when they were supposed to be making their rounds.
This story of institutional failure should be familiar to anyone who has been to a VA hospital or worked somewhere that got bought by a private equity fund. Itâs the story of a system that prioritizes low taxes and high profits over how well anything actually works, cutting costs and squeezing wages at the expense of long-term success. In other words, itâs the story of a country that runs according to the interests of Epsteinâs clients: wealthy people who get their money from rents, investments and inheritances and therefore have a material interest in nothing changing, not this month, unless itâs a lower tax rate. Itâs the story of finance taking over the economy and money taking over politics, the story of a system that doesnât do enough to restrain the power of those few Americans who live well without working, even as the rest of us are supposed to rule by majority. In other words, it is the story of vampires, whose existence is defined by exemption from the rules that determine the shape of ordinary peopleâs lives.
That is a story of the world we actually live in, and millions of Americans believe it. The conspiracy theory is just the simpler, more dramatic version, and if it gets the facts wrong â which it almost certainly does â the important parts are still true.
As of this writing, Democrats have joined with mutinous congressional Republicans to publicly demand that Trump release information related to the Epstein investigation. It is easy to identify a political motive among the Democrats, but Trumpâs failure to corral elected Republicans is unprecedented since 2016. If the money power Epstein represents transcended partisan divisions, so too has our fascination with his story. Should Trump prove unable to quash the publicâs interest, and it turns out he loses control of his own party over this issue, of all things, the Epstein legend will have a strong claim to be the defining story of our time.
Supplemental:
what this makes me think about – with regard to right now – is how so much of the information about Trump and Epstein thatâs resonated in recent weeks is old stuff, widely and publicly reported. but a lot of it didnât break through to lots of ppl in their information environments
— Charlie Warzel (@cwarzel.bsky.social) July 22, 2025 at 6:33 PM
this will sound like some defensive posture about the media, which i donât mean it to be. media failings are a part of this. but thereâs a component too where conditions have to be right for things to break through. the media absolutely can set agendas but itâs far from an absolute power
again, not a defense! some of this is that media broadly gets too responsive to audiences and spends too much time giving people what they want that they donât challenge audiences. sometimes the agenda is just a bad/wrong one too. but i think thereâs another dimension here tooâŠ
âŠwhich is not to say that audiences are *in control* or the media has no agency. but if you do this long enough online you can feel how attention moves in aggregate and how hard it can be to make people care about things they donât want to care about. the job should be to counter that, for sure
but i think the salience of old Epstein reporting now is notable in describing how, in addition to agency and responsibility, thereâs this other force that literally every person who wants attention comes up against.
i tried to write about this in November after Trump won but it feels sometimes like thereâs confusion about who is doing what online and who has narrative power and how much.
Bad News: Legacy media must compete against a choose-your-own-adventure reality.
âYou are the media now.â Thatâs the message that began to cohere among right-wing influencers shortly after Donald Trump won the election this week. Elon Musk first posted the phrase, and others followed. âThe legacy media is dead. Hollywood is done. Truth telling is in. No more complaining about the media,â the right-wing activist James OâKeefe posted shortly after. âYou are the media.â
Itâs a particularly effective message for Musk, who spent $44 billion to purchase a communications platform that he has harnessed to undermine existing media institutions and directly support Trumpâs campaign. QAnon devotees also know the phrase as a rallying cry, an invitation to participate in a particular kind of citizen âjournalismâ that involves ‘just asking questions’ and making stuff up altogether…
NotMax
I love the smell of n Open Thread in the morning.
Here’s a welcome find. All 32 episodes of the original series of BBC radio plays of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, courtesy of the Internet Archive.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
John Edwards campaigned on the Two Americas. Okay, he turned out to be a real piece of work but the message? That’s it right there in the quote and how it represents the natural development of things started under good ole Reagan.
prostratedragon
Just posted on the last thread: Joyce Vance, “Rewriting History”. There’s to be a new subcommittee, with subpoena power, formed after the recess to prove that all of đ€Ą’s problems are from a treasonous Democratic conspiracy led by Obama.
Keep those Epsteins rollin’!â
MagdaInBlack
@NotMax: Bookmarked. Thank you.
Suzanne
This is a really insightful viewpoint. I am a big believer in “themes” and “narratives” as having a lot of power over people â much more so than data, facts, truth, and evidence. I detect a widespread sense that American society simply does not provide good lives for many people, and that leaves a lot of those people vulnerable to looking for simple answers as to why.
me
@Suzanne: The irony is that a large number of the people who embrace these conspiracies (and Trump) live very comfortable lives.
NotMax
@comrade scotts agenda of rage
See: Mario Cuomo’s keynote A Tale of Two Cities speech in 1984.
Suzanne
@me: Okay, Iâm going to push back slightly here. Which is not to say that youâre incorrect (you aren’t)âŠ.. more to say that comfort isnât necessarily evidence that people are getting what they want out of life. There’s a lot of emotional precarity out there. I think that there is a lot of loneliness, a lot of scarcity in terms of meaningful time and connection.
Some of this stuff isnât directly measurable the way many of us here would like it to be, but it’s powerful all the same.
Baud
In the 2024 election, Donald Trump was the only candidate that had the long connection with Epstein and was part of the elite ruling class.
I’m glad people are paying attention now, but I think the decade of ignoring it is what tells us more about people’s relationship with the ruling class.
RevRick
@Suzanne: Stories have always held greater sway over human imagination than the things we call facts. Science, in a systematic sense, is really only two hundred years old. And since this is the 100th anniversary of the Scopes Trial, where Bryan battled Darrow, we should note that the struggle between the science of evolution versus the âbiblicalâ view ( and I put that in scare quotes deliberately) continues to this day. Thatâs because Evangelicals and other Fundamentalists insist on the dogma that the Bible is inerrant and infallible. Which to my mind is the gasbag theory of scripture: puncture it with a needle and the whole edifice deflates and collapses.
The difference between science and stories is that science stands outside of us, striving for objectivity, while stories are internal and relational, seeking to make connections between us and the world in which we live.
Baud
@RevRick:
Agree. We don’t tell stories and when we do, they’re not good stories.
ETA
Unfortunately, sometimes a good story cuts against what liberals feel comfortable with.
MobiusKlein
My meta-conspiracy is that various powers plant stories and ideas with the intent of creating conspiracy theories.
Some can be crazy or easily dismissed, discrediting the believers. E.g. the Bush National Guard letter, with Kerning Gate.
Also, themes with real impact, but crazy details, serve to consume the energy and outrage from real issues, and direct the attention to rabbit holes.
All to cement their positions.
Eolirin
@Suzanne: Well that’s almost tautological; the overwhelming majority of people who fall into cults or down conspiracy theory rabbit holes do so because they’re trying to find meaning they lack.
So yeah, if we have a ridiculous number of people who are engaging in cult like behavior or conspiracy theory thinking, something has gone wrong with society as a whole. You can’t get there otherwise. But the ways you take advantage of people with that vulnerability is also specific, and can be counteracted, and if you do that, they just stay vulnerable and don’t become cultists. Fixing the vulnerability helps sure, but so does preventing the cult dynamics from taking root in the first place and that *can* be accomplished via policy.
We did it with the fairness doctrine stuff and the general assault on right wing radio in the post war era. We could get something like that going again and also reign in social media. It’d do a lot of heavy lifting, and it’s much faster than addressing our social issues. I think it’s a prerequisite to doing so even. Trying to fix the root causes in society while also dealing with propaganda networks that are designed to stop you from doing that is too big a lift. We need to deal with the propaganda with a sense of urgency if we ever get back into power. Nothing else will work until we make that less bad at least.
catclub
@MobiusKlein:Â â
This is what the Russian interference does. Create conflict.
Another Scott
Thanks for continuing to report on the media environment, AL. Dean Baker’s “Beat The Press” at CEPR.net is a good resource on this topic as well.
E.g. Everyone Knows Campaign Spending Influences Elections, Why Donât They Understand the Media Do Also?:
(He lays out a sensible, impactful proposal to address the problem later in the piece. But, of course, it takes sensible legislators and legislation to get it done.)
Something something you may not care about
politicsthe media, butpoliticsthe media cares about manipulating you.Relatedly, … Ivy Main reposted at BlueVirginia.US:
There’s lots of stuff happening out there, and most of us are going to end up paying for all the “free” “AI” stuff that the MotUs are demanding that we use and be enthusiastic about. Shoveling more and more money to the plutocrats while accelerating climate change and other very bad things.
We shouldn’t let them bury these expensive decisions under a bunch of distractions. We need to pay attention, and often these days that means doing the work ourselves to find the small news outlets that are covering the important stories.
Grr…
Eyes on the prizes.
Best wishes,
Scott.
Eolirin
@catclub: Russia being neutralized as a going concern would make so many things better in so much of the world it’s kind of ridiculous. They’re the epicenter of the rich’s war on everyone else.
RevRick
@Baud: The political volatility we have experienced since Clintonâs election in 1992 speaks to this. The general public is frustrated with the way things are and how it works, but they donât know how to fix it. Enter the one who claimed he, alone, could fix it.
kindness
Epstein was murdered in his cell. Now who would send people to do that? Apparently there is a whole list somewhere. Who would have to power/capability to infiltrate Rikers Island and kill him? Trump would.
Baud
@RevRick:
IMHO a lot of them are afraid of the fix, because the fix would entail unwelcome changes.
Eolirin
@RevRick: We’re burdened by the fact that “it” does not mean the same thing to Republican voters as it does to Democrats either.
Economic stability, ease in living, a general reduction in how stressful life is are what we’re trying to move toward, and for everyone. But what the other side has lost and is desperately trying to find a way to claw back is the relative status of white men.
And they don’t care about how mean and misery filled their lives are as long as they have that. So we can’t appeal to them on the basis of making their lives better, because “better” means they can beat up on everyone else, not that they’re more comfortable economically, and that’s not something that we can put on offer.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, yet another illustration of the problems lefties (not those lefties) can have to deal with…
Best wishes,
Scott.
Lobo
@RevRick: Part of the mythos is the chosen one, usually male. Â Americans have a strong inclination for the âoneâ. Â It is he not we. Â The chosen one then lends itself to a narrative.
RevRick
@Eolirin: IOW, we tell different stories with different outcomes, addressing different needs. W. E. B. Dubois perfectly described what youâre saying, the psychological wage of whiteness, whereby the poorest, most hard-pressed white man was granted the same status as the wealthy white men who were profiting off their backs.
Trivia Man
@Suzanne: and fear they will lose what they have. My opinion is that much of the fear of black people is really a guilty conscience. If THEY are in charge, THEY will treat US the way WE treated them. It is beyond comprehension that a race/ power group/ nationality/ religion could have that power and not abuse it.
Doug R
@Eolirin:
Vaccine denial 2014-17:
Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate
NRA:
NRA Was ‘Foreign Asset’ To Russia Ahead of 2016, New Senate Report Reveals
COVID:
Putin targets lots of Americans with disinformation. One example? Anti-vaccine groups
War in Gaza:
Russia is trying to exploit America’s divisions over the war in Gaza
Trivia Man
@MobiusKlein: the irony of that example is that the TNG letter was a true story. The woman who wrote the original confirmed that the content was 100% accurate. Â The physical letter Rather based his story on was a forgery. It was being fact checked with VERY specific and true criticism of the errors BEFORE the show was even finished airing. Almost like it was preplanned.
la_caterina
@Eolirin: Agree. This is the harm white folks inflict on themselves by being racist. I think a majority of white people will have to recognize how racism hurts white people before they (or us, Iâm one of them) do something substantial to end it.
la_caterina
@Eolirin: Agree. This is the harm white folks inflict on themselves by being racist. I think a majority of white people will have to recognize how racism hurts white people before they (or us, Iâm one of them) do something substantial to end it.
Trivia Man
@MobiusKlein: Common movie trope is that National Enquirer and such have actual true stories, mixed in with fakes, told in a way to test public acceptance or discredit them as ludicrous. MIB and the Mel Gibson conspiracy movie off the top of my head.
Another Scott
Meanwhile, … Vee repost on Mastodon:
Best wishes,
Scott.
Baud
@Another Scott:
Cute.
RevRick
@Another Scott: Groan
BellyCat
Perhaps we could start a fundraiser for Charlie Warzel so he can purchase a new keyboard with a working shift button and then discover that upper case letters in sentences improves legibility and oneâs desire to actually read what is written?
SO FUCKING ANNOYING IS THIS TOO-CUTE-BY-HALF SCHTICKâŠ
Trivia Man
@catclub: there is a declassified CIA document on how to disrupt protest movements from the inside. One technique is to make every meeting digress into arguing about subtle distinctions in word choice or priorities. Divided we fall.
Baud
@Trivia Man:
tl;dr “Just follow their lead.”
Elizabelle
Good point about Count Dracula as a metaphor for the dead hand of the central European aristocracy. Â Hadn’t really thought about that, which will tell you I never majored in literature.
Bram Stoker described the trip to the Carpathians so well — very much “you are there.” And, he never set foot there. Â The power of traveller’s journals and accounts. Â I guess 19th century people read them as a form of escape as well.
Another Scott
@Trivia Man:
CIA.gov – Simple Sabotage Field Manual (20 page .pdf) (from January 1944)
Best wishes,
Scott.
Trivia Man
@Another Scott: thanks. Page 28 is the relevant bit here. I think there used to be another one from the 60âs as well. Targeted to the CoIntelPro stuff more specifically. But, unfortunately, this one may soon become much more relevant.
BlueGuitarist
Very interesting, thanks AL!
Next hands-off â no kings â good trouble lives demonstration:
August 2, Rage Against the Regime
rageagainsttheregime.org/
Hilbertsubspace
@Trivia Man: Scuttlebutt* was that the idea of creating and passing a forgery to Rather’s team earned Rove the name “Turdblossom”.  Turning a shit situation into something wonderful for the Bush campaign (Dan Rather being fired).
*I have no real evidence.
Other MJS
@Baud:
This.
Stocking up on holy water and garlic; couldn’t hurt.
Steve LaBonne
@Eolirin: Thank you, that is a really important comment. My Trumper neighbors and I both think that shit is fucked up and bullshit. But we have totally incompatible ideas about what the problems are, let alone how to fix them. This is why “economic anxiety” became a punchline- it is not even orthogonal but just totally unrelated to what actually motivates most Trump supporters. And since we can’t and won’t appeal to their actual racial grievances, that can be a very uncomfortable thought for many on the left.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: Â You found it faster than I did.
That link was floating around earlier this year, as resources for thwarting the Trumpster appointees in there destroying government agencies.
Seems like years ago. Â FOTUS has been in office just over seven months.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Trivia Man: Monty Python figured that out decades ago, just watch Life of Brian. Half the humor is based on that principle.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Eolirin:
Agreed but there’s no political pressure to bring that about…unfortunately. Sure, we need to try and do that but that’s as heavy a lift as anything else we’re talking about.
Eolirin
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Political pressure has to come from people, not politicians. So it’s up to us, collectively, to figure out how to generate it
Focusing on data privacy is a big thing that’d defang a lot of the social media abuse. And it’s easy enough to tie this into the corrupt billionares narrative. Misinformation crackdowns are going to be a harder sell, though making Russian influence go away or be lessened would help a ton there.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
I saw a headline that Gen Z are ditching their smart phones for flip phones because they’ve begun to realize being online all the time is the road to misery, not happiness. It’s the first thing that’s made me feel optimistic since the election. The biggest bait and switch of the last couple of decades is that social media is supposed to foster deeper and better connections between human beings. There are instances where it does that but they’re far outweighed by the instances where it does the opposite. It’s no coincidence that people participating in groups – bowling leagues, churches, etc. has declined as virtual connections have grown – starting with the ubiquity of cell phones around Y2K along with cable TV and the internet. I honestly think it’s a root cause of a lot of what has gone wrong over the past decade.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@Suzanne:
Logic, debate and critical thinking aren’t intuitive; they’re skills that have gotta be learned, and our society is doing fuck all to teach them to our kids.
I don’t get the Dracula metaphor, beyond them both being parasites. If anybody fits that role it’s Putin, given the subtext about foreign invaders coming to deliver on England what it had delivered on other nations. But Dracula Daily has made me a big nerd about it, so…
One thing I’ve seen pointed out in de-programming books about cults in particular and authoritarian setups in general is that when they program you they’ll tell you “so and so will try to convince you otherwise”. So they already have their guard up when you try to give them plain spoken facts that contradict what’s been trepanned into their brains.
That’s why narratives are important, because they deliver the information indirectly when the person’s guard is down, so it has a better chance of taking root.
Cheryl from Maryland
Excellent read/interview this am on Paul Krugmanâs Substack with International Relations academic Henry Farrell. paulkrugman.substack.com/p/talking-with-henry-farrell.  At the end of the is a fascinating discussion on the influence of science fiction on the thinking of Peter Thiel, et. al.  Readers of sci-fi elaborate even more in the comments.  Really connects to the theme of this post on the use of narratives.
Eolirin
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: It’s an accelerant for trends that were already troubling and it likely tipped certain things past a breaking point, but it isn’t the source of our problems directly.
It’s just infinitely harder to put out a fire when someone’s dumping gasoline on it.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
I assume you’ve seen the recent documentary “Join or Die”:
joinordiefilm.com/
The Inter-Neighborhood Cooperation group here in Denver screened it:
coloradocommunitymedia.com/2025/04/15/neighborhood-organizations-come-together-to-host-screening-of-…
Sold out. The issue? The people that needed to see it the most didn’t come.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
@Eolirin:
I don’t disagree with any of that but we’ve still not shown those things to be a compelling narrative to lotsa people in order to get their vote much less get that vote, then turn it into pressure on politicians to do something meaningful. If somebody can figure out a way to do that, great. Meanwhile, we’re still faced with an apparatus that makes it very hard to do anything.
I’m channeling my inner doomist this morning.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@Eolirin: I think it’s not the entire cause but part of it. The ubiquity of entertainment started with cable, increased with the internet and email, then social networks like facebook and Youtube etc. hyper-accelerated it. All that coincides with the trend of people joining in-person groups at lower rates.
I’m a GenXer and kind of proof – never been the member of a church or any real coherent non-work organization in my entire life. I wouldn’t describe myself as lonely now, as I’m married with kids and a decent network of friends and acquaintances, but there were times in my life when I’ve been pretty lonely and the fact that there’s always something on TV and if there’s not there’s the video rental store may in some way have contributed to the situation. In some ways it’s a salve because it distracts you from the loneliness but in other ways if everyone else is home watching TV too it breeds loneliness for everyone.
But even if it’s just an accelerant it’s bad enough that detoxing everyone would really help society cohere more which I think would help a lot. Social media makes it so easy to “other” groups of people without thinking twice about it because you never see the group you other getting hurt in real time. It’s all happening at a remove.
Elizabelle
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Â We are so lucky to have grown up before cell phones, the internet, and the constant attention suck.
It makes a huge difference on developing minds.
RevRick
@TurnItOffAndOnAgain: Iâve heard of this guy â a 1st century Middle Eastern Jew â who spoke in parables and stories which subverted the ideology of empire and its hierarchies and violence.
He was lynched by the state.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: I haven’t seen that but have just have read about how loneliness is an epidemic among generations that are extremely online and it’s not hard to put two and two together. But I should watch it.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Part of the reason his supporters are pissed at Trump over Epstein is maybe they see a compelling narrative that feeds into the conspiracy with him actually turning out to be the villain rather than the hero. Who is he surrounding himself with? Creepy tech oligarchs and other rich corporate hacks. They’re exactly the kind of people Epstein cultivated. So it suddenly sure seems like Trump is in the midst of and catering to this “global elite” they’re all lathered up about.
He’s kind of stumbled into being the guy at the center of everything they’ve been told to hate over the past decade. Then he comes along and tells them “nothing to see here” and what are they supposed to think?
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
Nice discussion but I’m going to take my own advice and get off line for awhile. Have a nice afternoon everyone.
Steve LaBonne
@RevRick: And in one of history’s great ironies, in just 3 centuries the religion founded in his name (though certainly not by him) became the state religion of that very empire, which had by then evolved into straight-up military despotism.
MobiusKlein
@Trivia Man:Â â
This does explain a lot – the whole “Life of Brian” Peoples Front of Judea thing, but in real life.
When I wonder where BLM is now, or Antifa, I think of how orgs get eaten from the inside.
Chetan Murthy
This is self-serving bullshit. In 2016 the media -created- a ruckus about Information Security and Buttery Males. It didn’t exist independently of them, b/c there was no there there. Clinton used a Secret Service-vetted server (the same one her husband’s Foundation used) for unclassified emails. The unclassified server at the State Department was hacked and its contents copied; her server was never (as far as we know, and that’s good enough) hacked. The media created that story. It didn’t require anything to be “right”.
In 1998 the media created the story of Bill Clinton’s sexual improprieties and how they were impeachable. And they did it in the midst of repeated scandals of the exact same sort by his Republican persecutors. We all remember Clinton and Monica and the cigar. Maybe we remember Newt and Callista. How about Bob Livingston? Hell, I don’t remember who his paramour was; I don’t even remember if there was just one.
I could go on and on (trans panic, Biden age panic, tan suit panic, birth certificate panic …..). This idea that the Media is just innocent, and are just reporting on the story, is -bullshit-.
Melancholy Jaques
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
Trump voters definitely believe there are Two Americas. One comprised of blacks, Spanish speakers, immigrants, Muslims, LGTBQ+, people who know things, and women who think their so smart and the other comprised of the most oppressed class of people in history: white males.
hueyplong
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Seems almost like we’re near the point at which the MAGAts have to either give up the narrative or give up Trump. The narrative stays in place, and even becomes a bit more revelatory, if Trump turns out to be the chief conspirator. Only a week or so ago, Trump expressly told them to accept the “fact” that there were never any pedos (except for Epstein himself) to hunt in the first place. So he’s telling them to dump the no-longer-convenient narrative.
We’re about to find out which path the MAGAts choose. It seems like the betting favorite in terms of next steps is for Maxwell to conveniently name persons other than Trump and leave Trump out, while at the same time getting a pardon from Trump. Such a scenario forces the choice.
My own wish is that the heavily armed cult would turn on one another with the extreme prejudice they demonstrate in many aspects of their daily lives.
Might solve y’all’s smartphone problem as a happy collateral effect.
RevRick
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Robert Fulghum in his book, Bowling Alone (2000), estimated that 10% of the decline in participation in organized social activities was due to the pressures of work and dual careers, 10% due to suburban sprawl and longer commutes, 25% due to the expansion of electronic entertainment, and 50% to generational change. Members of the Greatest Generation were inveterate joiners. Theyâre children, not so much.
Personally, I would ascribe a far bigger % to pressures of work and dual careers. Weekends are now devoted to housework, especially for women, who were often the backbone of many volunteer roles.
Melancholy Jaques
@RevRick:
And if you listen to him and them, they talk less about fixing things and more about hurting the people they hate.
RevRick
@Steve LaBonne: The Empire embraced us with disastrous consequences.
Suzanne
@Eolirin:
I think loss of status has been a huge destabilizer, for sure.
I think another element of it is just fear of arbitrariness. The human condition is full of so much luck, good and bad, and that is scary. Religions deal with that in different ways, either with promise of an afterlife or karma, etc. But that’s uncertain. Many people were raised with an idea that “the trend line goes up”, right, that life gets better if you can just stick to a basic success sequence. But that isn’t true, you can work hard and be a kind person and even make money and your life can still be shit. Thatâs a hard thing to come to terms with.
Trivia Man
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: they actually have a point. Technically, apart from roads, the baths and aqueducts, wine, sanitation, and civilization – what have they actually done for us? Lets discuss it in more depth before we take the vote.
Josie
@RevRick:Â â
My middle son and his wife are prime examples. They both have high powered, demanding jobs, long commutes, and two daughters (7 and 10). There is no time or energy for joining anything. He and I sing in an Episcopal church choir, and, by the beginning of our summer off, he was thinking of not doing it next year. He seems to have decided to go back in the fall, but it is a struggle.
They are lucky enough to have two grandmothers who are willing to haul and babysit the kids, but many people don’t even have that help. It’s difficult to see how they could add even one more thing to their schedule.
Trivia Man
@Eolirin: in my campaign of 2000 i tried to focus on privacy, specifically in the area of health data – Â no traction whatever on the issue.
TurnItOffAndOnAgain
@RevRick: Yeah, but his staying power.
Suzanne
@RevRick: Agree. And professional careers take much, much more than 40 hours a week. And commutes have gotten longer and longer over time (I work a hybrid schedule and the time-saving is mind-blowing.)
This is part of why I actually believe people who were really freaking out about inflation during the last election. We’re working a lot, we’re really, really productiveâŠ.. and yet struggling to afford things. We canât buy back our time.
Baud
@Suzanne:
Not if you half ass it.
Or so I’ve heard.
Suzanne
@Baud: I whole-ass it. And I have an Oakland booty, so lots of overtime.
ETA: Red beans and rice didnât miss me.
gene108
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:
@Eolirin:
I feel right-wing propaganda took over everything in the 2024 election, which is the biggest influence on how things turned out.
Since Republicans werenât in power, their lies could not be checked against outcomes.
This changes when Republicans are back in power and their are effects that people can see and feel versus the propaganda.
trollhattan
@Baud: Welcome to my world. We contain multitudes.
Captain C
@Chetan Murthy:
Henry Hyde (of Hyde Amendment infamy) was busted for having an affair and called it a “youthful indescretion,” which makes total sense given that he was 41 when it happened.
gene108
@Melancholy Jaques:
Hurting people is what they believe will fix things. This is why the claim Republicans âvote against their interestsâ is bullshit to me. Their interests and what they want society to deliver a vastly different than what I want society to deliver.
Suzanne
@Captain C: Okay, so youâve made me think of something that I had a weird bit of fun with some months back. (This is very stream of consciousness, sorry!) ButâŠ.. I was thinking about the presidential elections of my living memory, and each time except for 2020, the winner was the candidate who seemed to have more what I call “horny energy”. Maybe this is the secret to candidate selection!
(Tongue is in cheek, yâall.)
trollhattan
@Captain C:
I am too a yuut, just ask Strom over there.
Baud
@Suzanne:
You’re saying I have a chance?
BlueGuitarist
@RevRick:
Always appreciate your comments!
minor note:
Robert Putnam wrote Bowling Alone.
Robert Fulghum is the UU author of
All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten,
and other books.
Archon
Obviously racial grievance is a huge part of this but I believe there is another issue with younger men that is not being talked about enough as a political problem. The sexual prospects for men, especially young men have never been worse. There is a combination of factors (dating app culture being the main culprit) but there is an entire social media landscape blaming feminism and liberalism for why they can’t get a date, much less a partner.
We are creating a society of incels with no real prospects of social mobility and with radical political ideas on what went wrong in society. It is going to be VERY dangerous.
Baud
Contains word more acceptable in Scotland than here.
Captain C
@Baud: As long as you don’t reverse your stance on pants.
Wapiti
@RevRick: Weekends are now devoted to housework…
I think it’s been that way for a generation, since two-earner households became the norm. 25 years ago I was working dawn to dusk through the week and every weekend I had to mow the lawn, again, all through the summer. Cramps recreation time.
trollhattan
@Baud: So say we all.
ruckus
I use a VA hospital as my healthcare facility and really don’t notice much if any difference to when I went to a non government doctor. The doctors are area doctors that work part time at the VA. Some are good, some really good and some are pure shit. And the last group never lasts long because the patients rat them out, without a trace of guilt. Last primary I had was a pompous, arrogant asshole who lasted about 2-3 months before the complaints got piled up and he was gone. I didn’t even have time to get to the administrator and complain.
Trivia Man
@Archon: Instead of telling men “don’t rape” and men helping police men behavior… they double down on “false accusations are 100x more common than actual rape!” bullshit. Women are less isoltaed than they used to be and that is a power of its own. No accident the bad guys are trying to make divorce a LOT harder and make it more difficult for women to act independently. Some of the transgender “solutions” are absolutely aimed at making life more difficult for women. Register to vote under your married name? More hoops!
ruckus
@Baud:
That bluesky comment is priceless.
Jay
bsky.app/profile/darthputinkgb.bsky.social/post/3luq3zs6dns2w
Chetan Murthy
I wonder if this is true in all developed countries? Are there developed countries where relations between the genders are not polarizing like this? And if so, what are they doing that helps with that? For sure, whatever it is, it’ll probably be difficult-to-adopt here, but at least, it’d be worth knowing. And if there’s no developed country in which things are OK …… well, as a -man-, I think it means that all people contemplating having children should carefully consider having only female children.
lowtechcyclist
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:Â â
Hmmm…the original “Bowling Alone” essay was from 1995, when email was still a new thing to most of us.
Professor Bigfoot
American conservatism is very little more than the defense of white male supremacy.
Every policy they claim to support is aimed at this; from anti-abortion laws to kicking brown people out of the country to unlimited access to every gun imaginable to killing public education is built around this one thing; and too many of us right here cannot process this one simple fact.
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy:
Not all, by any means, but many. South Korea famously has a ton of gender-based tension. Birth rates are falling worldwide and women become more educated and continue to enter the professional workforce in increasing number.
Saw an interesting graph the other day (donât remember where, sorry no link) showing how the gender gap in voting behavior has grown over the last 40 or so years, and currently is the largest itâs ever been.
Professor Bigfoot
@Lobo: It has to be a straight white Christian man.
Thatâs the entire game, I donât give a damn what other white men have to say about it.
Miss Bianca
@lowtechcyclist: Adam Silverman has made the argument in the past that, notably *except* for the “Greatest Generation” post-WWII era a lot of Boomers grew up in, Americans have not historically been joiners, except for (even for) congregations, so maybe we’re just reverting to type.
Altho’ service clubs like Rotary got started around the turn of the last century, so maybe an American “joiner culture” goes back a little further than that.
Chetan Murthy
@Suzanne: Yes, I’d read about how terrible things are in ROK. I wonder what it’s like in the Scandinavian countries (where, IIUC, women’s rights have advanced more than anywhere else, but also (IIUC, which I might -not-), men perform the greatest share of domestic work of any developed country).
Ramona
@Trivia Man: I have always believed that it’s guilt that drives White anti-Black sentiment. I am dark-skinned but not African-American. I’m Indian. One night in the eighties I was on a date with a White man in a bar in Florida and an artificially smiling White woman was standing at our table before me asking me, “Where are you from? You’re not one of THEM are you?” She’d come over from a neighboring table with a full party eagerly awaiting my answer. My friend, a witty NYC Jew but blond and blue-eyed said, “She’s from Mars!” And I asked, “Not one of who?” I was all of twenty years old and had only been in the US in college for a couple of years, so I’m ashamed to say that after she didn’t move on I told her I was from India and she went back to the table with the information that I was not “one of them” and so they needn’t interfere with my sitting in the bar with a White man. I thought to myself how strange it was that they were willing to accept somebody from so far away yet have such strong feelings against people whom they have lived with for centuries. Until then I had bought the general lie prevalent in the eighties that we lived in a post-racial society.
The majority of my friends in the latter years of my college life in Florida were Afro-Caribbean and they never experienced the subtle disdain I noticed directed at African-Americans.
I gradually came to the conclusion that there is a great deal of guilt in American anti-Black sentiment.
BlueGuitarist
concise summary.
maybe the August 2 Rage Against the Regime demonstrations will provide an opportunity to denounce the
Tiny Repulsive Ugly Mushroom Prick
and many Republican emulators and accomplices
rageagainsttheregime.org/
Steve LaBonne
@Professor Bigfoot: Given that the Trump administration specializes in yelling the quiet parts through a bullhorn, it boggles my mind that some apparently sensible people are not willing to understand this.
Geminid
There’s been a lot of bad news coming out of the Middle East. The news from Gaza keeps getting worse, and that humanitarian disaster is a big topic oin European and Middle Eastern media including Israeli.
There are two promising stories in the larger region though. One is the Turkish/PKK peace process initiated by PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan last December. That process is maintaining momentum, and next week National Assembly parties will choose their members for a 51-member special committee that will draft laws codifying the agreements between the government and Ocalan regarding Kurdish rights. This week ten DEM party officials met with the imprisoned Ocalan to confer on these talks.
The other good story is that Armenia and Azerbaijan are close to signing a peace treaty that would end their 33 year-long war. Middle East Eye posted a good story about this earlier this week titled, “Why Trump is trying to put his seal on Armenia/Azerbaijan peace deal.”
Yeah, the Orange Churl wants to grab some of the credit and the first part of the article deals with those pretensions. The rest of the article gets down to business though, and gives some good background on the conflict including the roles of neighboring powers Turkiye, Russia and Iran.
This link oughta work:
middleeasteye.net/news/why-trump-trying-put-his-seal-armenia-azerbaijan-peace-deal
sab
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: Ha! I am endlessly ridiculed by the family for my devotion to my flip phone for those very reasons.
I have an e-reader for going on line. My phone is just a phone and cannot be used to ignore others while I am dining with or visiting with friends and family. To me smart phones just tempt people to be rude.
Princess
People arenât (only) horrified by Dracula stories. They love stories about Dracula and about vampires. The vampire is always sort of a dark hero. Same thing with Epstein.
Ramona
@Trivia Man: That is indeed the irony. It was a source of great frustration and disbelief to me that the debunking of that one piece of flawed evidence was treated by conservatives and the media as proof that GWB had fulfilled his National Guard duties faithfully and completely when there was so much other evidence that he had not.
coin operated
@Chetan Murthy: No lies detected.
Suzanne
@Chetan Murthy: I have no insight into whatâs happening in Scandinavia. But from what I have read, that gender gap in voting behavior is growing in most democratic countries, and it is growing within every racial cohort within the U.S. There is clearly something happening as the social order changes.
What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?
@RevRick: Those are good points. My commute in the DC area is an hour one way to go 8 miles. Careers take up more time. Also women, yes, are more likely to join things (go to a book club meeting sometime there probably won’t be any men there). And when women’s participation in the workforce was lower they probably joined things as a social outlet – most of them I’m sure needed something other than kids and housework in their lives. Then the men all joined lodges so they had one night where they could beg off of whatever their wife wanted to drag them to that night. Also to drink beer and look at porn.
I had a buddy – GenXer like me who joined a lodge in Champaign IL and said he was the only non-old member. This was 23 years ago. He said that’s mostly why the old timers joined.
Omnes Omnibus
@Princess: Not if you look at the earliest versions. Â Max Shreckâs Nosferatu wasnât an attractive anti-hero, nor was the Dracula of Stokerâs book. He was glamorized later.
Ramona
@Suzanne: Reagan had ‘horny energy’!?
trollhattan
Everything is totally normal. Business as usual. Mind, this is the official The White House Twitter account, not Donny’s pet social media thingie, so part of the official records of the United States of America.
digbysblog.net/2025/07/26/yeah-right/
Once upon a time at a long ago job, a car in the parking lot had a bumper sticker: “Don say bad tings ’bout me” This has become Trump’s credo.
trollhattan
@Ramona: Ask Peggy Noonan about that. Also shoes.
Montanareddog
@trollhattan: I was hoping you would turn up.
I went to see the movie “Fucking Ă mĂ„l” today. I don’t know if you know it or have seen it; it is a 1998 Swedish highschool movie, good enough to be Sweden’s submission for the Best Foreign Picture Oscar that year.
The title refers to the protagonists feelings about their home town.
Except, according to Wikipedia, it was not filmed in à mÄl, but in the nearby city of TrollhÀttan. I presume that is the origin of your nym?
Suzanne
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: An interesting thing I read some years back was about women in my grandmother’s era joining things not just for socializing, but also for the kind of leadership roles and esteem that they couldnât get in paid work. Being the President of the local chapter of the United Methodist Women, or something like that.
I started thinking in 2016 a lot about the concept of respect. You heard more and more people (mostly white men) say that they felt disrespected. You hear lots of comments from people in rural places complaining about urbanites not respecting them. In my view, respect implies a relationship of equality. What these comments indicated to me was more accurately described as esteem.
Respect is equal and thus limitless. But esteem isnât, itâs tied to status. Women clearly wanted to earn themselves some esteem. I think this is the dynamic that is so threatening right now.
eclare
@sab:
When my friend and I went on vacation together in 2015 our rule was no phone use during meals. The phones and her iPad were very helpful in recommending where to go to eat and what to do, though. Like anything else, it’s all about how you use technology.
hotshoe
@Miss Bianca:Â â
I recollect stories of social things like corn-husking parties and barn raising. I think that “membership” in those collective actions would not have felt voluntary to folks at the time — they would know that if you didn’t go along, you might not be able to count on neighbors’ help when your own family desperately needed it.
We still need our neighbors collectively but not it’s no longer an obvious case as all hands together for the barn raising.
Much easier to go one’s own way, maybe for a whole lifetime, than to figure out how to work for the good of all with the neighbor who has “bad taste” in music or whatever.
Suzanne
@Ramona:
Being married to the Throat GOAT?! Yeah. Definitely greater-than-zero on the horny scale.
ETA: Nancy’s been dead for almost ten years, and her legacy consists of being clueless about drugs, and giving great blowjobs.
Ramona
@trollhattan: Peggy Noonan’s voice and manner of speaking induce homicidal impulses in me. Say more about shoes.
eclare
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:
When I was growing up (I’m 55) my mom did not work outside the house. But she did have some social activity every day: church group, delivering Meals on Wheels, classroom aide, volunteering at the art museum, bridge club. That’s a lot of unpaid work, except for bridge club.
hotshoe
@Steve LaBonne:Â â
Seen elsewhere a few minutes ago:
All Republicans are bad. Some Democrats have not learned that all Republicans are bad.
Ramona
@Suzanne:
Are you referring to Nancy’s purported willingness to spread fellatio far and wide when you say Throat GOAT?You did explain that! I should have read further before responding.
trollhattan
@Ramona:Â â
Buckle up. (He’s her boss, mind.)
quotationspage.com/quote/23049.html
Princess
@Omnes Omnibus: yeah, nothing sexy about Nosferstu. But in my lifetime vampires have always been glamorous (or good at counting).
VeniceRiley
I don’t think most regular men care at all about Epstein. What they care about is Cheap Trick “Money for Nuthin’ and your Chicks For Free.” It’s just resentment using morality as a lever. We can all see the porn titles on cable that we don’t buy, dudes. We know. We fought you off. We know.
eclare
@Suzanne:
My mom was a member of UMW. I can’t remember if she had a leadership role, but it wouldn’t surprise me. She was very involved in fundraising.
Omnes Omnibus
@Miss Bianca:  Country clubs, fraternities and sororities, hunting and fishing clubs, and more all developed in the 19th century.  This leaves out political clubs and associations  that predate this country.  LABOR UNIONS.  The Grange movement (about which I once wrote a paper titled âHome, Home on the Grangeâ).  The majority of Americans may not have been joiners, but there were plenty who did.
Suzanne
@Ramona: Oh yes. It was so well-known that lived on until the age of memes. LOL.
Melancholy Jaques
@gene108:
That’s a big part right there, maybe the biggest. It’s why the right-wingers vote for president based on things the president doesn’t actually do. Or the culture war things that aren’t part of what the government does.
Ramona
@trollhattan: Arrrggggh! That was agonizing! She obviously wanted to be a writer of erotica but her dearth of talent made her settle for speechwriting.
Kayla Rudbek
@Elizabelle: and Bram Stoker was Irish so he was also getting in digs at the English and Anglo-Irish aristocracy in my opinion (absentee landlords draining the people dry are something that he would have been very familiar with)
Melancholy Jaques
@Archon:
Are there really that many people who can’t get a date? Or is it just a very loud part of the social media universe?
Maybe try being a nice person who does interesting things and has a genuine interest in other people.
Layer8Problem
@Miss Bianca:Â Â I wouldn’t want to argue with Adam, but:
trollhattan
@Ramona:
Heh. She left erotica for conservaporn on Sunday news chat shows. If really lucky, you’d get Nooners and David Brooks on the same panel! Add George Will and the tele explodes.
Omnes Omnibus
@Kayla Rudbek: I wouldnât go that far. Â Stoker was Protestant Anglo-Irish and the son of a senior civil servant.
Melancholy Jaques
@Ramona:
That was probably the biggest free pass the political media gave to Bush II. It’s a cliche, but can you imagine if any Democratic candidate had had that history?
Ramona
@trollhattan: This gives me a better understanding of her voice, her irritating way of speaking!
Melancholy Jaques
@Kayla Rudbek:
@Omnes Omnibus:
Article discussing what Bram Stoker intended from Time. Considering, of course, the death of the author and all that.
Miss Bianca
@hotshoe: You make an interesting point about group events like barn-raising etc being an example of “neighborliness” as a matter of necessity as much as communion.
In my rural neighborhood, we’re all pretty tight as a group, and we socialize together regularly. Despite political or religious differences, which can be pretty profound (pro-tip: don’t start a conversation that involves guns or abortion), we all draw together knowing that we really do depend on each other for help, whether it’s fixing a car or skid steer or trading eggs for veggies or homebrew or serving as a neighborhood watch for wildfires.
(btw, what is the etymology of your nym? I look at it and think it has something to do with farrier work, but that’s just me.)
Ramona
@Melancholy Jaques: This charming conservative I had only just met for the first time when that whole thing was going on assumed my high degree of education made me conservative and was speaking as though Dan Rather being caught out like that automatically put to rest the entire Bush reneging on his National Guard duties and I thought to myself that does not logically follow. I was astonished to discover in the weeks that followed that the media in general acted as though it did.
The conservative husband of a friend of mine trying to defend the Iraq war after all our liberal predictions came true would say, “Correlation doesn’t imply causation” interpreting it to mean that correlation actually disproves causation. The Right is incapable of elementary logic!
Kayla Rudbek
@Professor Bigfoot: I was about to raise the point that people want to hang onto their money, but then I remembered an article I read on IP Watchdog which was basically rooting for the gen-AI companies versus Disney. ipwatchdog.com/2025/06/27/opinion-legacy-media-trying-kill-ai-innovation/id=189862/
My initial reaction to the article was, âyou morons are rooting against Disney who are the ones who drive our copyright laws to be what they are? Disney who has a worldwide reputation for aggressively defending its IP? Disney who makes more money than their Scrooge McDuck character has? Youâre rooting for a bunch of jumped-up Incel script kiddies who donât actually own that much IP and are losing money hand over fist against Disney?â
But then when you phrase it as âwhite male supremacyâ and Suzanne and others would point out that Disney centers art and female experience (all those princesses, after all) so of course the goddamned jumped-up Incel script kiddies hate Disney, because Disney does art and storytelling, specifically storytelling where the heroine is the protagonist and the center of attention in the story!
Miss Bianca
@Layer8Problem:
@Omnes Omnibus:
And then there’s compelling evidence for the other side of the argument.
kalakal
@Omnes Omnibus:
@Kayla Rudbek:
@Melancholy Jaques:
The first ‘romantic’ vampires were horrible but had ‘possession of irresistible powers of seduction’
The first one was Lord Ruthven in Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819). Polidori was Byron’s doctor and he wrote the story at the same house party where Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein. The character’s based on Byron* who was a complete shit to women, many of whom found him super hot. leaving a trail of abandoned mistresses and illegitimate children in his wake.
Stoker and LeFanu were heavily infuenced by Polidori when they created Dracula and Carmilla
I’m just winding down from doing a biographical lecture on Byron, I love his poetry but consider him to have been a pretty horrible person
*Mr ‘Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know’
Omnes Omnibus
Prime has Wicked for free now. Â I am trying to watch it, but I need to take it in sections. Â People really like this stuff?!
Uncle Cosmo
@Baud: True story – in the course of getting a master’s in applied math at UMBC (1973-76) I took a course in complex analysis taught by a newly-arrived visiting prof from TĂŒrkiye named Sinan Kunt.â (NB the Turks use a modified Roman alphabet so this was his exact surname and not a transliteration hiccup. ETA: The name means “strong” or “durable” in Old Turkish.)
Come the following autumn, the new edition of the course catalog listed him as Dr. Koont. No idea if it was a legal change, or how much hassle he (might’ve) had to go through to make it so (at least in the Untied States), but there you go…ââ
TerryC
I was born for this connectivity and data access but, alas, in 1947. I would love to have had this growing up. But I was weird, reading more than one book pretty much every day and seldom socializing.
Uncle Cosmo
IIRC some years back a horror movie about a hellhole youth hostile was set in the Slovakian capital of Bratislava. What pissed off the locals doubly was not just the black eye it gave to their town, but the fact that it wasn’t even shot there, rather in Prague – so whatever money the production company dropped during filming went into the pockets of their arch-rivals instead of their own!
Tony Jay
To me, Stokerâs Dracula is a sci-fi classic. Thereâs horror, of course, especially the grotesque scene where Mina wakes up to find Dracula in her and Jonathanâs room at the Asylum. That scene alone makes it clear that Stoker had no intention whatsoever of presenting The Count as an irresistible sex-god, and is very Epstein in tone.
 But most of the novel is pure Victorian sci-fi. Taking the mythic monster from Eastern European myth that Le Fanu had partially updated in Carmilla (thereâs your predatory aristocratic snob right there) and asking âWhat if one of these ghouls exploited modern technology and ideas to actually try to conquer the greatest empire in the world?â This is no Croglin Grange revenant shambling from feeding site to grave, this is a monster that wants to be in the modern world and rule it.Â
A vampire using modern information technology to study its prey and plan their downfall? Thatâs sci-fi. A vampire experimenting with loading earth into boxes to create multiple mobile gravesites and free itself from its crypt/prison? Thatâs sci-fi. A vampire using front companies and the western legal system to arrange safe travel across running water and property ownership to avoid the need to be invited. Thatâs sci-fi.
Dracula should be up there with War of the Worlds as a groundbreaking updating of old ideas with a futuristic spin. The fact that itâs also pretty terrifying in parts is an extra.
frosty
Balloon-Juice and the Oxford Comma. We’re being manipulated!!
WTFGhost
At one point, I remember discussing with an author that, wouldn’t it be funny if the Vampire Curse was empathy, and the lords of the manor said vampires were horrible evil creatures who destroy all that is good on this earth, to prevent a revolution of super-powered peasants who were all “blood-kin” and could sense real evil.
@BlueGuitarist: Oh! So it’s Robert Fulghum who wants my head after the postings about “once you pull the pin, on Mr. Hand Grenade, he is no longer your friend!”
(What? You think you’d want to hold off on important safety lessons like that for *first grade*?)
I remain of the opinion that any guy who sees women as people, first and foremost, can get laid fairly frequently, and with affectionate partners, willing to trade their good times for your good times, unless you’re into popular kink. If you’re into a popular kink, like spanking, light bondage, light master/mistress and servant/slave play, come to the sex positive side, there are people eager to try all the flavors (sometimes including the vanilla), and a cornucopia of experiences to have.
@Suzanne: I have heard of South Korean woman swearing oaths to have sex with no men, to marry no men, to bear no man children, and… well, it’s not unlike having heard of “political lesbians” – women who were fine having sex with men, but chose to have sex with women, only.
@What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?: rest well!
Kayla Rudbek
@WTFGhost:
@Suzanne: yes, the South Koreans call it the 4B movement
Kayla Rudbek
@kalakal: and Byron was the father of Ada Lovelace the mathematician who worked with Babbage to program his Difference Engine.  Ada was raised by her mother who pushed/encouraged her daughterâs mathematical talents, in reaction to her being the daughter of Lord ByronâŠ
Martin
I think the first amendments protection to intentionally lie to the public is a big part of the downfall of this country. I think people have an instinctive ‘if it was a lie, why would they be allowed to tell it’ sense, and yet, that is a feature of the system that there is an affirmative right to lie to the public. That dissonance at the very least make us all uncertain of what to believe on even trivial things. Epstein and what I was commenting on in the RFK threads remind me of a movie trope I think of as ‘Chekov’s irradiated lizard’ – the scene at the start of the film of the small incident left unaddressed that over time metastasizes into the monster that crushes our cities. That we leave these small untruths to sit there because who cares if people think sugar is worse for you than corn syrup, or whatever, but when enough of them accumulate the risk isn’t that people make poor nutritional decisions around sugar, the risk is that the public will distrust the entire health system, or justice system, or media ecosystem, and so on.
I’ve said in the past that I think many of our problems are that the constitution and the foundations of our government are not up to the task of addressing modern problems, and this is an example of that. To use a term of art – the first amendment is necessary but insufficient to a well functioning society.
Archon
@Melancholy Jaques: If you are not a physically attractive male getting a date is very, very difficult on these online dating apps. Most men have a 95-99 percent no match rate, there is data on it. Now it’s a golden age for attractive and “high value” men, they have options that would make a medieval king blush but for everyone else it’s a profound and humiliating experience for single men on dating apps.
Trivia Man
@VeniceRiley: Ahem – Dire Straits is the source of those lines.
kalakal
@Kayla Rudbek: Yep, she’s the subject of my next lecture. She never knew Byron, she was born in 1815 and Lord Biro fled the country in 1816 after her parents divorced
Martin
I dunno. I suspect it’s more along the lines of not knowing the cost to be paid for an egalitarian society. But I will also note that every opportunity we’ve had in this country post WWII to use newly created national wealth, etc. to create a more egalitarian society was handed to the rich and corporations instead in increasing amounts. So even if you asked middle class whites if the cost should be paid, they would answer ‘with what money?’, because those resources had already been taken off the table.
Substitute in, jobs, opportunity, etc for money there.
Martin
@Archon: Right, but at the same time that’s not real. We see this also in the job market and in college admissions (my area of expertise).
In college admissions at my institution we went from 20,000 applications for 3,000 seats to 140,000 applications for 5,000 seats. From a denial rate of about 30% (in the beginning we took all qualified applicants) to a denial rate of about 85% (because we needed to whittle the pool down to fit the number of seats we had).
So, did it get 4x harder to get into college? No. Mainly because another trend was happening which is that students were applying to more schools. There weren’t 7x as many students trying to get in, there were about 2x as many, but they were applying to WAY more schools, which created WAY more competition, but at the end of the day not that many students were being denied admission to one of their schools.
Same thing happens when it gets way easier to apply for a job – way more people apply for each job, and the rejection rate shoots through the roof, but the balance of applicants and jobs doesn’t actually get worse.
The high rates of rejection feel bad, but there’s still someone out there to date – but with more competition, you might need to expand who you are willing to date. (I had this in my favor in college where there was a 7:1 female to male ratio (half the women were lesbians because unbeknownst to me in the 90s it was considered a safe school for queer students) but it meant I got to hook up with girls who were WAY out of my league and if they wanted to hook up, they had to settle for me.
Dating apps are structured around women having agency for a very simple reason – men are WAY more dangerous to women than women are to men, and out of self-protection, women demand to have the agency of choice. You cannot run an online dating service the other way around – no women will ever sign up for it ever. Like, ever. And so online, you have this inversion of the traditional dating dynamic where it was the man who courted the woman because he had economic agency and she didn’t (she couldn’t even hold a credit card in her name), and due to a social problem of men being collectively unable to not fucking rape and murder women, that dynamic has had to invert and men have not  adapted. It does not help that grifters have come in and told young men to reject the thing that women say they are looking for and instead focus on the thing that women say they don’t care that much about. This is a simple problem of refusing to listen to the people you are trying to build a connection with.
The structural solution for young men is to reject dating apps and insist on a space where both parties have equal agency and therefore both parties will need to ‘settle’ at equal rates.
Martin
@Melancholy Jaques: There are. What’s hard to gauge is the degree to which good faith efforts have been made to address that problem. If men only want to date women that look like porn stars, then yeah, they’re going to have trouble finding a date. And conversely in some cities there are women who won’t date a man that earns less than them, even though in that city women outearn men. That’s a mathematical equation that does not balance – some of those women are going to have to accept men that earn less.
One of the structural problems that is often pointed to is the lack of third spaces in US society – places outside of work (where dating is discouraged) and home (where its REALLY discouraged) where people across race/class/employment categories can interact. The British pub is usually held up as an example – it serves a local community who can walk in and interact as equals, so the banker and the plumber are in that space equals. This is some people get jobs because they make connections there. In these spaces everyone tends to know everyone else in a 1-2 degree of separation sense, which provides safety to the community and also allows for people to meet and interact and for dating partners to be found either directly or indirectly (I know a guy I think you’d really like).
We don’t have those in the US, hardly anywhere apart from church – which young people hardly go to any more. They are economically inefficient spaces that we do not tolerate. The closest are things like bars that do events like trivia night. It’s why college is where a LOT of people find partners and the moment they leave college it feels like tumbleweeds, because it is. You’re not going to meet a partner sitting in a drive through lane.
chemiclord
@comrade scotts agenda of rage:Â â
The thing about blaming equity firms for everything is that it gives consumers a pass. Like they bemoan how [x] company has been eviscerated, then get all angry when you note that [x] only got taken over because customers took [x] for granted.
I remember talking to a friend who was irate that Toys R’ Us was closing, that it got “ruined” by private equity firms, and I finally asked, “When was the last time you shopped at Toys R’ Us?”
He didn’t like that question. Probably because the answer was “About ten years ago.”
Private equity isn’t exactly buying up Microsoft after all. They aren’t taking over Apple and dragging it into the abyss. They buy up companies that are already dying. They effectively put the finishing blow on companies that are already bleeding out.
This isn’t to say that private equity firms current methods aren’t a problem, mind you. But the idea that things would be okay if they weren’t there seems… misguided.
Eolirin
@chemiclord: Private equity is an accelerant for decaying economic structures, just like social media is for community and informational structures.
The rot is a lot deeper than either but both make resolving the underlying problems much harder and makes the damage much worse. The shift from corporation to having to provide a public good to being entirely about shareholder returns was a big one in this context.
schrodingers_cat
@comrade scotts agenda of rage: Biden did his best to reverse the austerity mindset of DC, he backed unions, followed Keynesian macroeconomic policies but got little credit for it from the professional left.
Anne Laurie
Dead thread, but… If you read Kitty Kelley’s bio, Nancy’s mother basically sold her to a rich, ‘respectable’ pedophile in return for marriage. (She promptly abandoned her daughter — again — and her new husband, leaving 8-year-old Nancy to act as ‘Daddy’s’ stand-in social partner.)
Reagan’s father was an amiable drunk, and his mother was… probably BPD, certainly a narcissist, and also a neighborhood disgrace.
Reagan’s first wife (Jane Wyman) couldn’t give him what he wanted — she had the gall to be more successful in Hollywood than he was. Aspiring actress / hanger-on Nancy Reagan, on the other hand, had spent her entire life cultivating the wide-eyed adoring stare for which she would become White-House-famous. (And also, of course: literally sucking off older men.)
What Ronnie & Nancy offered each other was the ‘perfect’ folie-a-deux fantasy life… but it didn’t hurt that Nancy’s rich stepdad Dr. Davis, and his California friends, had the means to revive Reagan’s fading acting career by getting him into TV.
And this, I believe, was a tipping point for the GOP: A ‘photogenic’ white guy with a much younger, adoring wife… based on generational pedophilia and other peoples’ money. Trump is the (hopefully) final efflorescence of this particular sick subliminal fantasy…
martha
@Trivia Man: And also my most favorite line: philosophy is useless, theology is worseâŠ
hotshoe
@Miss Bianca:Â â
probably too late with this reply, but yes, nym is from the forged-hot-steel horseshoes (not mine, personally, just honoring the craft).
Martin
@schrodingers_cat: How do you conclude that? I mean, we fucking named it ‘Bidenomics’. That wasn’t an insult by the right like Obamacare, that was the name the professional left gave to Biden’s economic vision. We didn’t even fucking do that for Obama.
dnfree
@Trivia Man: Thatâs how I remember it, too. Â I knew several men who escaped being drafted by joining the National Guard in the later 1960s, before the draft lottery. Â They had to go through training for months, and serve for various periods of time over several years, but in those days it was virtually a guarantee of not being sent to Vietnam. Â GW not only was in the NatGuard, he was in an elite branch. Â Most of those able to avoid the draft this way had some influential contact or connection. Â It was not like being in the National Guard during the Iraq War era, as some people mistakenly assumed it was. Â The basic story of GW was true.
Geminid
@Martin: When she said “professionsl left,” I didn’t think SC was talkng about you or me or the other people here. I think it was fairly obvious that she was talking about the Sirotas, Turners and other Democrat-adjacent left-wing voices– the Jerkobin crowd. And my own observation is that they would not give Biden credit for anything.
dnfree
@RevRick: Back in the day (last century), executives and higher-level staff at many corporations were either required or strongly encouraged to join groups like Kiwanis, Rotary, United Way board, and other social and charitable groupsâto network, and also to be seen volunteering in the community. Â Iâm not sure when that changed. Â Heck, we ordinary office and factory workers were encouraged to donate to United Way, and to do a day of volunteering to help some social service agency or elderly person.
Citizen Alan
I think there is a strong correlation between creative genius and being an absolutely shitty person. That’s why I don’t dunk on Harry Potter fans even though the author is utterly vile.
chemiclord
@Citizen Alan: Well, what I would say is that there is strong correlation between creative genius and profound mental issues. Being a shitty person because of those issues is still very much a choice.
no body no name
@Eolirin:
Wrong. The center of the rich vs everyone else is in California and New York. And the worker drones there prosecuting it are all educated socially liberal good Democrats who voted for Harris. And that war is why those states are donor states. Until that truth is confronted head on and those six figure income jobs are wiped out there is nothing we can do about it. We are the fucking problem. Not racism, not sexism, it’s liberals.
Spc
@Suzanne: yes, it is everywhere in the West in varying degrees, fed in part by the outsized reach of US influencers. Covid was another accelerant for younger males.
Spc
@Eolirin: case in point: buying distressed companies is one thing but buying viable but perhaps not highly profitable businesses because of the value of underlying assets such as real estate is completely another.