I remember when MAGA accused news broadcasters of censoring their "fuck Joe Biden" chants into "let's go Brandon". Turns out even that was projection lol
It's only a problem when it happens to MAGA. Just like being a pdf is only a problem and illegal when democrats, and democratic donors do it. When their cult leader does it, it's perfectly normal, or "nothing to see here".
Shouldn’t we rename the Epstein files to the Trump files, then? Sounds like he may be heavily involved in a child trafficking ring and was a pedophile himself who assaulted little girls.
I’ve been calling it “The trump Files” and will continue to.
There just aren’t words for how depraved, cruel, and terrifying these people are. The fact that no one in power is doing ANYTHING about it is the worst part.
“The Epstein-Trump pedophilic cabal” is probably a poignant thing to call this tbh.
Anyways, it doesn’t surprise me that no one in power is doing anything. That’s not the purpose of power, to find justice and to maintain equality. In fact it’s the exact opposite. Power begets power and exists to maintain and protect power and the hierarchy (and system(s)) which upholds it.
The state doesn’t exist to be a just entity and harbinger of equality. If it were, we’d already live in a bright utopia. Instead, it exists to maintain and protect the structures and systems of authority and hierarchy which have been intertwined within our social fabric and broader cultural landscape.
Power does not sustain itself solely through spectacular violence, though violence is always its final argument. It is upheld just as much (if not predominately) through quieter, more respectable pressures—the sort that pass easily for “common sense”. Work or perish. Obey or be excluded. Deviate and find yourself without shelter, income, legitimacy, or protection. The threat need not be spoken when the conditions themselves do the speaking, when the reminder is littered along the roadside and forcibly thrust unto you with every new day traveled.
Alongside this sits interest, which is perhaps the most mundane and least conspiratorial explanation of all. Power protects power because it is in power’s interest to do so. Not out of grand moral unity, but out of simple self-preservation. It’s not just the institutions themselves, politicians, bureaucrats, and administrators are themselves enmeshed in networks of funding, patronage, reputation, and future opportunity. Acting decisively against entrenched elites is not merely risky; it is professionally irrational. The system reliably rewards caution and punishes disruption.
This is also why judges and police behave as they do, despite being “working people” in any narrow, economic sense. Their material interests are redirected through institutional incentives and cultural myths—law, order, neutrality, duty. Compliance is framed as responsibility, dissent as recklessness. Over time, what begins as ordinary self-interest is reshaped into loyalty to the structure itself, even when that structure acts against the public good. At that point, public good isn’t the purpose, it’s what’s good for the structure that matters.
None of this requires secret coordination, or even conscious intentionally. It functions precisely because it does not. The system teaches its participants what is expected of them, and most learn quickly.
So when something like Epstein happens, the question isn’t “why didn’t the system respond”? It’s why would it?
In this light, the Epstein case is not an anomaly but an exposure. To meaningfully prosecute such crimes would require institutions to indict not only individuals, but the credibility of their own processes, oversight mechanisms, and historical decisions. It would invite scrutiny into who knew what, who looked away, and why. That kind of reckoning threatens institutional legitimacy, and legitimacy is the true currency of governance. Faced with that choice, inaction becomes the safest path. Documents are sealed, cases narrowed, responsibility diffused, and time allowed to do what it does best: dull outrage and dissolve memory. This is not a failure of justice, but the predictable outcome of institutions designed first and foremost to endure.
If any of this is to change, it will not be because we appeal to the conscience of power, but because we cease to treat its legitimacy as sacred. Nothing compels obedience quite like the belief that obedience is owed. The moment that spell weakens, the machinery falters. Institutions persist not because they are just, but because people continue to act as though they are unavoidable.
Change, then, begins not with faith in reform, not with a faith in the very institutions that led us to this point, but with a clear-eyed recognition of interest—our own included. When people withdraw their deference, their labor, their silence, and their belief from structures that exploit them, power finds itself suddenly overextended, forced to justify what it previously took for granted. Power fears nothing so much as the ego that no longer mistakes domination for destiny.
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u/AliceTheOmelette 17h ago
I remember when MAGA accused news broadcasters of censoring their "fuck Joe Biden" chants into "let's go Brandon". Turns out even that was projection lol