United States | News & Politics

The problem is that the audience of lowest common denominator doesn't really care about the dismantling of the post-Cold War world, nor do they understand it. If anything, they prefer the Cold War era because that's the era in which "they made things like they used to" and "the minorities knew their place."

So if you're a news organization, even one that did care about truth and decency and not just profits, how do you get those people's attention? The terminally online MAGA/QAnon doesn't seem to care that he's losing Medicare, or that his children's schools are being gutted, or that his elections are being rigged by billionaires. But he does care about theatrics and drama and outrage. That's what drew him to Trump in the first place. So you run the Epstein/Trump story because nothing else seems to work.

Or... you run it because you know it guarantees clicks and ad revenue, because MAGA/QAnon are the most gullible drooling imbeciles on the planet. Either way, the loss of US democracy is merely taken for granted. It's already happened, it's not news anymore.

Like the firings that were on hold but are now going through.

I'm mostly talking out of my ass, but I wonder if the access to copious amounts of hard drugs and alcohol that comes with money plays some part in it. Seeing if there's anything to substantiate that idea, here's a review of prior studies on the subject: Substance misuse and substance use disorders in sex offenders: A review.

The following is an excerpt from Table 1. History of substance abuse among sex offenders: retrospective file research:

(No, I don't know what "child molesters without pedophilia" means.)

It basically continues like this. You can read the study yourself, but there does appear to be at least some correlation with drug and alcohol abuse when it comes to child molestation. Speaking anecdotally, I have also heard that cocaine use can lead to engaging in riskier sex acts that might not be appealing while sober.

I have no experience using cocaine, but being drunk has never made me want to sexually abuse children, so I suspect there must be some other personal defect which leads to these kinds of behaviors, with drugs/alcohol reducing inhibitions. Obviously, drug and alcohol use does not explain disgustingly rich people being disgustingly horrible creeps on its own, but it might be in the mix.

I think it's a bit of both. You need to have low morals or be a narcissist just to become Uber rich since it's inherently exploitative to make that much money. Then once you have the money you are protected from most things because you can pay money to make it go away. So then you start getting into weirder and weirder things, or it just becomes more of your focus since you can afford anything you want.

Like the saying goes "Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely"

Thats what happens when you have a king instead of a president.

A little of both.

You tend to do what the people around you do. If I'm in a religious person's home I'm going to act differently than I would in a rowdy bar.

I think you dropped this:

/s