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The first rule of being a conspiracist is that you were never wrong. No fact, no evidence, can ever be admitted to have undermined in any way the fantasy you have told. A conspiracy fantasy is forever treated as fact.

The second rule is that having the secret knowledge of the conspiracy makes you special. You are wiser than those naive yokels believing what the system and the man tell them. Your cynicism against the system is proof of your wisdom. This reinforces the first rule because you can never be the naive one, and as such, your adherence to the “truth” is further evidence of your intelligence.

The third rule is that you are always on the side of the angels. The system and the man are lying to everyone for their own terrible and evil purposes. The conspiracy fantasy “exposes” the truth that the powerful are hiding, and your fight to tell this “truth” makes you heroic. You aren’t an idiot who accepted a fantastic tale of space lizards invading the world—you are the archetypal hero freeing your fellow people from that space lizard tyranny.

These three rules have trapped Trump in a snare of his own devising, and one that he may find terribly difficult to escape.

It is an accepted legal fact that wealthy financier Epstein, with the assistance of at least one person, Maxwell, groomed and sexually abused young girls. It is a matter of record that when faced with legal repercussions, he first received suspiciously lenient treatment and, following that, died in prison before a more serious legal hammer fell upon him. It is also a historical fact that Trump and Epstein enjoyed each other’s company for a number of years, as did numerous other wealthy and politically powerful people. These facts are not conspiratorial fantasy but are its foundation.

The fantasy is that there is a vast and organized group of selected powerful people who engaged with Epstein in the sexual and ritual abuse of children. This cabal includes some of the world’s most influential people, who all happen to be opposed to the political posturing of the conspiracists. Epstein’s lenient treatment is taken as evidence of the shadowy cult’s power and not simply the sad fact of life that in modern America, the rich are never held to the same accountable standard as the rest of us.

Trump, and his surrogates, fed this conspiratorial fantasy to energize their base of voters against the Democrats. The more the base believed, the more energized they became, and the more likely that Trump and company would be swept into power. The fact that it is fantasy would be irrelevant.

Except the rules say otherwise.

The conspiracy cannot be untrue, and Trump supporters know this. It has to be true, and he and his squad of righteous people were going to expose all of it.

Only they didn’t.

They tried to sweep it under the rug. The released information fell far short of what they promised. They lied about it, and for the first time, Trump told them lies that they did not want to hear.

The conspiracists are on the side of the angels. They are defending and saving children by exposing the “truth,” and that is why this story will not die like so many other examples of Trump’s blatant corruption. For the base to accept that there is nothing there and move on to something else, they must accept that they were the naive fools and that they never were on the side of the angels. People don’t work that way—hence the trap.

Maybe Trump will still squirm out of it. Like Clinton before him, he’s proved an evolutionary marvel at escaping political pitfalls, but every story comes to an end, and maybe, just maybe, this is his.

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I hate the term ‘Conspiracy Theory’ as it gives far too much credence and plausibility to these insane and utterly batshit fantasies. In science a theory is something well established by test and falsification as being a model accurate to the data observed as to how the world functions. Conspiracists take falsehoods, unsupported preconceived notions, mixed heavily with idiosyncratic worldview to construct elaborate fantasies justifying the thing that they already want to believe. Once let loose and infecting minds conspiracies are undying, immune to facts, logic, and all evidence.

The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, antisemitic propaganda invented by the Czars of Imperial Russia has been debunked repeatedly but the popularization of the fantasy of a global plot by the Jews to control the world remains as potent and deadly today as it did 122 years ago when that despicable tract was loosed on the world.

Humanity achieved a technological marvel in 1969 when men walked on the surface of the moon and returned safely but within a few short years, fueled by cynicism propelled by both politics and entertainment Americans began believing in serious numbers that the entire endeavor had been faked. Again, fact and evidence are futile in killing the fantasy and people continue to believe it to this day.

Andrew Wakefield, a British physician, for monetary gain published a falsified study in 1998 linking vaccines to autism, again facts and science were unable to dislodge this destructive meme from the public consciousness and now adherents to his fraud control the levers of America’s medical system.

All this brings me to Trump and Epstein. That Jeffrey Epstein, a New York financier and socialite, rubbed elbows and traveled extensively with celebrities of entertainment, commerce, and government is an accepted fact. It is also a fact that the man was responsible for years of sexual assaults on young girls and women but suffered little criminal punishment for his convicted crimes. It is almost certain that his wealth and connections allowed him to avoid serious consequences for his actions. That others participated either in deed or knowledge of these heinous actions is a reasonable supposition but is not in evidence at this time. His death by suicide propelled more conjecture that others acted to ‘silence’ him but again this is not in evidence at this time.

The lack of evidence has never stopped; in fact, it is a growth medium, for conspiratorial fantasies and those did indeed erupt around Epstein.

Trump and his supporters cultivated these fantasies, fertilized them with their own bullshit, and weaponized, quite effectively, them against their political opponents. The tale grew and grew until to the believers, who accepted with a religious fervor, just knew, even without any actual evidence, that every high democratic person must somehow be entwined in the terrible affair.

Now, with the people who pushed and fed the flames of this firestorm of accusations occupying the very positions that have access to all the ‘hidden evidence’ Trump and his circle want the fantasies to stop. His name is too often correlated with Epstein’s, and it would be best if everyone would just accept the official report and move on to other matters.

But conspiratorial fantasies are forever. They are immune to fact, evidence, and logic surviving no matter the arguments arrayed against them. Those who have held these things about Epstein as ‘truth’ are not going to be dissuaded from their religious convictions by a press release or two.

Will this break Trump’s collation? Will enough followers cease to follow that he loses his ability to the threaten Republicans into submission? I don’t know and neither do you. “Always in motion is the future.” I do know this, he can’t extinguish these flames. Neither those on the right, convinced that Democrats held satanic orgies with these children, or those on the left, certain that Trump raped little girls alongside Epstein, will ever be moved from the convictions that define their worldview.

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On December 4th, 2024, the CEO of United Healthcare, Brian Thompson, while walking out of a hotel in Manhattan was shot and killed. The alleged assassin Luigi Mangione has lain in wait for the corporate executive to depart the hotel and killed him on the sidewalk leaving behind shell casings with the words ‘delay, deny, and depose’ inscribed upon them. Five days later Mangione was arrested and faces charges for the apparently politically motivated murder.

Following the assassination Mangione and his alleged actions became the focus of online activity with ironic supportive memes going viral and people debating the ‘justification’ of the murder due to the nature of the victim’s business. For some, Mangione became a sort of modern folk hero for murdering the ‘right’ sort of people.

I shall not get into a healthcare debate here, UHC is a company I have detested for more than a decade, and I am well-aware of the failings and evils of for-profit healthcare.

In the early morning hours of June 14th, 2025, Democratic state politician John Hoffman and his spouse were shot in their home, the spouse suffering gunshot wounds while shielding their daughter from the assailant. A short time later, the leader of the state’s Democratic Caucus Melissa Hortman and her spouse were assassinated in their home by an assassin posing as a police officer. The next day, Vance Boelter was arrested and charged with the murder. Once again memes began being shared online, dark, ironic and dismissive of the victims, with some coming from Republican Senators.

These two alleged assassins, though from very different ends of the political spectrum, are, in effect, the same. In both cases these people felt that the ‘injustice’ they perceived justified their murderous actions. That they held a moral authority to deal in death and judgment against whom those that they ascertained to be their enemies. If you celebrated one and condemned the other, even in mocking ironic memes, you are part of the problem. You are part of the culture that nurtures, encourages, and provides the justifications for such horrid actions.

Political violence is a terrible beast, never dead and always seeking to escape the chains of civilization do not saw at those links for your side’s benefit; it never pays off well in the end.

This Saturday, June 14, 2025, Washington, D.C. the capital of the United States, will witness an insulting parade of military machinery not unlike the displays seen from the Union of Soviet

Pathe

Socialist Republics to flatter and fluff the ego of a malignant narcissist. Oh, officially, this is a celebration of the United States Army, established on this date in 1775. (Well, actually that was the Continental Army, which was disbanded, and the U.S. Army was established June 2, 1784.) This unseemly projection of power which actually signals a deep and crippling weakness is all about the most unfit man to ever serve in any post of the United States, Trump, as that date is also his birthday.

How do I know this, beyond the simple fact that this man’s desperate neediness makes it manifestly clear to any objective observer?

We had no parade on March 27th in celebration of the founding of the U.S. Navy, nor is one planned or even discussed for October 13th the anniversary of the founding of the Continental navy. The same is true for July 11th or November 10th, the founding dates for the Marine Corps. No party for those services which do not share a date with the weak man’s birthday.

The office of president is currently occupied by a greed, vain, immoral man who has surrounded himself with grifter, kooks, and bootlickers, and our nation and the entire world will suffer for years to come because of it.

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It’s not uncommon when a relationship has become terribly strained and stressed for one of the parties involved to suggest that they ‘start over’ but such a step, short of a fantastical memory wipe, is impossible. We carry our histories inside us and the weight of all the past words and actions press us inevitably forward. This is also true outside of the romantic realm.

There are some current and former members of the Republican Party who long for a return to the party that they remember, often this is from a very distinct and fenced off recollection of the party, usually centered on the ‘Reagan Revolution’ discarding the party before that time. Such dreams are pure fantasy. The population, both inside and outside the party, carries the history of all the words and actions and hurt that has been visited upon this nation and this world by the GOP of the last quarter century. You cannot unwind history. This is not a malfunctioning iPhone that can be restored to factory settings and reloaded with fresh applications.

The people killed and injured by handing the nation’s health systems over to a conspiratorial nutjob cannot be made whole again. The international relations cannot be mended with mere words. The brilliant minds denied entry or chased away will remember their treatment for decades and will remain wary.

A startling fact I learned this morning is the number of physicians looking to leave this country. Over the same period in 2024, 71 doctors applied to become licensed in Canada, for 2025 that number rose to 615! Now we are the subject of a global ‘brain drain’.

If a massive health event were to take the principal instigator of our nation’s pains from this mortal coil the damage will have already been done. The dark period of rebuilding and constructing of a new Republican Party would be shortened but not eliminated. There are terrible times ahead and the next century may not be America’s.