Who could have guessed that The New York Times’ “conservative” columnist would be a pompous idiot, except anyone who’s ever seen the in-house conservatives at ABC, NBC, CBS, The Washington Post, etc., etc.
I was tricked into reading a column by “conservative” Ross Douthat by its title, “Conspiracies Are Real. The Theories Can Be Traps.” It’s a point I’ve often made myself. Of course, there are conspiracies. Political parties are conspiracies, businesses are conspiracies, sports teams are conspiracies.
Ross Douthat
Other than noncontroversial conspiracies, like political parties, business enterprises and the fact that Big Tech was censoring conservatives like mad from 2020 until Elon bought Twitter, the silly conspiracy theories involve vastly complicated, man-behind-the-curtain, super-secret operations — like UFOs manipulating humankind, Obama being the mastermind of everything the Democrats do, “they” (the media? the FBI?) orchestrating the assassination attempt on Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, and of course, the Jews.
So yeah, there are loads of real conspiracies, it’s the wacko theories that take things off the rails.
But that’s not Douthat’s point. His point mainly seems to be to remind me why I don’t read him.
He strikes the classic pose of the “reasonable” conservative. While he may not agree with Times readers, he sure doesn’t agree with those right-wing kooks, either! Everybody’s wrong — but he will explain what’s really going on from his perch on Mount Common Sense Olympus.
Except what Douthat calls right-wing “conspiracy theories” are classically known as “facts.” And what he posits as the Reasonable Middle positions are completely nuts.
He says the right-wing conspiracy theory on Jeffrey Epstein is this: “MAGA activists and influencers have long focused on the possibility that he ran a sex ring for wealthy men.” Nonsense, he says, driven by “ideological impulses.”
Ross, darling, I don’t know where you’ve been, but that is the irreducible minimum of what Epstein was doing. Anyone who cared to know the truth has known it since 2006, when the Palm Beach police released the results of their investigation.
Since then, we’ve gotten truckloads of court rulings and sworn affidavits, confirming what Douthat calls a “conspiracy theory.” Here’s a tiny scintilla of the evidence for the crazy idea that Epstein was running a sex ring for wealthy men:
— In February 2019, after a full briefing with supporting affidavits, Federal District Court Judge Kenneth A. Marra ruled that Epstein “and all of his powerful friends” committed “hundreds of federal sex trafficking crimes” in Florida. “In addition to his own sexual abuse of the victims,” the court found that “Epstein directed other persons to abuse the girls sexually.”
— A legal complaint on behalf of Virginia Giuffre, probably the single-most credible witness against Epstein, stated that she “was regularly abused by Epstein and was lent out by Epstein to others for sexual purposes.”
— Among Epstein’s “powerful friends” was Prince Andrew. Douthat may have his doubts, but the royal family sure doesn’t. Deeming Andrew’s response to the pedophilia accusations somewhat wanting, the erstwhile prince was stripped of his royal title, his security detail and all government funding.
— Another Epstein pal was French modeling agent Jean Luc Brunel. In December 2020, Paris Prosecutor Remy Heitz charged Brunel with committing — I quote — “rape, sexual assault and sexual harassment on various minor or major victims and of having in particular organized the transport and accommodation of young girls or young women on behalf of Jeffrey Epstein.” Before he could be tried, Brunel was found dead in Paris prison cell, an apparent suicide.
What Douthat describes as “the possibility that [Epstein] ran a sex ring for wealthy men,” is a solid certitude. It’s the only thing we know for a fact about his operation.
But, unfettered by ideological blinders, Douthat, this noble standard-bearer of the truth, says the real explanation of what Epstein was doing, was most likely the following:
“Suppose, though, that the crucial secret is that Epstein was a brilliant financial criminal, adept at moving money for shady international operators, and that his sexual habits were tolerated because of those talents, not because he had sexual kompromat.”
Oh yeah, that’s totally believable. Except to anyone who knows anything about financial markets.
“Shady operators” have two basic moves: 1) making money at someone else’s expense, through deceit or fraud; and 2) money laundering, or “moving money.”
The first one we would know by now. Financial crimes always unravel, usually pretty quickly. Every single detail of Bernie Madoff’s operation, for example, was known at least a decade before the “investors” (marks) figured it out. By now, it’s been 20 years since people started asking questions about Epstein’s money.
Douthat’s second idea is even more absurd. Does he know what it means to “move money”? You “move” money — launder it — by taking criminal proceeds and putting it into something legit. Wherever Epstein’s money was coming from, it all ended up in his pocket — paying for his mansions, his private planes, his artwork, his private islands, his 14-year-old girls, his Harvard professors, and hisMicrosoft founders, etc. That’s not “laundering,” it’s “pocketing.”
Douthat’s purported dismantling of the right-wing “conspiracy theory” on Russiagate follows the same pattern: Poo-poo the blazing truth and push the insane.
Apparently, Douthat thinks it’s NUTS to imagine that CIA Director John Brennan (admitted liar about the CIA’s hacking of Senate staffers’ computers), National Intelligence Director James Clapper (provably perjured himself about the NIA illegally collecting data on millions of Americans) and FBI Director James Comey (posts pro-Trump assassination images on Instagram), would twist the intelligence to make Trump look bad. Where’d you wacko conspiracy theorists get that?
Instead, Douthat’s theory is that the real culprit was the all-knowing, highly skilled, Russian superspy operation that deployed its magic to swing an American presidential election by taking out as much as $200,000 in Facebook ads!!!!
Just when you think Douthat’s column can’t get any stupider, he comes up with something even stupider: His belief in UFOs.
And you wonder why Times readers think conservatives are simpletons.
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