Trump, Clinton, and Epstein

Here’s what clear about Jeffrey Epstein: he has had many plausible accusations of participating in underage sex trafficking, the kind of accusations that would have landed anyone else in jail for a long time, but got him a light sentence because he has powerful  connections.

Epstein has very clear ties to Trump, even more to Trump’s appointee Alex Acosta, who negotiated a deal with Epstein no one else would have gotten. Epstein, in that deal, admitted to sex trafficking. In a later interview, he was clear he had no regret about any of it. (footnote on page nine)

So, as a culture, here’s what we should be arguing: Acosta should resign, and Trump should grovel for appointing him.

Instead, we’re engaged in some kind of weird “Well, Clinton is implicated, so Trump is innocent.” Or, the even weirder, “Trump told someone that he knew Epstein was a child rapist, and so banned him from Mar-a-Lago,” so Trump is in the clear.

The people who are making those arguments would never consider those good arguments if made by Clinton supporters.

And that is what is wrong with our current political world. That’s how far too many political arguments play out. We make arguments we think would be terrible if made on behalf of out-group political figures. We look at every issue from within the frame of “this is a zero-sum contest between us and them” and then only consider evidence that shows we are winning that contest, or they’re losing (which means we’re winning). In that world, if you or an in-group political figure is shown to have done something wrong, you can wipe the slate clean by showing that an out-group person did the same thing.

[Thus, the complaint that SJW are engaged in identity politics is sheer projection. People all over the political spectrum are reasoning from their identity. Not everyone reasons that way, but every position has someone doing it–some have lots.]

When I say this to people supporting Trump, I often get the response, “Well, liberals do it too.”

That would be proving my point.

(It’s a bit more complicated with people who don’t like Trump, because they aren’t all liberals—many of them are self-identified conservatives, some are progressives or Marxists (who hate liberals), some are anarchists—being opposed to Trump does not mean you’re “liberal”. Supporting Trump doesn’t necessarily mean you’re “conservative.”)

Imagine a world that was not people hiding in their enclave throwing reasons at one another like bricks. Imagine a world in which people held all groups to the same standards. That is a world in which people preferred one group over others, but in which simply being in-group didn’t exempt someone from prosecution, let alone criticism.

In that world, anyone with ties to Epstein would be investigated fairly and thoroughly, and we would see anyone who argued anything else as enabling a child molester.

This isn’t about Democrats v. Republicans (to be honest, no issue ever really is); this is about people who enabled Epstein in his sexually assaulting underage women. It should be non-partisan.

We can have a world in which Americans agree that anyone involved in underage sex trafficking goes to jail. Or we can have a world in which we decide that accusations of involvement in underage sex trafficking on the part of our political figures shouldn’t be fully investigated, but their involvement is criminal.

I’d like the former.