Just about perfect, as conspiracy theories go

Just before my trip I finished the book Southernmost by Silas House. It opens with the Cumberland River flooding and (of course) I thought a lot about the recent flooding in central Texas. I had thought the Cumberland River would be near the Cumberland Gap in western Maryland, but it actually flows through Nashville and much of the length of Tennessee. The main character is Asher, pastor at a rural church a ways downriver of Nashville. He and wife Lydia have a son Justin, nine years old. In the flood Asher and Justin rescue a gay couple, Jimmy and Stephen. Lydia won’t let them stay at the house where Justin can watch them. Justin is described as sensitive, carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders. Lydia wants to toughen him up and Asher sees no need to do that. Asher is also thinking about his brother Luke, who is gay and was run off by their parents. As a critical moment Asher turned his back on his brother. Jimmy and Stephen try out Asher’s church but the congregation condemns them. Asher realizes he has been preaching judgment when he should be preaching love and acceptance. But the congregation understands God through judgment and refuses Asher’s change in direction. Even Lydia rejects the change; her upbringing is too strong. Asher sees he is losing everything but does not want to lose Justin. He also doesn’t want Justin to learn the judgmental attitudes of his mother. He ends up doing something rash and stupid. The rest of the novel is about how that plays out. While a gay couple is a catalyst to the story, they make only a few brief appearances. Luke appears and only briefly mentions his lover. So this isn’t a story about gay people. It is about straight people coming to terms with how gay people are treated. And about coming to terms with the nature of God and with making a mistake. I enjoyed this book. Asher genuinely cares for Justin. My Sunday movie was Maestra. I had heard of this movie a year ago and only recently found it on Netflix. The name is too similar to more popular shows for good internet searching. The competition La Maestra was established to promote female orchestral conductors. The first one was in Paris in March 2022. This is a documentary about five of the women contestants – Mélisse, originally from Paris, but currently with a conducting job in Iowa City. Tamara from America. Anna from Krakow, Poland and the daughter of a conductor. Zoe from Athens. We get to know the lives of these women in their home countries. We don’t meet the fifth one, Ustina from Ukraine, until just before the competition begins. That’s understandable because the competition was one month after Russia’s invasion. The only one of the judges I recognize is Marin Alsop, a female conductor what had made a big name for herself in Baltimore and does a lot of mentoring of female conductors. In documentaries like this I wonder how they select which contestants to feature. Do they pick a few and hope they win? Do they pick the ones that agree to have cameras in their faces? Do they follow several more contestants than appear in the film and then include the ones that do well? The women talk about issues that face female conductors. The first is the reason why the contest was created – 97% of conductors are men. They wonder whether pregnancy will put a career on hold for a few years and would they be able to take a gig wile breastfeeding. They are told their gestures are too big or that they should smile more and they wonder whether a male conductor would be told the same thing. At the end we are told the contest allowed this woman to be offered this opportunity and that woman was able to take that job, a step up from what they did before. They also said the contest created a community of fellow conductors, less interested in competing and more interested in collaborating. In last Thursday’s pundit roundup for Daily Kos Chitown Kev quoted Charlie Warzel of The Atlantic discussing the MAGA revolt over the refusal to release the Epstein files.

The Jeffrey Epstein saga is just about perfect, as conspiracy theories go. At its core, it’s about a cabal of corrupt billionaires, politicians, and celebrities exploiting children on a distant island—catnip for online influencers and QAnon types who have bought into any number of outlandish stories. Yet for such a dark conspiracy theory, there’s a great deal we know about Epstein’s life and crimes. There are unsealed court transcripts, flight records, victim statements. His black book has been reported on, giving the public access to names of people Epstein is thought to have associated with (though some have said they don’t know why he had their information). There’s real investigative reporting, much of it from the Miami Herald’s Julie K. Brown, who spoke with detectives and victims and provided a fuller account of Epstein’s alleged sex trafficking and the attempts to downplay his crimes. Brown also credits the police officers who continued to press on their own investigation as federal officials seemed to wave it away. The case is real and horrifying, which gives life to all the wild speculation: If this is true, why not that? ... Whatever happens next will be a defining moment for Trump. However strange it seems to measure the Epstein conspiracy theory against, say, the president’s approach to tariffs or his bombing of Iran, this is the stuff Trump’s mythology is based on. Trump has positioned himself as an outsider who shares enemies with his base—namely, elites. It hasn’t mattered to his supporters that Trump is an elite himself; the appeal, and the narrative, is that Trump wants to punish the same people his supporters loathe. In appearing to bury the Epstein list—which, again, may or may not exist—by calling it a “hoax” and pinning it to his “PAST supporters,” Trump is pushing up against the limits of this narrative—as well as his ability to command attention and use it to bend the world to his whims. If Trump and the MAGA media ecosystem can successfully spin the Epstein debacle into a conspiracy theory that helps them, or if they can make the story stop, it would suggest once again that his grip on the party and its base is total: an impenetrable force field no bit of reality can puncture.

And if they can’t successfully spin it? David Wallace-Wells of the New York Times discussed what is known about the Epstein mess, which is quite a bit. Then:

Almost none of this information has satisfied those seeking it, or those seeking still more. And really, how could it? As with so many contemporary conspiracies, the known picture is expansive and uncomfortable enough, with abundant detail arrayed like so much proverbial red yarn. But the logic of paranoid thinking demands ever more cycles of disclosure and running epicycles of analysis. (This is among the many ways it is an extremely good match for the age of social media.) And what is missing in the Epstein story isn’t exactly more information — it’s more meaning. Is there more to see here, beyond the striking fact of a suspiciously wealthy and curiously well-connected sex offender? Or perhaps less, with Epstein turning out to have been more a shady influence hustler and savvy estate planner than some world-historical man of mystery? We get a classic conspiracy theory, we’re often told, when disempowered people try to make sense of a disordered world, seizing on a story that gives them a comforting sense of control, at least as analysts of an otherwise overwhelming system producing improbable or inscrutable outcomes.

In the comments of Sunday’s pundit roundup are a good cartoon and meme about the Epstein mess. The cartoon was from Marc Murphy. It is titled “The Real Epstein List” and shows a dozen female faces with black bars across the eyes to prevent identification with their names and ages, which range from 14-16. Murphy added:

This is the list. I hate that it falls to me to make this as clear as I can. Every sex act with these children was rape. Rape. It’s a moral and leadership and political problem, yes. But before all of these, it was a rape.

Murphy said it because, alas, the media sources I’m exposed to (and I can’t imagine any other source doing any better) ignore the underage girls that are why this is a scandal. A meme posted by exlrrp shows the nasty guy and Epstein, each with an arm around the waist of a woman. The text says, “Wow I can’t believe Epstein killed himself before realizing it was all a hoax.” That sentence is attributed to Elon Musk. In today’s roundup Greg Dworkin quoted Dan Pfeiffer of Message Box discussing why he changed his opinion on the nasty guy’s involvement in the Epstein case. The full article explains his reasoning.

Trump’s behavior is so bizarre, so unhinged, and so counter to his short-term interests that the most likely explanation for his actions is that Trump either believes or knows that he is mentioned in the Epstein files in ways that are even more damaging than the blowback he is getting for not releasing the files. This is, of course, speculation. There is no evidence that Trump was an Epstein “client.”

Congressman Brendan F Boyle, writing in The Bulwark:

The question that will soon be before my party is: Should we provide our votes to fund the government—and they need our votes—knowing that Republicans may very well undo, on a strictly partisan basis, any deal we’ve made with them? I certainly don’t speak for every Democrat, but I believe we must be prepared not to do so. No one wants a shutdown, but agreeing to a deal that can be revoked whenever Trump demands it isn’t responsible. It only teaches the other side that they can do it again and again. Guided by Russell Vought, Donald Trump has set out to seize complete control over federal spending. Meanwhile, the administration is already impounding—that is, illegally withholding—billions in congressionally approved funds for public services and infrastructure across the country. We’re already in a slow-motion government shutdown. We cannot allow this blatant power grab to continue. We need to ask ourselves: Is Congress going to defend its responsibility to set and safeguard federal spending? Or are we just going to roll over?

I think this is an issue because a budget vote can be filibustered and a rescission vote to cancel previously approved spending can’t be. If I have that right then my earlier writing of a couple months ago about the death of the filibuster was not accurate. Reporting during the passage of the Big Brutal Bill also implied the filibuster is still alive. In last Friday’s Cheers and Jeers column for Kos Bill in Portland, Maine quoted late night commentary. Here’s one:

"This really highlights Trump’s dilemma. He’s desperate to tamp down the drama, but his entire career has only taught him how to heighten the drama. You can’t spend your whole life as the messy b*tch from a reality show and then suddenly say, ‘Can we have some decorum here, please?’ ” —The Daily Show's Jordan Klepper

Brian Mann of NPR went to Santiago, Chile to explore the country’s low birth rate, much lower than in the US, though the US rate is dropping and many of the reasons are the same. The birth rate in Chile is 1.6, well below the 2.1 rate of a stable population. Many social systems – the economy, labor market, and pensions – are based on a new generation big enough to replace the older ones. These systems will have problems if the new generation is notably smaller. Some of the reasons for the low birth rate: Younger women want fewer kids or don’t want kids at all, seeing them as a burden and great expense. Or they are delaying having kids until later in life after they are well established in their careers. To them being a mother means a loss of freedom and a loss of body autonomy. The number of women earning college degrees and entering the workforce is rising. They are rejecting the idea that the purpose of a woman is to give birth to and take care of children. They have almost erased teen pregnancy in the last 20 years. Immigration could relieve some of the problems of a low birth rate. But Chile is following the US opinion that immigration, even from elsewhere in South America, is seen as an invasion. They fear what makes the Chilean national character will be extinguished. Of course, conservative political leaders decry the loss of the mother-child bond. They propose policies to encourage women to have more children. The influential Catholic Church also preaches motherhood. Women respond by saying the government and the Church will not change their decision.