[juleiie]

In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity.

This HST quote seems severely outdated by now. They have already been caught, committed all the sins of stupidity and some more. All of it to the clapping mob of people who yearn for some kind of social revenge.

And it’s happening everywhere these last years.

Who could possibly know we have so many wife beaters?

[arttaboi]

Modern spin: In a closed society where everybody is guilty, the only crime is not being in power.

[wolttam]

the only crime is being poor.

[skrebbel]

HST = Hunter S. Thompson, an American writer and journalist.

[mikkupikku]

I assumed that was the ethos of High Speed Trading.

[JohnCClarke]

Well, the wives.

But women are generally ignored in our society.

[tombert]

I've said it a million times, but I'll repeat it.

There are a lot of conspiracy nuts like Alex Jones, and the amusing thing to me is that there is a conspiracy of elites who are exerting large amounts of unelected control of the government, and who are actively working to keep you down to enrich themselves, and it's not even a secret.

We call these people "billionaires", and at this point they don't even bother hiding it. Trump had a streamlined bribery system with his stupid cryptocurrency and being in charge of a publicly traded company while in office, Musk bought his way in so he could be in charge of a new department and start defunding any organization that has ever tried to investigate him, and there are hundreds of examples.

Instead morons like Alex Jones will go on the radio and blame lizards or something, and then his listeners will take that and then start blaming Jews or Mexicans, while cheering on the actual conspiracy that's making their lives terrible.

[ikr678]

The only war is class war, but those at the top spend a lot of money creating new culture wars instead to keep us busy.

[ml-anon]

Not to mention trafficking and raping children

[graemep]

I have long thought that the greatest harm conspiracy theories do is to distract attention from actual problems, and to discredit attempts to draw attention to them by labelling them all as conspiracy theories.

Other things are used too. A lot of the attention given to culture wars issues distracts attention from other issues. Its not just the right either. It allows people to pose as left wing while actually not being left wing on economic and business issues which are the traditional definition (the labour party in the UK - to be fair the left within it does seem to the reviving now).

With the Epstein affair, the shock people feel about sex crimes is being used focus just on those to avoid investigating the corruption in the US and other countries . The UK's two high profile arrests, of former Prince Andrew, and the far more important Peter Mandelson (former cabinet minister, for EU Commissioner, very close to multiple Prime Ministers) have been for passing on sensitive information but this is almost certainly a tiny fraction of what was going on.

[juleiie]

Some people just don’t want to hear it no matter what. Not because they are unusually stupid or inherently evil but because they feel severely hurt by the societal changes and left out. Anything that gives a hint of hope of reverting things to be the way they were is justified and no price is too high.

They can steal as long as they are our thieves.

To get through to these people you have to validate their deep fears. Not just say - shut up, you are stupid, vote for me.

[wartywhoa23]

Jones in a shill, plain and simple. A puppet of said and unsaid billi/trillionaires.

Discredit By Association is written all over his yelling face.

[enaaem]

From the Epstein files we know that these billionaires are exactly behind these conspiracy guys like Qanon. It is called controlled opposition.

[GorbachevyChase]

Be the change, my man. Try to make a podcast. I think it will eventually make sense why nobody who is a threat and also famous.

[isoprophlex]

Not a week goes by without me thinking "what would HST have made of THIS fresh bullshit, if he were alive today"

[codechicago277]

The only human to authorize a nuclear attack…