FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 5 days ago
I’m afraid that pedophilia is prevalent everywhere. We only hear about the rich people more because journalists take an interest and rich people think - not unjustifiably - that money is a good protective shield and therefore take more risks.
In this hypothetical scenario, if all these people were pedophiles or turned a blind eye to it, were assembled at the same time, and all punched their ticket to a delightfully shitty afterlife, I don’t think the problem would be gone. There will be willing successors standing by to fill all of these positions. And it would be a stroke of luck if the waiting successors were suddenly more moral beings.
bluemoon@piefed.social 5 days ago
so it’s systemic and needs cultural activism at grassroots level to truly change the landscape?
i suppose death of such people only inspire such grassroots change after all, not actually changes as much by itself- like directly.
FriendOfDeSoto@startrek.website 5 days ago
There are certain crimes you will never be able to fully eradicate. You can only try to get them down to the bare flawed human minimum. For pretty much as long as there are laws and courts, killing in cold blood has been illegal. But to this day humans kill humans in cold blood. All we can do is make good laws, prosecute perpetrators, and increase awareness. If the latter is what you mean by grassroot change, then sure. If we stay within the hypothetical, I don’t think a mass accident (like an accidental gas leak) or mass murder (a gas leak made to look like an accident) of the whole bunch on Epstein island would bring about a cultural change. My personal fear is that this whole exposé of this particular case only served to make the rich fuckers even more careful when they do it, not do it less.
At the root of the Epstein case is money. Billionaires should not exist. The quality of legal representation should not depend on one’s bank account. If you want a grassroot cause, tackle that one.
bluemoon@piefed.social 5 days ago
that’s a realistic personal fear.
i do mean grassroots change as in people being the change to see in the world. while i’m certain this needs protection from any sabotage (see american interventionism) i know it needs to be an empathic core of pacifism at heart where conflict doesn’t entail violence and competition doesn’t entail polemy.
i wonder if money is the impossibility, since money existed before writing allegedly, or if military power to disrupt is the impossibility- arms dealing is a supply that creates demand historically (broadly speaking, with emphasis on the automated arms deals that ignited cold wars and FOMO all around while warmongerers profiteered- hence divesting oligarch-amounts of money to begin with.)