The crisis of credibility faced by Western elites as they try and fail to patch over the bursting abscess that is the Epstein files release heralds something much more profound: potential systemic collapse.
I’ve been grappling with these issues for a bit, most recently last week in my post “The Mask of Unreality Slipping?”
The Disorienting Impact of Massive Document Dumps
Like many of you, I’ve been overwhelmed attempting to process the most recent Jeffrey Epstein document dump.
A personal cognitive crisis of credibility if you will.
I came across an explanation for why my normally trusty yellow waders weren’t keeping the filth off my feet from a somewhat unlikely source, the Pop Apologists podcast.
The show, hosted by sisters Lauren and Chanler, is not normally the sort of content I engage with.
But their discussion of the psychic trauma engendered by the latest Epstein files pointed me to a Threads account with an interesting insight.
FWIW, this is the first time I’ve seen any content of interest on Threads.
From Daphne Delvaux, Esq.,Trial Attorney aka The Mama Attorney:
View on Threads
I’ll paste some other key parts of Delvaux’s argument as straight text since the Threads embeds are so cumbersome:
Courts understand that when the brain is flooded with horror, your system gets hijacked by the primal brain. You go into hypervigilance, rage, obsession, and collapse. We have a name for this: reptile theory.
Reptile theory is a trial strategy built on this premise: if you can bypass the cognitive brain and activate the primitive survival brain (the oldest/reptile part of the brain), you can control outcomes without ever persuading on facts or law. This strategy is not allowed at trial.
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The onus is placed entirely on the reader to make sense of chaos. There are random redactions that force the brain into constant guesswork. You have to deduce, infer, fill in blanks. This keeps the mind spinning, searching, looping.You may have assumed they are sloppy. They are not. This is a known strategy.
The most ruthless corporate defense lawyers fight cases this exact way. Disorganized document drops, and endless data with no roadmap. Both high-volume but also evasive. It’s at the same time too much information, but also omits the most crucial information.
The strategy has two predictable outcomes.
1) You become consumed. You deep dive. You push to get more information. You stop sleeping. It takes over your life. Your focus narrows until there is nothing else. Gradually, they frack all of your life force. They keep you locked in an endless energy loop in their sick mind games. You become one of their victims.
2) You disengage completely. You decide it’s too much. Too confusing. Too overwhelming. You walk away. It implodes from your exhaustion.
Either way, they win.
While Delvaux may be correct that POTUS Trump’s Attorney General Pam Bondi is employing a known trial lawyer strategy — one that aligns perfectly with Steve Bannon’s “flood the zone with shit” tactic for overwhelming the corporate media.
Psyoper Delude Thyself
Unfortunately for Bondi and Team Trump, the POTUS infamously gets most of his information from cable news.
Thus when Bondi floods the media zone and glitches the MSM, she is further disorienting her boss.
And, as Michael Tomasky pointed out at The New Republic, the more tightly bubbles are sealed shut, the bigger they get, and the bigger they get, the louder they burst:
On a personal level, Donald Trump is becoming more and more unhinged. He rambles, he stumbles, he fumbles. We don’t know whether he actually pooped himself in that one much-discussed episode in the Oval Office. But the fact that it has been discussed as something that might have happened is bad enough. And even if he retains full control of those evacuations, it’s the ones coming out of his brain and mouth that remain more concerning.
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Politically, the bubble in which he lives is becoming further and further removed from reality. His penchant for self-aggrandization, always prodigious, has lately reached the point of insane self-parody.
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He has come to believe that the American people actually want what Immigration and Customs Enforcement is doing where it’s been unleashed. They do not. He has created for himself a world in which he never hears a negative word about himself. This is not a plea for him and his people to wake up—they won’t, and I’m well past hoping they will. It is rather an observation that this too is one more Trumpian assault on democracy. He thinks himself answerable only to those who adore him and think he can do no wrong—in other words, to people who require of him no answers at all. The rest of the country—that is, the majority of the country—doesn’t exist.
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He is of course preparing to steal the midterms. Pundits and talking heads on cable news should dispense with even wondering whether he will. Of course he will try. And if he can’t pull it off, he and the GOP will challenge every result they possibly can in ways that you and I can’t even imagine.So here we are. Mentally deteriorating, unpopular, incompetent, corrupt, out of touch; and yet, in—for now—unshakably firm control of power, completely beyond any democratic accountability. And when that accountability moment comes in November, he will blatantly do whatever he can to erase and reverse it. So this year is going to be far worse than last, at least for a while.
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But he can’t shut out reality forever. No one can. And the longer he manages to do so, the more thunderous and unequivocal will be the comeuppance. The Trump bubble will burst, and it’ll be like the Red Sea in The Ten Commandments, crashing down on Pharoah’s head.
Hopeful words from Tomasky, who ends by advising “patience and rage” which is so useless as to nearly ruin the whole thing, but let’s keep moving.
Reps. Massie and Khanna Don’t Stop
The bipartisan co-sponsors of the Jeffrey Epstein Transparency Act that triggered all these Epstein document dumps are calling BS on the DOJ’s redactions and naming names. Per The Guardian:
The Democratic congressman Ro Khanna said on Tuesday that he and his Republican colleague Thomas Massie had forced the justice department to disclose the “hidden” names of six wealthy men they say are “likely incriminated” by their inclusion in the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.
In a post on X at lunchtime, Khanna, of California, named the six as Salvatore Nuara, Zurab Mikeladze, Leonic Leonov, Nicola Caputo, Sultan Ahmed Bin Sulayem and Leslie Wexner.
Wexner is the billionaire founder of Victoria’s Secret. His extensive ties to Epstein – the late convicted sex offender and disgraced financier – were exposed in a lengthy New York Times investigation in November.
Bin Sulayem is a billionaire businessman and real estate developer from Dubai – and brother of Mohammed Ben Sulayem, the head of FIA, the body that governs the world’s motorsport championships, including the prestigious Formula One series. Email exchanges between Bin Sulayem and Epstein have been previously reported.
The other four men named remain mysterious, for now.
Khanna and Massie refusing to play along with the DOJ’s half-measures are just one of many problems the flood the zone strategy is running into.
Flooding the Zone Doesn’t Work on Info Swarmers
One problem with Bannon’s flood the zone with shit tactic is that only the corporate media is frozen in place by the explosions of filth, the swarms of social media feed on it like dung beetles. Per Politico:
…we are witnessing this through the prism of an entirely new phenomenon — an internationally crowdsourced scandal, unfolding in real time across your social media feed. In many cases, citizen journalists have been nearly as capable as professional journalists and investigators at finding insightful documents within the millions of DOJ files and bringing them to the fore.
Parlor games: Washington being what it is, the universal access to raw investigative data has given rise to another new fad. People are also scouring the Epstein files for references to their bosses, their corporate rivals, their political enemies — even their own families. Gossip about some of the highest-profile revelations had been swirling in D.C. circles for days in advance, uncovered by the associates of those involved. Plenty of people are hunting not for criminal behavior, but for the intrigue.
“We are all searching the files: for colleagues, competitors, clients,” one well-connected PR operative tells POLITICO’s Daniel Lippman. “It’s shocking to see what some of the most powerful people in the world say to each other in private — and it’s also shocking how many folks we know are mentioned in some capacity, even completely innocuously.”
Politico then points to an important find in the Epstein files by The Miami Herald’s Julie Brown (who isn’t representative of the MSM, she’s a throwback to the Watergate era of reporting) about Trump and Epstein.
Politico concludes that Brown’s piece “ultimately seems to corroborate Trump’s longstanding insistence that he had fallen out with Epstein long before any police inquiry, and cut all ties. It’s important to note that the figures who have so far been damaged by this latest tranche of documents are those who chose to maintain links with Epstein after his 2008 conviction for soliciting prostitution from a minor, like Peter Mandelson, Britain’s now-former ambassador to Washington.”
Which brings us to our next section, how are the Europeans reacting to the latest document dump splashing across the Atlantic and getting all over them?
European Leaders Frozen in Place
The redoubtable Simplicius addresses the European failure to respond to the current crisis of confidence and goes on to explain why they can’t.
Interested readers should also see Yves’ piece on “The European Veal Pen” to better understand their impotence.
After summing up the various troubles of UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his Labour government caused by the latest Epstein release and Starmer’s refusal to resign, Simplicius gets to his point:
Whether Starmer actually survives or not is immaterial: the fact remains that Europe is in a deep crisis of credibility, no longer retaining even a picayune’s worth of moral authority over the rest of the world. But the whacky thing is that these Western governments have no real solutions to their problems because the issues are so utterly structural and fundamental in nature, that merely the simple act of admitting to their root causes would signify the total collapse of everything the Western globalist order has built up over the last decades.
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European countries are trapped in this zugzwang of inextricable problems that can only be “patched” over because, as stated earlier, truly fixing them at the first-principle level would require peering into uncomfortable closets where the elites have stashed their secrets.
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Another example is the current censorship firestorm (Link mine, not Simplicius’, Nat): instead of addressing the actual issues that terrify these elites, bringing them out into the open and having a real honest dialogue about them at the societal level, the elites prefer the short-term “hotfix” of stamping out any dissent or discussion of ‘sensitive topics’ with increasingly crude and heavy-handed tactics. They believe this will make the issues go away, but instead it engenders vast social resentment, discontent, and distrust of all the organs of power, from media to government and everything in between. But of course, if these topics were allowed to be honestly and sensibly discussed in the ‘public square’, it would unravel the entire house of cards, making it a real no-win situation for the controllers in charge.
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European elites have no way out of their sunk-cost fallacy trap: to turn back would be to admit to sins so monstrous they have squandered the livelihood of the entire European civilization; for these criminals, there is no other way but forward. Double down and hope your opponents happen to break before you do.
The Status Quo Doesn’t Have to Outlast Reality, It Just Has to Outlast Us
That last sentence brings to mind Aurelian’s summary of the fate of the late 2010s gilets jaunes movement in France:
…the reality was that the GJ were numerous enough and determined enough that they could actually have shaken the government to its foundations if they had been sufficiently organised. On at least one occasion in December 2018, there were enough of them in central Paris to have laid siege to the Elysée Palace, and indeed there was a helicopter on standby to take Macron to safety. But the GJ were from the sticks, and few of them had much idea of the geography of Paris, so they wandered around trying to find where Macron lived. As it was, the government realised that it only had to hang on and make a few token concessions, and eventually the protests would stop, which they did.
If the rulers of the West are unwilling or unable to change in response to their crisis of credibility and the people are too disorganized to force them, where does that leave us?
Stuck in the Spodocene?
I came across this translation of Hakan Illatikdi’s “The Spodocene: inhabiting the ruins of progress” (Italian original) at GeoPolitiQ and found it just too on the nose:
In thermodynamics, a system does not necessarily collapse when its energy is exhausted. First, it goes through a more disturbing phase: the point preceding the change of state. It is the moment when matter is formally the same, but no longer behaves as before. The temperature rises, pressure builds up, molecules agitate without finding a new stable form. Nothing seems to have changed, and yet everything is about to change.
Our era is exactly there.
The Spodocene is not yet the next state. It is the antechamber. The system continues to function, but it does so erratically, inefficiently and increasingly violently against itself. The energy that circulates no longer produces order, but friction. The mechanisms that once guaranteed stability — markets, institutions, narratives of progress — continue to operate, but have lost their ability to structure the whole. The result is not immediate collapse, but prolonged instability: a social, political and subjective warming that heralds an inevitable transition.
The change of state is neither a moral decision nor a voluntary act. It occurs when a critical threshold is reached. The most common mistake is to confuse this phase with a correctable anomaly. The most costly mistake is to try to force the old form when the conditions that made it possible no longer exist.
This is what defines our present. The elites continue to act as if it were enough to regulate the temperature, redistribute pressures or adjust variables to recover the previous balance. But that balance is no longer available. The system is not disordered: it is saturated. It does not need corrections, but transformation.
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We are still in the moment before. The world has not changed state, but it can no longer return to its previous one. This interval — unstable, uncomfortable, fraught with tension — is the only real space for dispute. The Spodocene is not the end of history: it is the moment when history returns to being open, not because of the promise of progress, but because of the exhaustion of all the illusions that sustained it.
The synchronicities were piling up in my inbox yesterday morning as I worked on this piece because I had no sooner plugged in the above, than the latest from Nefarious Russians arrived in my email.
Is This What the Late Stage Soviet Experience Was Like?
Evgenia, born in the former USSR just as it collapsed writes “The Disappearance of Barbarians: How the Soviet Union psyoped itself out of existence.”
Now, though, having become an American and living through the decline of the American Empire in its very centre — New York — I do wonder if this is how it felt to be in Moscow during late Perestroika. A big part of America’s intelligentsia seems to be more and more disillusioned with the American myth, in American Exceptionalism. Meanwhile, the other part of America is doubling down on it and joining quasi-fascist “old guard” forces that are promising to keep the myth strong as ever…
As I’ve been writing and saying for a while, this American unraveling feels vaguely familiar. I was born during the unraveling of another mythic empire and grew up in its postmortem, a world that was like Fellini’s (and Petronius’s) Satyricon — a proto-Christian world where there was no faith and where basic instincts and base pursuits reigned in society, or what was left of it.
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The Soviet elite actually believed American propaganda about the Soviet Union. And this elite themselves demonized the Soviet Union into extinction. The Voice of America and Radio Free Liberty were, in the end, very successful in carrying out their mission: to destabilize and topple the Soviet Union from within, despite all the censorship and Iron Curtain protections the Soviet Union put up in defense. In fact, this attempt to wall itself off from the West contributed to its demise, since no one could really experience the West as it was and relied on an idealized picture of the West they had in their heads — a picture drawn, in large part by American propaganda and Hollywood.
Unfortunately for Western intelligentsia, there is no great power ideological rival to admire and emulate the way the Soviets admired the West, leaving us stuck in the Spodocene.
I’m aware that some readers will be screaming “What about China?” to themselves, but I’ll have to save that for another time. Suffice it to say few in the West are even seriously attempting to understand China, much less admiring or emulating Earth’s longest-running civilization as it rises again.
But we can at least read how we are viewed by Chinese-born English-language author Yiyun Li:
I cried every morning on the way to nursery school, but few four-year-olds would know how to articulate their terror and misery. There were other adults at the school, but none of them seemed to find the teacher’s practice unacceptable (and perhaps the parents, had they known, would not have done either). All of them must have benefited from the teacher’s regime – we were obedient, easily manageable.
Living in today’s America reminds me of that nursery school. The reigning tyranny; the men who brutalise the innocent – like the boy with the hammer – because they can; the people who, like my mother, say this can’t be true, life can’t be that terrible; if bad things happen, you are the problem; do not provoke; keep up the hope; things will be better – by the midterms, in four years, some day.
But let’s close with two realities that may insist on breaking through Trump’s info-bubble and bring and end to the Spodocene or what I’ve been calling the “Interregnum of Unreality.”
I am referring to war and economics.
Scylla and/or Charybdis?
First up, The Wall Street Journal has elected to inform its readers about what Julien Garran is calling “The Biggest Capital Misallocation in History.”
From the WSJ’s piece “Big Tech’s AI Push Is Costing a Lot More Than the Moon Landing”, I’ll let the following picture serve as several thousand words:
— Nat Wilson Turner (@natwilsonturner) February 10, 2026
As for war, I’ll quote William Schryver’s latest (and refer interested readers to Yves’ piece from Monday):
…contrary to the perceptions of most Americans and others around the world, making war against Iran in its own backyard here in 2026 is all but certain to produce disastrous results for both the US and Israel — and has pronounced potential to spark a regional war, spiral out of control, and ultimately draw in Russia, China, and North Korea.
In any case, it must be understood that, in firmly rejecting US/Israel demands, Iran is effectively dictating terms — and this strongly confirms what many of us have argued since last summer: Iran was the clear winner of the 12-Day War. Israel knows it, the US knows it, and Iran knows it.
If the reports above are more or less accurate, then it is undeniably evident that Washington is angling for an exit from this march to madness.
But, given that the Iranians are now dictating the terms of that exit and will not agree to a reprise of the orchestrated Operation Midnight Hammer, and its fictitious B-2 bunker-busting strike, and given the massive concentration of American military power in the region, and given the huge investment in menacing bravado Trump has already made in this ill-conceived adventure, war may now be unavoidable.
As Dean Wormer warned the Freshman from Animal House, “fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life,” I hope someone is warning Donald Trump that a market crash and a losing war on Iran is no way to go through a second term.
But we all know he won’t hear the warning over the din of cable news.
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For the algorithm. (I’m suffering from some “brain fog” this fine day.)
This keeping the populace disorganized and therefore helpless reminds me of the “No Kings” protests and before that the “Pussy Hat” protests — carefully choreographed Democratic Party initiatives meant to look as if they were spontaneous. No real demands — except for perhaps a vague forlorn wish for constitutional rule — and the hidden hands of Democrat elites behind them all.
The ICE protests in Minneapolis and elsewhere at least have a single focused demand — the removal of ICE/CBP from their self appointed role as imperial enforcers.
What is missing though is a real movement other than a desire for a “return to normalcy”. It keeps me up at night knowing that the system we have cannot be reformed and needs to be replaced, wondering how many others know the same thing. We cannot keep on in the US as we have — this government has wholly sacrificed every last ounce of its former legitimacy.
Just as Pussy Hat protests misdirected political energy into a ditch, so too did Russiagate convince #McResistance liberals that their Watergate fantasies would culminate with Trump’s removal. It also had the important side benefit of prepping and enlisting liberals for support for war with Russia.
Recall that the first protests of Trump’s first term were the mass disruptions at airports over Trump’s Muslim ban, spontaneous and direct actions that had real effects upon production, rather than embarrassing displays of magical thinking, NatSec psy-ops and moral vanity.
Re re processing massive data dumps or “How to eat an elephant”: One bite at a time.
Re: ambrit & Fastball
FWIW, the Ms and I, independently, hit the wall today. Two artists adept at pattern recognition, and as one art prof explained, ‘canaries in the coal mine.’ The Spodocene in the Coffee Break was something I can’t unsee even without logic’s grim maw. FWIW
Agreed. I, fogged in as I am today, can appreciate the aptness of the idea of a Spodocene.
Tangentially, Phyllis has been an “art for art’s sake” person her whole life. Lately she has begged off of discussing “current events.”
“It is all too much now,” she says. “When I think about it, I become almost self destructively angry. I agree with you, in that some heads must roll. But then, the entire system will have fallen apart. And, more importantly, who decides which heads roll in the gutter?”
Stay safe. Find your centre and live there.
And about China.
I saw a stationary surveillance video on X last week of a truck careening through some random place in China discharging it’s cargo with slopy abandon as it went. In its wake, everyone in who entered the frame, self organizing, picked up all the things that had fallen from the truck and re-loaded them just off the frame bottom left where the truck had apparently come to a stop. Whoever posted it included a caption to the effect, “look how helpful the Chinese are”.
I expect this is exactly the kind of thing Larry Ellison meant by “everyone will be on their best behavior”. There are those who want to emulate the Chinese model.
Trump will keep doubling down and the US Elites are desperate, which is why we see Government kidnap and murder squads.
Since November I have been calling for a crash by April 1st, this could be economic or caused by invoking the insurrection act followed by an economic crash.
Bluntly, too many systems are broken or breaking due to corruption of one kind or another.
Trump dropping dead ( Which is not unlikely, he’s 79 and in shitty health) would certainly complicate things because although Trump is weak ,when it comes to Vance he is weaker politically.
His base is Peter Thiel and the other Tech Bros aren’t happy about that…
It’s gonna be lit as Mr Boxman puts it.
Thank you Nat. We are indeed in the midst of a major credibility crisis with regarding to our most central institutions. I’m old enough to have lived through several of these, in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, etc. But this one seems different, in that it threatens to pull back the curtain to reveal some of the deepest sources of power and systemic corruption that managed to remain concealed from most people in earlier “crisis” periods.
A few quick observations from the last day or two.
Re the Report uncovered by Julie Brown: There was a story about this on NBC last night. Of course it is being spun different ways. Some Trump supporters (I believe Bondi was one) used it to say “See, we told you Trump was suspicious of Epstein and had broken all ties with him!” Trump haters, on the other hand, point out that Trump had said earlier that he was unaware of Epstein’s sexual misconduct, which this Report calls into question. “So he lied!” Further, most of the scurrilous information about Trump from earlier file dumps were from earlier years when Trump and Epstein were good partying buddies. Their “break” seems to be over a real estate dispute rather than any moral qualms by Trump (I just laughed at my own use of that last phrase).
Re Bondi: I’ve been watching some of the clips of Bondi’s Congressional testimony posted on Youtube by Forbes. I normally hate Congressional hearings; they are almost always partisan circuses in which the Blue Team plays gotcha with the Red Team, or vice versa. This one seemed a bit different. The questions were direct and relevant. Bondi wasn’t getting rescued by Team Red, and she sounded increasingly shrill as she tried to avoid direct answers or counter with right-wing talking points. Maybe it was just the clips I watched, or my bias, but she came off really badly. Nothing to reduce public skepticism whatsoever in what I saw.
Re the “flooding the zone” strategy: that has clearly had some effect. And the document dumps have clearly been carried out in a way calculated to limit their coherence and usefulness. Massie was making this explicit point against Bondi today. I have been concerned with a lot of hearsay junk being released and jumped on by the media because of its salaciousness, or because it made Trump look bad, etc. But as Nat notes, it has also allowed research to be crowd-sourced in a way, so that specific individuals or groups can search for specific topics or targets.
That can be good or bad, however. Case in point: I just skimmed the latest Michael Tracey effort. I have not read it carefully yet, but I will, as I have most of his “debunking” efforts. Always the same tactic: find the shakiest witness or weakest claim, or the best example of weak evidence, and focus laser-like on demolishing this target in hundreds of words while ignoring all evidence or context that might challenge your own interpretation – even when there is a massive amount of it. Clearly Tracey has decided that Virginia Guiffre is such a weak link, so he has focused on completely smearing her as a lying, manipulating, willing prostitute who exploited her Epstein relationship for money. He found a prosecution document from Maxwell’s trial that discussed some of her weaknesses as a prosecution witness, and used it to smear her and, by extension, all other survivor claims (Tracey would surely put “survivor” in quotes since he views them all the same way). Tracey becomes more despicable with every piece of his I read. Yet I can’t help but ask: if the whole Epstein issue is such a nothingburger, why is he devoting such a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to “debunk” it? Why not move on to more worthwhile topics, say Gaza, or Iran, or Ukraine? As always, when so much energy is devoted to obvious cover-ups and misdirection, it just makes me more curious as to what they don’t want us to know.
Michael Tracey has over 21 thousand subscribers on his substack; I am assuming that he is getting paid for his propaganda by wealthy individuals or NGOs because that is a lot of readers who, for now, take you as a credible journalist. For his sake, I hope that it at least in the millions of dollars, because that sort of propaganda will permanently damage your credibility.
Whenever Michael Tracey gets too annoying I find its nice to look up that youtube clip of him screaming like a baby goat while getting dragged out of an Ann Coulter book signing he tried to disrupt.
A link, please! I searched on YT and Twitter and can’t find it.
Here you go.
plus local news coverage
Frustrating how often people pounce on an email thread where Epstein is running his mouth about someone, as though Epstein has any credibility, when there is so much in rhe files that not hearsay junk. Assistants making sure travel plans are squared, for instance.
A lot of people who really ought to wake up and smell the coffee are wondering what will happen here. Well, what we have here (as described in the OP) is a ‘crisis of confidence’ in the ruling elite, where the existing elite are perceived as being too old, too tired, too ‘evil’, too immoral and too incompetent to govern.
The next obvious question is: when did this happen last, and can it give us some kind of an idea as to what will happen in the future?
Well, the last time this happened was in the 1970s, when there was a similar period of disillusion, and (because of Watergate) a similar sense that ‘they’re all corrupt’, and ‘they’re all in it together’ and ‘they’re all the same’.
What was the upshot of all that?
A radical and fundamental (and we now see, permanent) move to the political Right in the 1980s.
Bearing that in mind, let’s see what is happening here. We all know the names of the men who are in the ‘Epstein files’. Here are some names which are missing.
Benjamin Netanyahu.
Smottrich.
Ben Gvir.
Kemi Badenoch.
Nigel Farage.
Bolsanaro.
Erdogan.
Whatever loon is currently ‘running’ Poland.
(etc. etc. etc.).
In other words, all the ‘major names’ of the so-called ‘populist’ Right have been left unscathed, and Trump seems to have had the sense (as noted in the OP) to cut ties with Epstein before exposure of these ties might have become politically damaging, so it seems unlikely (at least at the time of writing this comment) that l’affaire Epstein will seriously hurt him. Indeed, it might not hurt him at all.
So the likelihood at the moment is that the 2020s are the new 1970s (without the great music and movies) and that the 2030s will mark the coming of the New New Right, who will sweep out the last battered remnants of the liberal order and create a New New Right hegemony that will last the next 50 years. I mean I could be wrong. But that’s what past history would suggest.
This is quite apocalyptic. Not just in the usual sense of “end of things” but in the sense of “revealing” besides. To change things in any substantive way it is all the PMC what must be removed, changed, re-educated, separated from their malfunctioning heads… whatever. This is what a Court should rule in “Epstein’s papers against humanity” case and the judge should resign after such last ruling.
Well, well, well 😀
Just wanted to say it’s been awesome being a part of the NC Commentariat 🫡
From my perch, down here in Jefferson Parish, LA, I sense the unifying of people against these rich pedo fucks.
Between this and the American 🇺🇸 Revolution 2 errr, I MEAN 250th anniversary of the OG American Revolution coming up…ladies and gentlemen we may just found ourselves the answer to put a steak 🥩 in these 🩸 bloodsucking vampires hearts!!! Like for real everyone understands the Epstein files! Do you know how long it takes to teach the masses classical economics and understand Michael Hudson?!!! 😂 like a really long time, you guys!
Anyway, at this point, your boy Johnny Becnel – the MOUF OF THE SOUF – is having his urban lib AND neocon rural family and friends come to the realization that the game is rigged. When your mom starts talking about how Elon musk and his tech pedos wanna get rid of humans and trans humanism!!!! Like HELL YEAH mom, FINALLY! Welcome to THUNDERDOME! My pops… is almost there, but his boomer lib male programming is UNASSAILABLE. He’s awesome though. I love my parents. I love my family. I love y’all. Like FUCK YEAH TIME TO MARCH ON OUR LOCAL NEIGHBORHOOD SQUARES AND HASH OUT OUR NEXT MOVES AGAINST THE RICH PEDOS!!!!!
FOR AMERICA 🇺🇸
If theres one issue that cuts through the noise and makes everyone lifts their heads out of the sand, it’s fucking with our kids. There’s a sense of urgency to do something. You don’t quite know what to do yet! There’s a calm, moving forward, and a letting go and trusting in the faith of your neighbors to make the right decision – TOGETHER.
The Rich pedos, after a lonnnnggggg time – generations, have finally lost the narrative with the American 🇺🇸 People. Sure, we may be numb, but when they hear the sweet, sweet mouth of the South whispering such lovely sounds of American 🇺🇸 Revolution 2 and a bright economic future for all including their children, THEY BELIEVE.
Hope everyone is having an easy time convincing their neighbors and coworkers like I am!
LISAN AL-GAIB!
It’s Our Time Down Here!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PJpdt6H-Ao
On the subject of pedos, this was an interesting obit in the NYT. I was in Lafayette at USL when this broke, and MSM ignored it. Only the weekly Times of Acadiana had it. It was a hell of a story.
Ray Mouton Dies at 78; Lawyer Warned of Pedophilia in the Catholic Church – The New York Times
John Paul and Benedict tried to ignore the problem. And then blab a few platitudes. Their loyalty was to the organization and not the flock. Had they been decisive 40 years ago it never would have bankrupted the US church and cut its practitioners by 80%. It was simply their corruption. JP was a Nazi collaborator and B was a Hitler youth. They had their agenda.
Thank you for sharing! It’s funny you say that because the Catholic Church is YUGE in my neighborhood. St. Angela Merici Parish. I had the honor to be my little brothers sponsor for his confirmation. He chose St Pantileon?? Idk 🤷♂️ some saint that survived a bunch of assassination attempts I think? Mines St Augustine, so give me God….BUT NOT YET!
Ive been working on my religious angle down here and trying to reach the parishioners. Obviously, im big on Hudson’s reading of Jesus and forgiveness of debts, so I will add this Ray Mouton to the local list of Louisiana Greats – up there with Huey Long!
Organise, brother, organise! 🫡
And listen to Kneecap!
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=h1J_DVutL-w
They’ve got a bit darker lately, fighting for Palestine and free speech.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=e061Py8MTHg&list=OLAK5uy_mvayhokTVfA9Pw5RtVBFy0x_jLY056QuU&index=6&pp=8AUB
Added to my playlist, bro!
I’ve since joined a Revolutionary Choir called the No Law Solidarity Choir. We sing songs of revolution both new and old. It’s really cool! Idk they are nominal anarchists but it seems like we are a motley crew from a few different strains. We sang outside for practice yesterday off Frenchman St and made 85$ for getting people out of prison or donating to their canteen fund.
We sang a few songs on 30JAN26 for the General Strike Solidarity rally in Armstrong Park where the PSL, DSA, and Indivisible turned out an astonishing 1,000 people! These dumbass libs are of course kettling the revolutionary fervor on behalf of the lib dems but at least they are demanding an end to ICE. It’s start, right?! We are supposed to sing at the upcoming No Kings rally in March and are working on how to persuade the crowd to choose revolution over reform and join us or at least get a few new recruits.
Here’s a local news video with us singing in the background. We are at 1:04:
https://youtu.be/-NfGDVKWFCw?si=FQ2Kd6jVSUdIRwa9
I managed to seriously upset a few Catholics recently by asking if they heard anything from the Pope recently. Where’s your Pope now? Gone.
“The crisis of credibility faced by Western elites as they try to patch over the bursting abscess that is the Epstein files release heralds something much more profound: potential system collapse.”
Unfortunately, significant portions of the populist right (think Kunstler, for example) also seem quite content with the supposed “strategic” brilliance of waiting for system collapse as the necessary foundation for beginning something new and positive.
Consequently, what often passes for politics on both political fringes seems to rely almost completely on the rhetoric of point and sputter, meanwhile waiting optimistically (having done our part) for the supposedly guaranteed benefits of Armageddon.
I do recognize that the left also calls for some kind of general strike across the country which will magically emerge without any thoughts about how to practically create the type of political coalition that might make such a goal actionable.
“reptile theory” and “flood the zone with *hit” seem to be domain specific parallels to the Gish Gallop. Yeah, it’s a predatory tactic by the powerful to waste time and drain people emotionally.
Coffeezilla on Youtube has been really helpful in summarizing some of the biggest finds in the files, without making it overwhelming.
Today he just posted an interview with Ro Khanna. It’s mostly basic questions, like why nothing’s being done, but it’s still nice to hear them. Anyway his videos on the breakdown of the files are really good for the detail, and still concise and easy to follow.
That link goes to a Voidzilla post. I don’t understand the difference between Coffee content and Void content – both channels seem the same to me.
His pal Patrick Boyle also has equally informative, bit more amusing dives into all this ick. They were careless people
It is absolutely unbelievable that Epstein did not index his materials and did not have data backup arrangements. The refusal of the DOJ to acknowledge the existence of these critical resources confirms the corrupt nature of their “investigation.” Someone has the indexes and backup material, including all the incriminating name, videos, and photographs.
You would probably need someone who reads and writes Hebrew to get any use out of those files.
Ambrit, do you really think that’s a problem?
Silly me. Phyl notes that one need only request a translator from one’s AIPAC minder to solve many problems.
I often conjure up the collapse of the USSR with the USA, and if it goes down like I think it will, 99% of 99% of Americans will be rather instant paupers, their wealth reduced to nothing much.
This meant a lot less in the USSR, as who really had savings in the stock market or in a bank?
Scariest part of it, is we are already going through a loss of morals which has been ongoing all of my life, and it will be greatly accelerated, when you got nothing-you got nothing to lose.
I have witnessed humans behaving better when they have nothing. More cooperation, etc.
Indeed…
Money wont buy you a thing in the wilderness-and people are kind and caring to one another, but we’re talking about the real world where money gluttony is a thing of pride and I daresay, honor.
The Mama Lady; Attorney, was posted up on one of my other feeds today. Thank you for this post. Be well my friend. Old Lady with a Virtual Cat❤️🐈⬛
The Delvaux theory fits with the Nina Illingworth theory I mentioned a couple of weeks ago: QAnon was a test run to see how much they could en-trance people.
Spodocene: I like this a lot. Since 2016 I’ve been thinking of this period as “The Confusion” which is a nod to Neal Stephenson’s book of the same name (set 1666-1715). Confusion meaning both everything/everyone is confused AND the old order has been thrown up in the air and we don’t yet know where everything lands. We are between two eras, and it’s very messy and scary.
On Europe: my work involves talking to a lot of mid-level German business people. Many I know are depressed and completely without hope that their system/elites are able to address the causes of the problems esp. the economic ones.
I know this will come across as off the wall, but there is one basic observation what will crack open human civilization, if it ever considered it.
As mobile organisms, this sentient interface our body has with its situation functions as a sequence of perceptions, in order to navigate, so our experience of time is of the present flowing past to future, but the evident physical reality is that activity and the resulting change turns future to past. Tomorrow becomes yesterday, because the earth turns. Potential to residual.
There is no dimension of time, because the past is consumed by the present, to inform and drive it. Causality and conservation of energy. Cause becomes effect.
So how could such a simple observation possibly be earth shattering?
Our minds operate on sequence. Cause and effect. Cause becoming effect short circuits that.
What is narrative, let alone narrative control, when the reality is thermodynamic feedback loops?
Information as recursive, rather than static. Why we tend to end up down the rabbit hole, echo chamber, Plato’s Cave.
Objectivity becomes obsolete, as this emergent subjectivity takes hold. Knowing both the position and momentum of a moving car is contradictory, but it’s only a mystery if we assume information to be inherently objective, rather than emergent with the processes generating it.
Spacetime as the physical basis of gravity and the presumption of an expanding universe is out the window.
As time is an effect and measure, like temperature. Rate and degree, frequency and amplitude.
It would be like trying to come to terms, five hundred years ago, with the idea the cosmos is not swirling east to west, but we are on a relatively small orb that is spinning west to east.
The fact is that people are very detail oriented, so the technology is quite evolved, but our big picture understanding of reality is seriously deficient.
Far out, man
When you climb to the top of the mountain, building a spaceship and flying to Mars is not actually the most logical next step.
😂 facts bro
In my head that mf has the high ground and needs to be helping people up to!!!
When you live in the penthouse, the structural integrity of the building is actually important.
Government is the nervous system. Money and banking are blood and the circulation system.
We know enough to make government a public utility, but haven’t realized the same principle applies to banking. It’s like the heart telling the hands and feet to go suck dirt, because it’s keeping all the blood for itself.
The problem will be when it all does come crashing down, it will be the warlords and cartels in charge, not the bankers. They just go back to being accountants.
Then the warlords declare themselves kings and we start over again.
Forget the reptile-brain thingy. Reptiles are good and we should emulate them.
The FBI Epstein file dump, in its disorder and redactions, is exactly like the FBI’s disorganized and redacted 26 Volumes of Evidence for the Warren Commision.
It is intended to waste time and confuse, and provoke endless meaningless talking-points. The real evidence never makes it in there.
Data with gaps, intended to make people’s compasses swing and question the viewing of the North Star.
My commie doctor* says this to get people to look to an authority.
*He grew up behind the Iron Curtain. Fun to talk to as maybe the USSR had a few good benefits for most people. Maybe the complaints come from upper middle class looking over the wall and those in large urban areas that experienced shortages.
Yeah. It’s a zone flood and a limited hangout.
Great article, thanks.
I wonder how different the current situation is from Habermas’ “Legitimation Crisis”? He saw that already as an issue in the 1970s.
Methinks the current order is a lot more resilient than many people imagine. E.g. the di Lampedusa principle.
I felt compelled on reading this to point out Francis Fukuyama’s other thesis about history: That states formed, grew, merged, and decayed in a competitive process that was ultimately decided by the strain of war. When you wreck your country, you can try to bed down in the ashes for a while, but then a strong wind blows from a rival state, and you and your failing civ are simply blown away into histories dustbin.
Keep in mind that free landholders make better soldiers than half starved debt serfs, when the neighboring tribes came visiting.
The utility of debt jubilees as circuit breakers to the feedback loop of compound interest was all too evident to the early states. The most healthy states are the most powerful.
It’s remarkable that Kier Starmer’s job is hanging by a thread considering his name does not appear in the Epstein files. No doubt, because of his ambassador Peter Mandelson, still, the British seem to be taking this scandal more seriously than Americans. Trump and others are all over the files but they don’t seem to be going anywhere.
The only analogy I can think of to describe Epstein is a real estate broker. If you’re in the market for a house both the owner and buyer normally prefer to let the agent handle the details of the transaction.
Similarly, if you need to talk to Jamie Dimon at JP Morgan or you have information on a corporation and you don’t want a record of your involvement then let a guy like Epstein do the talking and handle your business for you.
And about the girls, there’s an old fashion word called exploitation; one group of people are in a position to exploit another group. Did the British not exploit the Chinese when it forced opium on China while it exploited its own workers and children in English factories? Did Epstein and his elite contacts care about exploiting the girls? Though it’s profoundly misogynistic, I think they felt entitled; it was normal.
In 1922 the US Supreme Court blocked legislation regulating child labor. Did the Atlantic slave trade involve sex or even sex with children? When people say the economy is rigged they are surprised to learn how much of what they think is wheeling and dealing is actually legal.
There are endless examples. Why should people be shocked by the Epstein scandals. The problem is a centuries old system, which we are all well aware, where some people feel entitled to exploit others as low paid workers or for sex or anything else.
Thank you Nat for the link to Hakan Illatikdi’s Spodocene article. It was a welcome assist to understanding in clear mechanical, thermodynamic terms the incredibly screwed up state we are now in.
His conclusion, while not optimistic, is practical. I can live with it.
“Living on this threshold requires something more difficult than hope: it requires precision. Because when the change of state occurs, it does not happen slowly. And those who have not learned to read the preliminary signs will only be able to describe it afterwards as a catastrophe”,
Link for “The Disappearance of Barbarians” article mentioned in the post seems broken. Here it is: https://www.nefariousrussians.com/p/the-disappearance-of-barbarians
thanks, will fix!