Someone needs to go to jail

https://edwardelson.substack.com/p/someone-needs-to-go-to-jail

by shimm723 • 5 months ago

111 67 5 months ago

edwardelson.substack.com

polotics2• 5 months ago

Indeed just heard that "Epic Fury" is an anagram of "Epstein Files" (FBI-redacted I guess)

giancarlostoro• 5 months ago

That does not make sense.

polotics2• 5 months ago

Yes it does: Epic Fury is the name of the operation that's been started on Saturday. Granted, it takes some nimble to keep up.

outside12343• 5 months ago

He is being tongue-in-cheek. To explain the joke, Trump is fumbling around for anything to distract from the fact that he is in the Epstein Files.

outside12343• 5 months ago

We are in a battle of top 0.01% vs. the bottom 99.99% where the top 0.01% has convinced us that our enemy is the "right" or the "left" such that we are distracted from our actual oppressors.

tstrimple3• 5 months ago

Nope. The right explicitly supports the policies that lead to the direct concentration of wealth and power and rise of fascism. If the right constantly sides with the oppressors, they are the oppressors. This should be trivial to see just by looking at voting records. It's all very public and you've got decades of history worth of it to review. Both sides are not the same. The right chooses to align with the top 0.01% making them firmly part of the problem.

AntiDyatlov• 5 months ago

Well, dethroning the 0.01% seems more feasible than starting and winning a civil war against the right. I think the right is not so pro 0.01% as you think, the killing of the United Healthcare CEO had strong bipartisan support, at the level of ordinary people.

brutal_chaos_• 5 months ago

I believe it's a bit more nuanced than that. Both democrats and republicans have had enough power to make meaningful changes to prevent such a wealth gap and thus the wealthy play both parties. I do see democrats trying to help people have a better life (medicare for all, etc), but the wealth gap grew nometheless. Though I do agree with you that republicans don't seem to give a flying fuck about the people these days, which does make it worse IMHO. Regardless, both parties enabled the wealth gap and is why the fight is the 99.99% against the 0.01%. The US needs to kill citizens united and take money out of politics, I think that'd be a huge step forward...and yet, it is basically impossible because the 0.01% have the power.

replooda• 5 months ago

Nope, it's 0.01% vs 99.9%. First, because they themselves are at the top — or, what, was Biden some sort of proletarian? Second, the left is okay with left-flavored dictatorships — just think, recently, of poor, poor Maduro. Third, from the outside, the drones kept coming whether red or blue happened to be in power.

juris3• 5 months ago

hard disagree

when you couch it as a left vs right instead of a top vs down problem you will lock yourself (and your immediate circle) up in the hardline media items the people who lobby both sides will control.

as disclosure: i am socially liberal and fiscally conservative except in matters relating to education, which i believe should be free (and tuition rate controlled). never voted for trump, never will. wanted to write in bernie for the first pass until he dropped, then threw for the queen of england. i didn't vote in the last election. i consider ice to be an illegal and fascist arm of too large a state.

the most arresting argument i've heard a leftist say (which i agree with) is: there is a distribution of wealth at which a free market fails and we are long past that, especially given our failure to bust monopolies and enforce antitrust law.

that enables entities who lobby both sides of the policy spectrum to position us against each other. epstein played this well: how else do you get neoconservatives bubbling out of 4chan as an answer to thundercat tumblr kids? it's all divide-and-conquer (and over the most inane issues).

now, tell me: do you want to support eurasia or oceania? or do you want to put the puppeteers in jail?

zetanor• 5 months ago

[flagged]

tartuffe782• 5 months ago

[flagged]

tomhow5• 5 months ago

Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.

Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. It tramples curiosity.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

mey• 5 months ago

This is not an either or issue. There are policy issues all around. The "left" isn't creating an magical "other" in the form of panic about "woke"/"immigrants"/"terrorists cells"/"trans people"/"welfare queens"/"libs"/"gay agenda" etc.

The US government in general is not prioritizing the reality and needs of the people, it is supposed to be in service to. Instead it is serving the needs of the few, but there are many many fronts of injustice, as there are many different people in power with their own agenda. It's not necessarily a single unified agenda.

Edit: The astro-turfing in this thread is going to be interesting based on the bot comment just below my comment...

juris3• 5 months ago

hah, dang, did i fall for that?

Caius-Cosades• 5 months ago

Yeah, remember occupy wallstreet? They got spooked and pretty much whipped up the whole identity-politics thing overnight in response. And unfortunately it did work.

voisin• 5 months ago

Identity politics was the primary agenda well before occupy wall street. Think about the religious right in the early 90s pushing abortion and gay marriage as primary political issues to drive voters.

tomhow5• 5 months ago

Please don't make grand sweeping proclamations on HN. We're here for curious conversation. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

outside12343• 5 months ago

My comment is meant as a conversation starter more than anything, based on my observations of how both 1) the right (or at least MAGA?) and the left are against the Iran war AND 2) both the right (or at least some part of MAGA?) and left want to see the Epstein perpetrators locked up.

This hasn't happened, per my theory, because we are really in a top versus bottom fight where the top controls the narrative and shapes it to be a right vs. left fight amongst the bottom.

UncleMeat3• 5 months ago

I think that this is ridiculous. The idea that grand sweeping proclamations cannot be curious is plainly false. We can look at numerous excellent works of scholarship in the humanities and social sciences that produce grand sweeping proclamations that are nevertheless backed by years of archival or scientific research performed by experts.

While I don't agree with the poster that left/right is a distraction from class conflict, the idea that this idea cannot possibly be worth discussion or inspection is outrageous.

flyinglizard2• 5 months ago

Sometimes the wrong people do the right thing for whatever reason and the war in Iran is precisely that.

cryzinger• 5 months ago

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism vs. No It Won’t

https://theonion.com/this-war-will-destabilize-the-entire-mi...

morkalork• 5 months ago

The authors really nailed it on the timing if you look at when ISIS peaked

flyinglizard2• 5 months ago

You can see by the Iranian violent reaction that’s spread far and wide over most of the Middle East countries about what exact kind of stability it brings to the area.

Amongst the countries attacked by Iran now are Qatar, UAE, Bahrain, Jordan, Oman, Kuwait and Saudia Arabia; indirectly, it’s dragging kicking and screaming into the conflict also Yemen (surely soon), Lebanon (already) and Iraq (already).

Analemma_• 5 months ago

How about we wait more than three days to see if this really was “the right thing” before rolling out the Mission Accomplished banner, yeah?

bananaflag• 5 months ago

Tomahawk cruise missiles are the new AI.

I'd say AI is the new AI.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/mar/03/iran-war-...

neaden• 5 months ago

"Some argue this blurriness unfairly implicates those who were simply mentioned in the files. I take the opposite view: It unfairly protects those who abused minors." This seems like a weird distinction to make, and the fact that he sees these as being in conflict kind of ruins the article for me. For instance Ro Khanna revealed six names of people in the Epstein files but then it turned out four of them had just had their photos used in a photo lineup and had no other connection (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/feb/13/four-men-unr...) so obviously yes, there are some perfectly innocent people in the files. Then later in the article he says "There’s a solution to the Epstein problem, and it’s called a perp walk. It doesn’t matter what we get them for, but someone very rich and very famous needs to be seen in handcuffs. It could be Gates, it could be Dershowitz, it could be Clinton, it could be Summers, I don’t really care." Which once again is missing the point, assuming that anyone mentioned there is guilty and worthy of punishment of a public shaming. And while honestly I wouldn't be upset if any of these famous men were shamed that way, the fact remains that's not how justice works. He sees a problem, a lack of justice for these crimes and then instead of coming to the solution as being that we need justice, which includes trials and the presumption of innocence, that we just need to start punishing at random. That not only is a failure of justice, but it also isn't a good deterrent and I think will ultimately fail to accomplish his goals.

nh23423fefe3• 5 months ago

Caring about Epstein is stupid and I don't listen to people who talk about it at all.

Sabinus• 5 months ago

We live in an era where the Western social contract is breaking down and the wealthy collect more money and power to themselves than ever before. We should care about Epstein and consequences for illegal activities done by the rich and famous. Justice must be seen to be done. We need it for social cohesion.

mingus882• 5 months ago

Isn’t it amazing how the conspiracy of “elites running a pedophile ring and controlling the world” was all the rage not that long ago?

Yet now that we have actual documents that say exactly that, somehow it becomes stupid to talk about it, because it turns out that your team was behind it the whole time? Can’t we all just move on already?

Animats• 5 months ago

It begins to look like Citizens United [1] cost us democracy.

"That government of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich shall not perish from the earth."

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizens_United_v._FEC

deathanatos3• 5 months ago

I know people hate Citizens United, but to me, if the debate on this is ever to progress: what's the alternative? Say I and a bunch of my friends donate money to promote some cause; let's say "Black Lives Matter", for the sake of argument. Is that also off the table? Is there to be no ability for people to associate & collectively argue for change (e.g., by buying an ad to raise awareness)?

Or, is it fine when I do it, but not when others do it? Where do I draw the line, between what association for the purposes of political advocacy is fine, and what association isn't fine?

actionfromafar3• 5 months ago

Is this "Black Lives Matter" running for President?

snovv_crash• 5 months ago

As an individual you can. Not as a corporation.

throwaway87543• 5 months ago

Campaign finance laws were set up tell you where the line is. There needs to be a line because the amount of reach you have should not grow with your wealth. But Citizens United made the money as speech an unlimited right. Spending $250 is a completely different category than spending $250 million.

UncleMeat3• 5 months ago

The alternative was what we had between McCain-Feingold and Citizens United, which was not a hellscape of limitations on collective action.

This isn't some hypothetical world. We had it.

12_throw_away• 5 months ago

Yes, the rich and powerful have increasingly captured and profited from the police and carceral state while being completely free to, for instance, build an island dedicated to the rape of children. Justice should absolutely be served here. Arrest more rich people, arrest more politicians, and hell arrest all of the "royalty" (for this and other reasons).

But this rant's "solution", which seems to be "let's empower the police state to do more excesses" - yeah, no. Maybe let's just ensure that everyone gets the same due process?

mrala• 5 months ago

But this rant's "solution", which seems to be "let's empower the police state to do more excesses" - yeah, no.

What led you to believe this is the solution presented in the article? Much less try to pass those statements off as quoting or paraphrasing.

Maybe let's just ensure that everyone gets the same due process?

That is the actual solution presented in the last two sections of the article.

ghusto• 5 months ago

I both agree with the sentiment, and believe it won't happen because the USA is past the point of no return.

I mean this with no direspect or cynisism, and hope I'm wrong, but I think that country has rotted too much for saving. You let it go too far for too long.

Then again the UK (repeatedly) went through some very dark times, and whilst not exactly a bastion of justice, we're doing a lot better now.

actionfromafar3• 5 months ago

Correct me if I'm on a limb here, but didn't the UK truly embrace stupid, only after it lost its Empire status? While the US does it at its peak, which seems much more dangerous for, well everybody actually.

randyrand• 5 months ago

Every associate of Epstein was interested in him for the same reason

Baseless speculation.

Someone needs to go to jail

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