Thread by @JuliusGoat

Watching the Epstein story unfold, you’d almost think our entire society is based on knowing enablement of the violent abuse of marginalized people—mostly young, mostly of color, mostly women, mostly poor—by powerful people—mostly older, mostly white, mostly men, mostly rich.

It might almost start to seem that wealth, maleness, whiteness, and age, are instinctively seen as presumed moral value, presumed innocence, presumed ownership—and that poverty, femaleness, color, and youth are seen as presumed moral lack, presumed guilt, presumed property.

It might seem as if acceptance of these assumptions are so instinctive, the existence of a Jeffery Epstein, who procured weaker human beings for consumption by stronger ones, would seem not an aberration but rather an inevitability

As might the existence of many Jeffery Epsteins

This—yet another moment when it becomes obvious that powerful men consume women and children for pleasure—is going to be framed, once again, as a scary time for men.

It’s an instinct

It’s a statement of alignment

In an enabler culture, revelation of the offense is the offense

So rarely is the question “how will we make this end?”

So often the question is “have we gone to far?—and if we keep pushing this, where will it end?”

It’s a question someone asks who doesn’t want it to end.

It might begin to seem inevitable, then, that such a society would elect as its leader a profoundly incompetent man, whose only value was a grotesquely flagrant display of the full extent to which a powerful person—older, white, wealthy, male—can abusively consume other people.

Yes. "Not all" etc. Of course everyone is appalled. Of course

And yet when it's put to a vote, old people and white people and rich people and men voted for a predator by wide margins. And will do so again

It's an instinct.

https://twitter.com/tjradcliffe/status/1148445365789581312?s=20

What I'm trying to get at here is this question of instinct.

We're so individualistic in our society; believe morality is simply a matter of what we actively assent to in our minds. WE never think predatory thoughts. We're innocent.

But instinct goes below thought.

Our society has enabled abuse embedded in it, in ways that constantly tell.

Society is a construct.

People constructed our society.

I am a person in our society.

So, perhaps, are you.

Certain conclusions present themselves.

My mission shouldn't be to list the ways I'm not like Jeffery Epstein (though I should hope there are many) finding reasons to self-exonerate, and therefore not have to change

My mission should be to locate the ways I benefit from a society that makes Jeffery Epstein inevitable

In a culture centered upon enablement of violent abuse, where report of the crime is seen as the crime, it might almost seem femaleness becomes implied guilt, implied property, and maleness implied innocence, implied ownership.

This was inevitable.

https://twitter.com/jasonscampbell/status/1148782849421709312?s=21

In a culture centered on abuse of marginalized people by a powerful minority—mostly male, mostly white, mostly wealthy—statements that assume whiteness is implied ownership and lack of whiteness is implied theft, become inevitable.

"Us" is the giveaway.

https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1149118379447529472?s=20

In a time of Muslim bans and normalization of white supremacy, Omar's great crime is, to Tucker Carlson, ingratitude.

She's not a co-equal citizen to him. No right to complain. No right to expect better. The report of abuse is seen as abuse. More, as danger. As license to abuse.

"Us" is supremacy.

"Us" demands a "them."

"Us" owns the country. "Us" chooses to give it.

"Them" receive it.

"Us" is allowed to speak, to criticize.

"Them" should be grateful.

"Us" is implied ownership.

"Them" is implied theft.

It's embedded. The nods are almost instinct

It’s hard to imagine a greater display of contempt for this country then flying the flag of those who chose to fight a murderous war in an attempt to leave.

Yet Carlson’s ideology has no warnings about them, only common cause.

Whiteness is implied ownership and innocence.

“Us”

More, there actually is danger there, which is being deliberately ignored.

Nazis occupied Charlottesville in defense of that flag’s cause and of themselves.

They chanted “Jews will not replace us.”

It was a statement of implied ownership.

“Us.”

For Carlson, Ilan Omar is a danger and a warning, in a way a white supremacist occupation of a U.S. city is not

His “us” means the same thing as theirs

The next hate crime against immigrants will be as inevitable as its predecessors.

My point is all this is embedded deep in our society’s psyche, appearing not only in overt ways, but in instinctive ways that live below active intention.

Interesting to find someone who thinks that this rebuts the point rather than strengthens it.

https://twitter.com/sterlingwords1/status/1149304156617707525?s=21

It’s easy to point out that Tucker Carlson is a white supremacist, because he manifestly is, and it requires a willful act of imagination to deny it.

Harder is to ask “how do I personally inextricably benefit from a society that makes Tucker Carlson inevitable?”

Also instructive to consider those who will just say all of these instinctive assumptions with the varnish off

In a culture that instinctively reflects their core values, they will be inevitable. When we empower their noxious worldview—as we have—they become bold

Here they are:

My original post identifies the American instinct to locate an intrinsic ownership and innocence in whiteness, wealth, and maleness—and an intrinsic sense of property and guilt in all others.

What is their response? To locate Epstein's guilt precisely in his not-whiteness.

Does it occur to them that they are perfectly demonstrating the point that's being interrogated?

It does not.

Do such people talk about Epstein's crimes primarily around the protection of "their" white women—as if those women were their presumed property?

They do.

Instinctive

But you can hear the dark echoes of their clear expressions of this worldview in more mainstream statements.

You hear it when men feel compelled to introduce their outrage by proclaiming that this affects them personally, because they "have" a daughter, a wife.

These foundational lies are embedded in our culture. They seep up in ways we can't even control, inevitable as oil up from tar pits. Once you see it, it's everywhere.

Easy to call these gentlemen white supremacists—they manifestly are.

Harder to ask: how do I unconsciously benefit from a society that feeds their belief, makes them bold, gives them power, makes them inevitable?

“Denounced as racist.”

He told sitting American Congresswomen of color to “go back where they came from.” He May as well have signed off with the 14 words.

But “denounced as racist.”

Report of the offense is the offense. Inevitably.

https://twitter.com/nbcnews/status/1150561636148764673?s=21

The @NBCNews headline writer didn't focus on the accusation rather than the offense by accident.

There's something in our society, that will instinctively react with outrage if wealthy white male presumed innocence is challenged in any way.

NBC is aware. So: "denounced as."

@NBCNews This thread may never end. I may just keep adding onto it until it's some sort of insane Winchester Mystery House of white supremacist patriarchy.