Plan World Optimization Today!

Adjacent. Building costume masks @glowingskull. Published fiction @ontploffing. Tags are a mix of category, source, and commentary; your guess is which. Read #worldbuilding. Sources cited where applicable. Send me your opinions on Zeonism in Gundam. H̴̳̿è̴͎̮/̸̩̈́̇h̶̤͙̓i̶̳͋m̸̧̱͍͐̄͘.̵̘̽̈ Carrd: https://irradiate.space Warrant canary: This blog's owner has not received a warrant or public records request regarding this blog's contents or activities.

[corvidayays]

if the new gundam announcement is another gundam vs kaiju thing im gonna be so mad

[irradiate-space]

Fans: "You already already have Gundam Eight and that new video game."

Sunrise: "But what about Gundams versus actual kaiju?"

[evilsoup]

ok that post about the right wing dudes wanting boy concubines...can you enlighten me as to what the fuck is actually happening in the minds of these men because it's breaking my brain??!!

We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

The connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is no accident, but reveals a deep logic at the heart of reactionary politics.

[nonevahed]

it's because the Sotadic zone is moving north due to global warming

[brazenautomaton]

Remember when claiming your opponents were all pedophiles was qanon's thing?

[iteratedextras]

I think that's why Democrats (as a tribe) are doing it.

~None of them actually believe in their accusations that every random right-winger is one, or even that Trump is, but they saw QAnon doing it, lost the 2024 election, and will do just about anything other than change their policies to better appeal to voters.

"QAnon Alex Jones bullshit worked for Republicans to fool those gullible idiot conspiracy theorists, so maybe it'll work for us, too."

[irradiate-space]

Pedocon theory isn't QAnon secret-signals stuff; it doesn't depend on someone making cryptic posts on 13chag. The animating factor of pedocon theory is the actual FBI and Department of Justice issuing press releases about actual criminal investigations and actual court cases. And not even weird fishing-exercise investigations; those press releases are talking about cases that are based in reality and have resulted in criminal convictions.

The slippery-slope overgeneralized over-extrapolated version of pedocon theory is that all Republicans are pedos, and that every accusation is a confession.

The overcautious, reserved, not-overstretching version of pedocon theory is that people affiliated with the Republican Party are, for structural reasons related to religious conservatism, less likely to back anti-pedophilia bills because those bills would, as a side effect, diminish the privileges of parents and the church in modern life. Republicans are also more likely to participate in social institutions which facilitate those types of abuse, because the not-related-to-abuse aspects of those institutions jive with their worldviews. And when a member of the Party is accused, of course the Party closes ranks to defend them; that's just basic ingroup/outgroup defense. It's simply ideological overlap with pedophiles, you understand, but that's still enough reason for the advocates of this reserved version of pedocon theory to advocate for throwing out the current Republican Party. (whether or not a revised one gets built, and its politics, are beyond the scope of this post)

But.

Throw all the theorizing out. Find the list(s) of people charged with a certain set of offenses regarding sexual and nonsexual abuse of minors. Filter the list to people within handshake distance of political power. Who remains?

Quoting the Liberal Currents article linked above:

After all, Donald Trump is hardly the only Republican pedophile. Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House, was a pedophile. Roy Moore, Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was a pedophile. R.J. May, Republican State Representative, was a pedophile. John Jessup, Republican County Commissioner, was a pedophile. Mark Foley, Republican Member of Congress, sent sexually explicit messages to teenagers. Matt Gaetz, Republican Member of Congress, had sex with a 17 year old—count that one if you like. Edward Coristine, one of Elon Musk's handpicked DOGE staffers, founded an image-sharing website tailor-made for sharing child porn. The list goes on and on. [...] When Slate went looking for an equivalent list of Democratic pedophiles, they were able to come up with: a random donor, the head of a local Young Democrats, and Anthony Weiner's sexts. Not a speaker of the House, a Chief Justice, and a President.

The underlying fact is that of people with actual political post, so many Republicans — and generally only Republicans — put themselves in these situations is why any variant of "pedocon theory" is catchy, even before you start looking into what sorts of bills Republicans propose or block.

"Comet Pizza" was 4chan, and sure, Clinton was seen in the Epstein files. But as more facts are revealed, the less this weapon can be wielded by Trumpist Republicans. It's too self-harming. The only factions that can wield it without self-inflicting damage are anti-Trumpists, and there aren't many of those in the Republican Party. It's a natural weapon for Democrats and other leftists to wield, simply because of whom the facts damage.

[brazenautomaton]

"Actually, this completely batshit theory is totally sensical if you ignore all of the things that the person said and replace them with other things that are wrong but in a more low-key way that's mostly lies of omission!"

People did this about qanon, too. You called it "sanewashing."

[irradiate-space]

The sanewashed version isn't the version the general public is talking about, though, and neither is the "all Republicans are pedos" line. I introduced those as examples of things that could be called "pedocon theory", but aren't central to it. I then followed the exaggerated version and the sanewashed version with the version described in the Liberal Currents article, which I hope you've read by now.

Is the Liberal Currents article representative of pedocon theory?

If I search "Pedocon theory" right now on DuckDuckGo, the results are:

a 4-year-old post from r/Conspiracy_Commons

The Liberal Currents link upthread.

(irrelevant link)

The Slate article referenced above.

a blog post

a blog post

Wiktionary for "pedocon"

LGBTQ Nation news article

a blog post

Daily Kos

Google is less useful. Its AI header leaves out the conservatism angle, and the search results are full of "pedocon theory undefeated" rather than actual explanations of the term, but they do include some news articles that explain the term.

Based upon this wholly-scientific survey of search results, then:

I conclude that the version of pedocon theory that the general public is talking about is the same as the version that we've been discussing in this thread. It starts with the factual observation that, somehow, the vast majority of convicted child abusers who also held political power are conservatives. Then it looks at Republicans' political actions, which include blocking bills that would reduce child abuse, and blocking investigations into alleged abusers.

Can you explain these facts without drawing the conclusion that the Republican Party in its current form protects pedophiles? Or do you have to sanewash to avoid that conclusion?

The next step of pedocon theory moves from the descriptive to the accusative. It adds "every accusation is an admission", which is based on a documented history of conservatives boldly speaking out against a thing, while privately participating in the thing, for things as varied as drugs, porn, gay sex, insider trading, and child abuse. "Every accusation is an admission" is a sword that cuts both ways. Such accusations of projection are a general-purpose thought-terminating cliché that can be used to rhetorically terminate all useful discussion, yet its use can also be grounded in fact. Again, this specific application is based on an observable fact pattern with independent third-party confirmation: there's that pesky documented history of conservatives publicly decrying child abuse while privately participating in it. The history of Democrats and liberals doing it is much, much smaller.

Can that discrepancy be explained away without sanewashing?

The final step of pedocon theory is the application of the heuristic "the purpose of a system is what it does". This final piece of the puzzle is how many people make a logical leap from the observed actions of Republicans to stating that the Republican Party and the conservative media establishment exist in order to defend pedophiles. The refutation of this conclusion relies on the refutation of the applicability of the heuristic, which is an exercise left to the reader.

[brazenautomaton]

The history of Democrats and liberals doing this is not smaller. That's simply not true. You just don't want to remember it when Democrats did it. Everyone was in the Epstein book.

Republicans blocking anti-pedophilia bills is not true. You just don't want to remember otherwise. Republicans would not shut up about how they wanted more laws to stop pedophiles and Democrats were standing in the way of them.

The entirety of your argument is selective memory. That's it. That's all. Literally every single argument you make or could possibly make is a symmetrical transformation of an argument qanon was making two fucking years ago that you totally forgot because it is so emotionally satisfying to believe that your opponents are pedophiles. There is no "what about," there is no "but it's different this time."

When two groups of people do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way to exactly the same ends, they did not do it for totally different reasons. You are doing the same thing as qanon did, you are doing it in the same way they did, and you are doing it for the same reason they did.

[irradiate-space]

Of that list of people even mentioned in the files, the following named people are American politicians:

Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, who introduced Bill to Jeff (Democrat)

Steve Bannon (Republican)

Tom Barrack, Trump-appointed US ambassador to Turkiye (Republican)

Albert Bryan Jr., current governor of the US Virgin Islands, appearing in his official capacity (Democrat)

William Burns, then US deputy secretary of state, appearing in his official capacity (served under Biden, Obama, Bush W, and Clinton)

Bill Clinton (Democrat)

John de Jongh Jr., then governor of the US Virgin Islands (Democrat)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Republican)

Gary King, then attorney general of New Mexico (Democrat)

Howard Lutnick, former fundraiser for Hillary's presidential bid, former fundraiser for Trump's presidential bids, current US Secretary of Commerce (then Democrat, now Republican)

Kenneth Mapp, former governor of the US Virgin Islands (registered Republican, but elected as independent)

George Mitchell, many things including former US senator from Maine (Democrat)

John Cartwright Phelan, then investment banker and fundraiser for various causes, also Trump's Secretary of the Navy from 2025-2026 (Republican)

William Blaine Richardson III, former governor of New Mexico (Democrat)

Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House counsel under Obama (Democrat)

Kenn Starr, independent counsel for the investigation that recommended impeachment of Clinton, solicitor general of the US under George H. W. Bush, judge appointed by Reagan (Republican)

Larry Summers, deputy secretary and secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Obama (Democratic)

Donald Trump (Republican)

Narrow that list to everyone who's alleged of having knowledge before Epstein's first round of criminal charges in 2008:

Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, who introduced Bill to Jeff (Democrat)

Tom Barrack, Trump-appointed US ambassador to Turkiye (Republican)

John de Jongh Jr., then governor of the US Virgin Islands (Democrat) and his wife

Howard Lutnick, former fundraiser for Hillary's presidential bid, former fundraiser for Trump's presidential bids, current US Secretary of Commerce (then Democrat, now Republican)

George Mitchell, many things including former US senator from Maine (Democrat)

John Cartwright Phelan, then investment banker and fundraiser for various causes, also Trump's Secretary of the Navy from 2025-2026 (Republican)

William Blaine Richardson III, former governor of New Mexico (Democrat)

Larry Summers, deputy secretary and secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Obama (Democratic)

Donald Trump (Republican)

If you narrow that list to people who were actually charged with anything related to Epstein, you get:

(crickets)

Yes, it's a real who's-who of people who went through Epstein's island.

---

I wasn't talking about Epstein's island specifically.

Let's take a step back and look at US politicians in the last ~20 years who have been credibly accused of anything related to sexual abuse of a minor, which for many of these includes 17-year-old House pages. I'm pulling from GovTrack's list of Congresscritter misconduct:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican FL-1 2017-2024)

Rep. Anthony Weiner (Democrat NY-9, 1999-2011)

Rep. Dennis Hastert (Republican IL-14, 1987-2007)

Rep. Mark Foley (Republican FL-16, 1995-2006) House pages

Rep. Mel Reynolds (Democrat IL-2, 1993-1995)

Rep. Donald Lukens (Republican OH-8, 1987-1990)

Rep. Gerry Studds (Democrat MA-10, 1983-1996) House page

Rep. Daniel Crane (Republican IL-19, 1983-1984) House page

The dates that these national-level legislators were last in office might suggest recency bias rather than selective memory.

But let's look at state officials, too. Again filtering to just those accused of sexual abuse of a minor. Drawing from a 2017-2019 list from the AP, Ballotpedia's two-year lists of noteworthy criminal and sexual misconduct in American politics which go back to 2017,

State Rep. RJ May (Republican South Carolina 2025)

State Rep. David Byrd (Republican Tennessee 2022)

Joel Koskan, candidate for state senate (Republican South Dakota 2022)

State Rep. Mike Folmer (Republican Pennsylvania 2019)

State Rep. Angel Arce (Democrat Connecticut 2018)

State Rep. Dillon Bates (Democrat Maine 2018)

State Rep. Brandon Hixon (Republican Idaho 2017)

State Rep. Dan Johnson (Republican Kentucky 2017)

State Sen. Ralph Shortey (Republican Oklahoma 2017)

Ballotpedia also notes allegations involving minors about campaign strategist John Weaver (Republican) in 2021.

Other than Gaetz, I don't think the general public is aware of specifics regarding these legislators' cases.

They're probably thinking about Donald Trump (Republican) who ran in 2020 on revealing the Epstein Files, who after gaining office then stalled their release until Congress passed a bill for force the matter. Trump's allies in the House and Senate, at his insistence, whipped against the bill, up until the point where Trump decided that they could pass it. Congressional Republicans knew of the allegations, and they protected him against them.

But the allegation in the Epstein files of Trump forcing himself isn't the only one. You can read an extensive list on Wikipedia, including the times that Trump himself bragged about "inspecting" the dressing rooms of teenaged contestants at his pageants while the contestants were getting dressed.

But anyways.

Yeah, you're right that I'm not exposed to the whole firehose of pedocon theory content. I just saw a Bluesky Poster repost this:

I think this is actually about the Republican-passed bills mandating genital inspections for minors playing school sports.

[brazenautomaton]

It's actually about what it says it is about. We can all see it right there with our eyes.

[irradiate-space]

In Atlas Shrugged, when John Galt said "A is A", there was no deeper meaning or logic, no chain of reasoning, no many-hour radio broadcast, no political movement, no activism, no personal history, no bond of brotherhood between ideologues preventing a disaster during a conversational lacuna, no frenzied explanations while partially dressed in a smoke-filled office as the sun cast sultry shadows through the slatted blinds. Not even a revolutionary idea which had been condensed and summarized into a koan.

There was only the slogan, nothing more.

A is A.

[brazenautomaton]

It had meaning and associations. Due to the things he said. That we can read, when he explained them at length in his many-hour radio broadcast. He condensed and summarized it into a koan that was a condensation and summary of the actual thing that he said actually.

What we don't do is go "Well, he didn't really MEAN that A is A. He didn't actually mean all of those things he said right there where we can see them. He meant something totally different that I think sounds more reasonable."

[irradiate-space]

I'll admit there is a difference between child molestation and:

protecting self-admitted (Trump) and alleged (Gaetz) child molesters from scrutiny

passing laws requiring genital inspections of schoolchildren

[eightyonekilograms]

ADHD treatment and the gatekeeping thereof is actually evidence against "capitalism rules everything around me", and a reminder that there are plenty of decisions being made based on personal biases, moral panics, self-interested groups, etc. People with ADHD are way more effective and useful to capitalism-in-the-abstract when they can just get their medication no questions asked, and yet.

[evilsoup]

ok that post about the right wing dudes wanting boy concubines...can you enlighten me as to what the fuck is actually happening in the minds of these men because it's breaking my brain??!!

We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

The connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is no accident, but reveals a deep logic at the heart of reactionary politics.

[nonevahed]

it's because the Sotadic zone is moving north due to global warming

[brazenautomaton]

Remember when claiming your opponents were all pedophiles was qanon's thing?

[iteratedextras]

I think that's why Democrats (as a tribe) are doing it.

~None of them actually believe in their accusations that every random right-winger is one, or even that Trump is, but they saw QAnon doing it, lost the 2024 election, and will do just about anything other than change their policies to better appeal to voters.

"QAnon Alex Jones bullshit worked for Republicans to fool those gullible idiot conspiracy theorists, so maybe it'll work for us, too."

[irradiate-space]

Pedocon theory isn't QAnon secret-signals stuff; it doesn't depend on someone making cryptic posts on 13chag. The animating factor of pedocon theory is the actual FBI and Department of Justice issuing press releases about actual criminal investigations and actual court cases. And not even weird fishing-exercise investigations; those press releases are talking about cases that are based in reality and have resulted in criminal convictions.

The slippery-slope overgeneralized over-extrapolated version of pedocon theory is that all Republicans are pedos, and that every accusation is a confession.

The overcautious, reserved, not-overstretching version of pedocon theory is that people affiliated with the Republican Party are, for structural reasons related to religious conservatism, less likely to back anti-pedophilia bills because those bills would, as a side effect, diminish the privileges of parents and the church in modern life. Republicans are also more likely to participate in social institutions which facilitate those types of abuse, because the not-related-to-abuse aspects of those institutions jive with their worldviews. And when a member of the Party is accused, of course the Party closes ranks to defend them; that's just basic ingroup/outgroup defense. It's simply ideological overlap with pedophiles, you understand, but that's still enough reason for the advocates of this reserved version of pedocon theory to advocate for throwing out the current Republican Party. (whether or not a revised one gets built, and its politics, are beyond the scope of this post)

But.

Throw all the theorizing out. Find the list(s) of people charged with a certain set of offenses regarding sexual and nonsexual abuse of minors. Filter the list to people within handshake distance of political power. Who remains?

Quoting the Liberal Currents article linked above:

After all, Donald Trump is hardly the only Republican pedophile. Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House, was a pedophile. Roy Moore, Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was a pedophile. R.J. May, Republican State Representative, was a pedophile. John Jessup, Republican County Commissioner, was a pedophile. Mark Foley, Republican Member of Congress, sent sexually explicit messages to teenagers. Matt Gaetz, Republican Member of Congress, had sex with a 17 year old—count that one if you like. Edward Coristine, one of Elon Musk's handpicked DOGE staffers, founded an image-sharing website tailor-made for sharing child porn. The list goes on and on. [...] When Slate went looking for an equivalent list of Democratic pedophiles, they were able to come up with: a random donor, the head of a local Young Democrats, and Anthony Weiner's sexts. Not a speaker of the House, a Chief Justice, and a President.

The underlying fact is that of people with actual political post, so many Republicans — and generally only Republicans — put themselves in these situations is why any variant of "pedocon theory" is catchy, even before you start looking into what sorts of bills Republicans propose or block.

"Comet Pizza" was 4chan, and sure, Clinton was seen in the Epstein files. But as more facts are revealed, the less this weapon can be wielded by Trumpist Republicans. It's too self-harming. The only factions that can wield it without self-inflicting damage are anti-Trumpists, and there aren't many of those in the Republican Party. It's a natural weapon for Democrats and other leftists to wield, simply because of whom the facts damage.

[brazenautomaton]

"Actually, this completely batshit theory is totally sensical if you ignore all of the things that the person said and replace them with other things that are wrong but in a more low-key way that's mostly lies of omission!"

People did this about qanon, too. You called it "sanewashing."

[irradiate-space]

The sanewashed version isn't the version the general public is talking about, though, and neither is the "all Republicans are pedos" line. I introduced those as examples of things that could be called "pedocon theory", but aren't central to it. I then followed the exaggerated version and the sanewashed version with the version described in the Liberal Currents article, which I hope you've read by now.

Is the Liberal Currents article representative of pedocon theory?

If I search "Pedocon theory" right now on DuckDuckGo, the results are:

a 4-year-old post from r/Conspiracy_Commons

The Liberal Currents link upthread.

(irrelevant link)

The Slate article referenced above.

a blog post

a blog post

Wiktionary for "pedocon"

LGBTQ Nation news article

a blog post

Daily Kos

Google is less useful. Its AI header leaves out the conservatism angle, and the search results are full of "pedocon theory undefeated" rather than actual explanations of the term, but they do include some news articles that explain the term.

Based upon this wholly-scientific survey of search results, then:

I conclude that the version of pedocon theory that the general public is talking about is the same as the version that we've been discussing in this thread. It starts with the factual observation that, somehow, the vast majority of convicted child abusers who also held political power are conservatives. Then it looks at Republicans' political actions, which include blocking bills that would reduce child abuse, and blocking investigations into alleged abusers.

Can you explain these facts without drawing the conclusion that the Republican Party in its current form protects pedophiles? Or do you have to sanewash to avoid that conclusion?

The next step of pedocon theory moves from the descriptive to the accusative. It adds "every accusation is an admission", which is based on a documented history of conservatives boldly speaking out against a thing, while privately participating in the thing, for things as varied as drugs, porn, gay sex, insider trading, and child abuse. "Every accusation is an admission" is a sword that cuts both ways. Such accusations of projection are a general-purpose thought-terminating cliché that can be used to rhetorically terminate all useful discussion, yet its use can also be grounded in fact. Again, this specific application is based on an observable fact pattern with independent third-party confirmation: there's that pesky documented history of conservatives publicly decrying child abuse while privately participating in it. The history of Democrats and liberals doing it is much, much smaller.

Can that discrepancy be explained away without sanewashing?

The final step of pedocon theory is the application of the heuristic "the purpose of a system is what it does". This final piece of the puzzle is how many people make a logical leap from the observed actions of Republicans to stating that the Republican Party and the conservative media establishment exist in order to defend pedophiles. The refutation of this conclusion relies on the refutation of the applicability of the heuristic, which is an exercise left to the reader.

[brazenautomaton]

The history of Democrats and liberals doing this is not smaller. That's simply not true. You just don't want to remember it when Democrats did it. Everyone was in the Epstein book.

Republicans blocking anti-pedophilia bills is not true. You just don't want to remember otherwise. Republicans would not shut up about how they wanted more laws to stop pedophiles and Democrats were standing in the way of them.

The entirety of your argument is selective memory. That's it. That's all. Literally every single argument you make or could possibly make is a symmetrical transformation of an argument qanon was making two fucking years ago that you totally forgot because it is so emotionally satisfying to believe that your opponents are pedophiles. There is no "what about," there is no "but it's different this time."

When two groups of people do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way to exactly the same ends, they did not do it for totally different reasons. You are doing the same thing as qanon did, you are doing it in the same way they did, and you are doing it for the same reason they did.

[irradiate-space]

Of that list of people even mentioned in the files, the following named people are American politicians:

Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, who introduced Bill to Jeff (Democrat)

Steve Bannon (Republican)

Tom Barrack, Trump-appointed US ambassador to Turkiye (Republican)

Albert Bryan Jr., current governor of the US Virgin Islands, appearing in his official capacity (Democrat)

William Burns, then US deputy secretary of state, appearing in his official capacity (served under Biden, Obama, Bush W, and Clinton)

Bill Clinton (Democrat)

John de Jongh Jr., then governor of the US Virgin Islands (Democrat)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Republican)

Gary King, then attorney general of New Mexico (Democrat)

Howard Lutnick, former fundraiser for Hillary's presidential bid, former fundraiser for Trump's presidential bids, current US Secretary of Commerce (then Democrat, now Republican)

Kenneth Mapp, former governor of the US Virgin Islands (registered Republican, but elected as independent)

George Mitchell, many things including former US senator from Maine (Democrat)

John Cartwright Phelan, then investment banker and fundraiser for various causes, also Trump's Secretary of the Navy from 2025-2026 (Republican)

William Blaine Richardson III, former governor of New Mexico (Democrat)

Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House counsel under Obama (Democrat)

Kenn Starr, independent counsel for the investigation that recommended impeachment of Clinton, solicitor general of the US under George H. W. Bush, judge appointed by Reagan (Republican)

Larry Summers, deputy secretary and secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Obama (Democratic)

Donald Trump (Republican)

Narrow that list to everyone who's alleged of having knowledge before Epstein's first round of criminal charges in 2008:

Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, who introduced Bill to Jeff (Democrat)

Tom Barrack, Trump-appointed US ambassador to Turkiye (Republican)

John de Jongh Jr., then governor of the US Virgin Islands (Democrat) and his wife

Howard Lutnick, former fundraiser for Hillary's presidential bid, former fundraiser for Trump's presidential bids, current US Secretary of Commerce (then Democrat, now Republican)

George Mitchell, many things including former US senator from Maine (Democrat)

John Cartwright Phelan, then investment banker and fundraiser for various causes, also Trump's Secretary of the Navy from 2025-2026 (Republican)

William Blaine Richardson III, former governor of New Mexico (Democrat)

Larry Summers, deputy secretary and secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Obama (Democratic)

Donald Trump (Republican)

If you narrow that list to people who were actually charged with anything related to Epstein, you get:

(crickets)

Yes, it's a real who's-who of people who went through Epstein's island.

---

I wasn't talking about Epstein's island specifically.

Let's take a step back and look at US politicians in the last ~20 years who have been credibly accused of anything related to sexual abuse of a minor, which for many of these includes 17-year-old House pages. I'm pulling from GovTrack's list of Congresscritter misconduct:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican FL-1 2017-2024)

Rep. Anthony Weiner (Democrat NY-9, 1999-2011)

Rep. Dennis Hastert (Republican IL-14, 1987-2007)

Rep. Mark Foley (Republican FL-16, 1995-2006) House pages

Rep. Mel Reynolds (Democrat IL-2, 1993-1995)

Rep. Donald Lukens (Republican OH-8, 1987-1990)

Rep. Gerry Studds (Democrat MA-10, 1983-1996) House page

Rep. Daniel Crane (Republican IL-19, 1983-1984) House page

The dates that these national-level legislators were last in office might suggest recency bias rather than selective memory.

But let's look at state officials, too. Again filtering to just those accused of sexual abuse of a minor. Drawing from a 2017-2019 list from the AP, Ballotpedia's two-year lists of noteworthy criminal and sexual misconduct in American politics which go back to 2017,

State Rep. RJ May (Republican South Carolina 2025)

State Rep. David Byrd (Republican Tennessee 2022)

Joel Koskan, candidate for state senate (Republican South Dakota 2022)

State Rep. Mike Folmer (Republican Pennsylvania 2019)

State Rep. Angel Arce (Democrat Connecticut 2018)

State Rep. Dillon Bates (Democrat Maine 2018)

State Rep. Brandon Hixon (Republican Idaho 2017)

State Rep. Dan Johnson (Republican Kentucky 2017)

State Sen. Ralph Shortey (Republican Oklahoma 2017)

Ballotpedia also notes allegations involving minors about campaign strategist John Weaver (Republican) in 2021.

Other than Gaetz, I don't think the general public is aware of specifics regarding these legislators' cases.

They're probably thinking about Donald Trump (Republican) who ran in 2020 on revealing the Epstein Files, who after gaining office then stalled their release until Congress passed a bill for force the matter. Trump's allies in the House and Senate, at his insistence, whipped against the bill, up until the point where Trump decided that they could pass it. Congressional Republicans knew of the allegations, and they protected him against them.

But the allegation in the Epstein files of Trump forcing himself isn't the only one. You can read an extensive list on Wikipedia, including the times that Trump himself bragged about "inspecting" the dressing rooms of teenaged contestants at his pageants while the contestants were getting dressed.

But anyways.

Yeah, you're right that I'm not exposed to the whole firehose of pedocon theory content. I just saw a Bluesky Poster repost this:

I think this is actually about the Republican-passed bills mandating genital inspections for minors playing school sports.

[brazenautomaton]

It's actually about what it says it is about. We can all see it right there with our eyes.

[irradiate-space]

In Atlas Shrugged, when John Galt said "A is A", there was no deeper meaning or logic, no chain of reasoning, no many-hour radio broadcast, no political movement, no activism, no personal history, no bond of brotherhood between ideologues preventing a disaster during a conversational lacuna, no frenzied explanations while partially dressed in a smoke-filled office as the sun cast sultry shadows through the slatted blinds. Not even a revolutionary idea which had been condensed and summarized into a koan.

There was only the slogan, nothing more.

A is A.

[sigmaleph]

i like to imagine how people in the post-material-scarcity future would romanticise the current time period.

having a job gave people a sense of community and purpose lacking in our modern age where nobody is forcing you to get out of bed on threat of starvation. actually the average office worker in the early 21st century was so much wealthier than a UBI-having-modern if you forget to count paying rent and also make some very bad purchasing power conversions. if you look at contemporary records (sitcom where the main characters are only at work when it's plot relevant) it is obvious that employment was never really a major obstacle to having an active social life or pursuing your own passions.

[nitpickspot]

Honestly I have a lot of...concerns about how a post scarcity society would work in relation to the things that I love. But I hope having to give up things like tv and pop culture and toys makes them happier

[sigmaleph]

why would a post-scarcity society have to give up those things? what do you think post-scarcity means?

[nitpickspot]

I mean, cartoons are probably going to end up "reduced" to Glitch Productions type things, like 10 minutes of animation every 6 months. There's just no way to produce 20 minutes of quality animation on a weekly or even a monthly basis in a world where no one has an incentive to work on an idea that isn't theirs.

Why would anyone choose to do inbetweens on someone else's cartoon, when they have no financial or occupational obstacles to just working on their OWN cartoon? Animation takes dozens or hundreds of people to do to current quality and a lot of it is a really shit job to get stuck with.

The same goes for things like toys and collectables. Who is going to CHOOSE to make someone else's dolls all day when anyone with the skill or the talent is 100% fo the kind of person who would just be making their OWN dolls in miniscule batches.

Remove employment from the equation and I just don't see any reason why ANYONE would do large entertainment projects at current scale. And even if they did, most of them would crumble under the fact that the entire workforce can and will just leave at any possible moment, right?

This isn't a dig, or a gotcha, it's just the thought I constantly have when this concept comes up

[sigmaleph]

i think you're imagining 'nobody needs a job to survive' but 'post scarcity' is a stronger postulate than that, and implies something like e.g. if i have an idea for a doll or a tv show it can trivially be mass produced (generally under the assumption that we can automate almost all things that nowadays require human labour)

[nitpickspot]

We're uhh...kind of already starting to try and do that automation step.

and the results are not great.

[sigmaleph]

we've been doing the automation thing for centuries and I would describe the results as nothing short of amazing.

[centrally-unplanned]

Also why would people not work jobs in a post-scarcity society? Not everyone would, of course - not everyone does today after all. But status & economics wouldn't go away. You would absolutely get teams of artists making animated films that people would pay utility-bucks to see and popular influencers would praise. It would use whatever techniques work to make the most "in vogue" art that people would want to see. Almost certainly sometimes that would be totally human-drawn stuff because that is Cool Now, and other times it would be heavily automated - just like the animated film industry today.

Production efficiency changes, but human nature doesn't - we are going to want the same things we always did. Unless this post-scarcity society is like cyborgs and uploaded minds and wire-heading or whatever; but we all know that isn't what we mean here.

[irradiate-space]

See also the idea of "job" as a type of play that can be engaged in:

Vekllei people engage with work not in an economic but in a social sense. This concept is known as 'ludic productivity,' and resembles a for

[evilsoup]

ok that post about the right wing dudes wanting boy concubines...can you enlighten me as to what the fuck is actually happening in the minds of these men because it's breaking my brain??!!

We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

The connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is no accident, but reveals a deep logic at the heart of reactionary politics.

[nonevahed]

it's because the Sotadic zone is moving north due to global warming

[brazenautomaton]

Remember when claiming your opponents were all pedophiles was qanon's thing?

[iteratedextras]

I think that's why Democrats (as a tribe) are doing it.

~None of them actually believe in their accusations that every random right-winger is one, or even that Trump is, but they saw QAnon doing it, lost the 2024 election, and will do just about anything other than change their policies to better appeal to voters.

"QAnon Alex Jones bullshit worked for Republicans to fool those gullible idiot conspiracy theorists, so maybe it'll work for us, too."

[irradiate-space]

Pedocon theory isn't QAnon secret-signals stuff; it doesn't depend on someone making cryptic posts on 13chag. The animating factor of pedocon theory is the actual FBI and Department of Justice issuing press releases about actual criminal investigations and actual court cases. And not even weird fishing-exercise investigations; those press releases are talking about cases that are based in reality and have resulted in criminal convictions.

The slippery-slope overgeneralized over-extrapolated version of pedocon theory is that all Republicans are pedos, and that every accusation is a confession.

The overcautious, reserved, not-overstretching version of pedocon theory is that people affiliated with the Republican Party are, for structural reasons related to religious conservatism, less likely to back anti-pedophilia bills because those bills would, as a side effect, diminish the privileges of parents and the church in modern life. Republicans are also more likely to participate in social institutions which facilitate those types of abuse, because the not-related-to-abuse aspects of those institutions jive with their worldviews. And when a member of the Party is accused, of course the Party closes ranks to defend them; that's just basic ingroup/outgroup defense. It's simply ideological overlap with pedophiles, you understand, but that's still enough reason for the advocates of this reserved version of pedocon theory to advocate for throwing out the current Republican Party. (whether or not a revised one gets built, and its politics, are beyond the scope of this post)

But.

Throw all the theorizing out. Find the list(s) of people charged with a certain set of offenses regarding sexual and nonsexual abuse of minors. Filter the list to people within handshake distance of political power. Who remains?

Quoting the Liberal Currents article linked above:

After all, Donald Trump is hardly the only Republican pedophile. Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House, was a pedophile. Roy Moore, Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was a pedophile. R.J. May, Republican State Representative, was a pedophile. John Jessup, Republican County Commissioner, was a pedophile. Mark Foley, Republican Member of Congress, sent sexually explicit messages to teenagers. Matt Gaetz, Republican Member of Congress, had sex with a 17 year old—count that one if you like. Edward Coristine, one of Elon Musk's handpicked DOGE staffers, founded an image-sharing website tailor-made for sharing child porn. The list goes on and on. [...] When Slate went looking for an equivalent list of Democratic pedophiles, they were able to come up with: a random donor, the head of a local Young Democrats, and Anthony Weiner's sexts. Not a speaker of the House, a Chief Justice, and a President.

The underlying fact is that of people with actual political post, so many Republicans — and generally only Republicans — put themselves in these situations is why any variant of "pedocon theory" is catchy, even before you start looking into what sorts of bills Republicans propose or block.

"Comet Pizza" was 4chan, and sure, Clinton was seen in the Epstein files. But as more facts are revealed, the less this weapon can be wielded by Trumpist Republicans. It's too self-harming. The only factions that can wield it without self-inflicting damage are anti-Trumpists, and there aren't many of those in the Republican Party. It's a natural weapon for Democrats and other leftists to wield, simply because of whom the facts damage.

[brazenautomaton]

"Actually, this completely batshit theory is totally sensical if you ignore all of the things that the person said and replace them with other things that are wrong but in a more low-key way that's mostly lies of omission!"

People did this about qanon, too. You called it "sanewashing."

[irradiate-space]

The sanewashed version isn't the version the general public is talking about, though, and neither is the "all Republicans are pedos" line. I introduced those as examples of things that could be called "pedocon theory", but aren't central to it. I then followed the exaggerated version and the sanewashed version with the version described in the Liberal Currents article, which I hope you've read by now.

Is the Liberal Currents article representative of pedocon theory?

If I search "Pedocon theory" right now on DuckDuckGo, the results are:

a 4-year-old post from r/Conspiracy_Commons

The Liberal Currents link upthread.

(irrelevant link)

The Slate article referenced above.

a blog post

a blog post

Wiktionary for "pedocon"

LGBTQ Nation news article

a blog post

Daily Kos

Google is less useful. Its AI header leaves out the conservatism angle, and the search results are full of "pedocon theory undefeated" rather than actual explanations of the term, but they do include some news articles that explain the term.

Based upon this wholly-scientific survey of search results, then:

I conclude that the version of pedocon theory that the general public is talking about is the same as the version that we've been discussing in this thread. It starts with the factual observation that, somehow, the vast majority of convicted child abusers who also held political power are conservatives. Then it looks at Republicans' political actions, which include blocking bills that would reduce child abuse, and blocking investigations into alleged abusers.

Can you explain these facts without drawing the conclusion that the Republican Party in its current form protects pedophiles? Or do you have to sanewash to avoid that conclusion?

The next step of pedocon theory moves from the descriptive to the accusative. It adds "every accusation is an admission", which is based on a documented history of conservatives boldly speaking out against a thing, while privately participating in the thing, for things as varied as drugs, porn, gay sex, insider trading, and child abuse. "Every accusation is an admission" is a sword that cuts both ways. Such accusations of projection are a general-purpose thought-terminating cliché that can be used to rhetorically terminate all useful discussion, yet its use can also be grounded in fact. Again, this specific application is based on an observable fact pattern with independent third-party confirmation: there's that pesky documented history of conservatives publicly decrying child abuse while privately participating in it. The history of Democrats and liberals doing it is much, much smaller.

Can that discrepancy be explained away without sanewashing?

The final step of pedocon theory is the application of the heuristic "the purpose of a system is what it does". This final piece of the puzzle is how many people make a logical leap from the observed actions of Republicans to stating that the Republican Party and the conservative media establishment exist in order to defend pedophiles. The refutation of this conclusion relies on the refutation of the applicability of the heuristic, which is an exercise left to the reader.

[brazenautomaton]

The history of Democrats and liberals doing this is not smaller. That's simply not true. You just don't want to remember it when Democrats did it. Everyone was in the Epstein book.

Republicans blocking anti-pedophilia bills is not true. You just don't want to remember otherwise. Republicans would not shut up about how they wanted more laws to stop pedophiles and Democrats were standing in the way of them.

The entirety of your argument is selective memory. That's it. That's all. Literally every single argument you make or could possibly make is a symmetrical transformation of an argument qanon was making two fucking years ago that you totally forgot because it is so emotionally satisfying to believe that your opponents are pedophiles. There is no "what about," there is no "but it's different this time."

When two groups of people do exactly the same thing in exactly the same way to exactly the same ends, they did not do it for totally different reasons. You are doing the same thing as qanon did, you are doing it in the same way they did, and you are doing it for the same reason they did.

[irradiate-space]

Of that list of people even mentioned in the files, the following named people are American politicians:

Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, who introduced Bill to Jeff (Democrat)

Steve Bannon (Republican)

Tom Barrack, Trump-appointed US ambassador to Turkiye (Republican)

Albert Bryan Jr., current governor of the US Virgin Islands, appearing in his official capacity (Democrat)

William Burns, then US deputy secretary of state, appearing in his official capacity (served under Biden, Obama, Bush W, and Clinton)

Bill Clinton (Democrat)

John de Jongh Jr., then governor of the US Virgin Islands (Democrat)

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Republican)

Gary King, then attorney general of New Mexico (Democrat)

Howard Lutnick, former fundraiser for Hillary's presidential bid, former fundraiser for Trump's presidential bids, current US Secretary of Commerce (then Democrat, now Republican)

Kenneth Mapp, former governor of the US Virgin Islands (registered Republican, but elected as independent)

George Mitchell, many things including former US senator from Maine (Democrat)

John Cartwright Phelan, then investment banker and fundraiser for various causes, also Trump's Secretary of the Navy from 2025-2026 (Republican)

William Blaine Richardson III, former governor of New Mexico (Democrat)

Kathryn Ruemmler, former White House counsel under Obama (Democrat)

Kenn Starr, independent counsel for the investigation that recommended impeachment of Clinton, solicitor general of the US under George H. W. Bush, judge appointed by Reagan (Republican)

Larry Summers, deputy secretary and secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Obama (Democratic)

Donald Trump (Republican)

Narrow that list to everyone who's alleged of having knowledge before Epstein's first round of criminal charges in 2008:

Doug Band, former aide to Bill Clinton, who introduced Bill to Jeff (Democrat)

Tom Barrack, Trump-appointed US ambassador to Turkiye (Republican)

John de Jongh Jr., then governor of the US Virgin Islands (Democrat) and his wife

Howard Lutnick, former fundraiser for Hillary's presidential bid, former fundraiser for Trump's presidential bids, current US Secretary of Commerce (then Democrat, now Republican)

George Mitchell, many things including former US senator from Maine (Democrat)

John Cartwright Phelan, then investment banker and fundraiser for various causes, also Trump's Secretary of the Navy from 2025-2026 (Republican)

William Blaine Richardson III, former governor of New Mexico (Democrat)

Larry Summers, deputy secretary and secretary of the treasury under Bill Clinton, director of the National Economic Council under Obama (Democratic)

Donald Trump (Republican)

If you narrow that list to people who were actually charged with anything related to Epstein, you get:

(crickets)

Yes, it's a real who's-who of people who went through Epstein's island.

---

I wasn't talking about Epstein's island specifically.

Let's take a step back and look at US politicians in the last ~20 years who have been credibly accused of anything related to sexual abuse of a minor, which for many of these includes 17-year-old House pages. I'm pulling from GovTrack's list of Congresscritter misconduct:

Rep. Matt Gaetz (Republican FL-1 2017-2024)

Rep. Anthony Weiner (Democrat NY-9, 1999-2011)

Rep. Dennis Hastert (Republican IL-14, 1987-2007)

Rep. Mark Foley (Republican FL-16, 1995-2006) House pages

Rep. Mel Reynolds (Democrat IL-2, 1993-1995)

Rep. Donald Lukens (Republican OH-8, 1987-1990)

Rep. Gerry Studds (Democrat MA-10, 1983-1996) House page

Rep. Daniel Crane (Republican IL-19, 1983-1984) House page

The dates that these national-level legislators were last in office might suggest recency bias rather than selective memory.

But let's look at state officials, too. Again filtering to just those accused of sexual abuse of a minor. Drawing from a 2017-2019 list from the AP, Ballotpedia's two-year lists of noteworthy criminal and sexual misconduct in American politics which go back to 2017,

State Rep. RJ May (Republican South Carolina 2025)

State Rep. David Byrd (Republican Tennessee 2022)

Joel Koskan, candidate for state senate (Republican South Dakota 2022)

State Rep. Mike Folmer (Republican Pennsylvania 2019)

State Rep. Angel Arce (Democrat Connecticut 2018)

State Rep. Dillon Bates (Democrat Maine 2018)

State Rep. Brandon Hixon (Republican Idaho 2017)

State Rep. Dan Johnson (Republican Kentucky 2017)

State Sen. Ralph Shortey (Republican Oklahoma 2017)

Ballotpedia also notes allegations involving minors about campaign strategist John Weaver (Republican) in 2021.

Other than Gaetz, I don't think the general public is aware of specifics regarding these legislators' cases.

They're probably thinking about Donald Trump (Republican) who ran in 2020 on revealing the Epstein Files, who after gaining office then stalled their release until Congress passed a bill for force the matter. Trump's allies in the House and Senate, at his insistence, whipped against the bill, up until the point where Trump decided that they could pass it. Congressional Republicans knew of the allegations, and they protected him against them.

But the allegation in the Epstein files of Trump forcing himself isn't the only one. You can read an extensive list on Wikipedia, including the times that Trump himself bragged about "inspecting" the dressing rooms of teenaged contestants at his pageants while the contestants were getting dressed.

But anyways.

Yeah, you're right that I'm not exposed to the whole firehose of pedocon theory content. I just saw a Bluesky Poster repost this:

I think this is actually about the Republican-passed bills mandating genital inspections for minors playing school sports.

[evilsoup]

ok that post about the right wing dudes wanting boy concubines...can you enlighten me as to what the fuck is actually happening in the minds of these men because it's breaking my brain??!!

We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

The connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is no accident, but reveals a deep logic at the heart of reactionary politics.

[nonevahed]

it's because the Sotadic zone is moving north due to global warming

[irradiate-space]

This map is the Sotadic Zone that Richard Burton theorized, which already covered the entire Americas, even the parts that have permafrost. Climate change can't affect the Sotadic Zone in the New World.

[evilsoup]

ok that post about the right wing dudes wanting boy concubines...can you enlighten me as to what the fuck is actually happening in the minds of these men because it's breaking my brain??!!

We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

The connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is no accident, but reveals a deep logic at the heart of reactionary politics.

[nonevahed]

it's because the Sotadic zone is moving north due to global warming

[brazenautomaton]

Remember when claiming your opponents were all pedophiles was qanon's thing?

[iteratedextras]

I think that's why Democrats (as a tribe) are doing it.

~None of them actually believe in their accusations that every random right-winger is one, or even that Trump is, but they saw QAnon doing it, lost the 2024 election, and will do just about anything other than change their policies to better appeal to voters.

"QAnon Alex Jones bullshit worked for Republicans to fool those gullible idiot conspiracy theorists, so maybe it'll work for us, too."

[irradiate-space]

Pedocon theory isn't QAnon secret-signals stuff; it doesn't depend on someone making cryptic posts on 13chag. The animating factor of pedocon theory is the actual FBI and Department of Justice issuing press releases about actual criminal investigations and actual court cases. And not even weird fishing-exercise investigations; those press releases are talking about cases that are based in reality and have resulted in criminal convictions.

The slippery-slope overgeneralized over-extrapolated version of pedocon theory is that all Republicans are pedos, and that every accusation is a confession.

The overcautious, reserved, not-overstretching version of pedocon theory is that people affiliated with the Republican Party are, for structural reasons related to religious conservatism, less likely to back anti-pedophilia bills because those bills would, as a side effect, diminish the privileges of parents and the church in modern life. Republicans are also more likely to participate in social institutions which facilitate those types of abuse, because the not-related-to-abuse aspects of those institutions jive with their worldviews. And when a member of the Party is accused, of course the Party closes ranks to defend them; that's just basic ingroup/outgroup defense. It's simply ideological overlap with pedophiles, you understand, but that's still enough reason for the advocates of this reserved version of pedocon theory to advocate for throwing out the current Republican Party. (whether or not a revised one gets built, and its politics, are beyond the scope of this post)

But.

Throw all the theorizing out. Find the list(s) of people charged with a certain set of offenses regarding sexual and nonsexual abuse of minors. Filter the list to people within handshake distance of political power. Who remains?

Quoting the Liberal Currents article linked above:

After all, Donald Trump is hardly the only Republican pedophile. Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House, was a pedophile. Roy Moore, Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was a pedophile. R.J. May, Republican State Representative, was a pedophile. John Jessup, Republican County Commissioner, was a pedophile. Mark Foley, Republican Member of Congress, sent sexually explicit messages to teenagers. Matt Gaetz, Republican Member of Congress, had sex with a 17 year old—count that one if you like. Edward Coristine, one of Elon Musk's handpicked DOGE staffers, founded an image-sharing website tailor-made for sharing child porn. The list goes on and on. [...] When Slate went looking for an equivalent list of Democratic pedophiles, they were able to come up with: a random donor, the head of a local Young Democrats, and Anthony Weiner's sexts. Not a speaker of the House, a Chief Justice, and a President.

The underlying fact is that of people with actual political post, so many Republicans — and generally only Republicans — put themselves in these situations is why any variant of "pedocon theory" is catchy, even before you start looking into what sorts of bills Republicans propose or block.

"Comet Pizza" was 4chan, and sure, Clinton was seen in the Epstein files. But as more facts are revealed, the less this weapon can be wielded by Trumpist Republicans. It's too self-harming. The only factions that can wield it without self-inflicting damage are anti-Trumpists, and there aren't many of those in the Republican Party. It's a natural weapon for Democrats and other leftists to wield, simply because of whom the facts damage.

[brazenautomaton]

"Actually, this completely batshit theory is totally sensical if you ignore all of the things that the person said and replace them with other things that are wrong but in a more low-key way that's mostly lies of omission!"

People did this about qanon, too. You called it "sanewashing."

[irradiate-space]

The sanewashed version isn't the version the general public is talking about, though, and neither is the "all Republicans are pedos" line. I introduced those as examples of things that could be called "pedocon theory", but aren't central to it. I then followed the exaggerated version and the sanewashed version with the version described in the Liberal Currents article, which I hope you've read by now.

Is the Liberal Currents article representative of pedocon theory?

If I search "Pedocon theory" right now on DuckDuckGo, the results are:

a 4-year-old post from r/Conspiracy_Commons

The Liberal Currents link upthread.

(irrelevant link)

The Slate article referenced above.

a blog post

a blog post

Wiktionary for "pedocon"

LGBTQ Nation news article

a blog post

Daily Kos

Google is less useful. Its AI header leaves out the conservatism angle, and the search results are full of "pedocon theory undefeated" rather than actual explanations of the term, but they do include some news articles that explain the term.

Based upon this wholly-scientific survey of search results, then:

I conclude that the version of pedocon theory that the general public is talking about is the same as the version that we've been discussing in this thread. It starts with the factual observation that, somehow, the vast majority of convicted child abusers who also held political power are conservatives. Then it looks at Republicans' political actions, which include blocking bills that would reduce child abuse, and blocking investigations into alleged abusers.

Can you explain these facts without drawing the conclusion that the Republican Party in its current form protects pedophiles? Or do you have to sanewash to avoid that conclusion?

The next step of pedocon theory moves from the descriptive to the accusative. It adds "every accusation is an admission", which is based on a documented history of conservatives boldly speaking out against a thing, while privately participating in the thing, for things as varied as drugs, porn, gay sex, insider trading, and child abuse. "Every accusation is an admission" is a sword that cuts both ways. Such accusations of projection are a general-purpose thought-terminating cliché that can be used to rhetorically terminate all useful discussion, yet its use can also be grounded in fact. Again, this specific application is based on an observable fact pattern with independent third-party confirmation: there's that pesky documented history of conservatives publicly decrying child abuse while privately participating in it. The history of Democrats and liberals doing it is much, much smaller.

Can that discrepancy be explained away without sanewashing?

The final step of pedocon theory is the application of the heuristic "the purpose of a system is what it does". This final piece of the puzzle is how many people make a logical leap from the observed actions of Republicans to stating that the Republican Party and the conservative media establishment exist in order to defend pedophiles. The refutation of this conclusion relies on the refutation of the applicability of the heuristic, which is an exercise left to the reader.

[evilsoup]

ok that post about the right wing dudes wanting boy concubines...can you enlighten me as to what the fuck is actually happening in the minds of these men because it's breaking my brain??!!

We Need to Talk About Pedocon Theory

The connection between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein is no accident, but reveals a deep logic at the heart of reactionary politics.

[nonevahed]

it's because the Sotadic zone is moving north due to global warming

[brazenautomaton]

Remember when claiming your opponents were all pedophiles was qanon's thing?

[iteratedextras]

I think that's why Democrats (as a tribe) are doing it.

~None of them actually believe in their accusations that every random right-winger is one, or even that Trump is, but they saw QAnon doing it, lost the 2024 election, and will do just about anything other than change their policies to better appeal to voters.

"QAnon Alex Jones bullshit worked for Republicans to fool those gullible idiot conspiracy theorists, so maybe it'll work for us, too."

[irradiate-space]

Pedocon theory isn't QAnon secret-signals stuff; it doesn't depend on someone making cryptic posts on 13chag. The animating factor of pedocon theory is the actual FBI and Department of Justice issuing press releases about actual criminal investigations and actual court cases. And not even weird fishing-exercise investigations; those press releases are talking about cases that are based in reality and have resulted in criminal convictions.

The slippery-slope overgeneralized over-extrapolated version of pedocon theory is that all Republicans are pedos, and that every accusation is a confession.

The overcautious, reserved, not-overstretching version of pedocon theory is that people affiliated with the Republican Party are, for structural reasons related to religious conservatism, less likely to back anti-pedophilia bills because those bills would, as a side effect, diminish the privileges of parents and the church in modern life. Republicans are also more likely to participate in social institutions which facilitate those types of abuse, because the not-related-to-abuse aspects of those institutions jive with their worldviews. And when a member of the Party is accused, of course the Party closes ranks to defend them; that's just basic ingroup/outgroup defense. It's simply ideological overlap with pedophiles, you understand, but that's still enough reason for the advocates of this reserved version of pedocon theory to advocate for throwing out the current Republican Party. (whether or not a revised one gets built, and its politics, are beyond the scope of this post)

But.

Throw all the theorizing out. Find the list(s) of people charged with a certain set of offenses regarding sexual and nonsexual abuse of minors. Filter the list to people within handshake distance of political power. Who remains?

Quoting the Liberal Currents article linked above:

After all, Donald Trump is hardly the only Republican pedophile. Dennis Hastert, Republican Speaker of the House, was a pedophile. Roy Moore, Republican Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Alabama, was a pedophile. R.J. May, Republican State Representative, was a pedophile. John Jessup, Republican County Commissioner, was a pedophile. Mark Foley, Republican Member of Congress, sent sexually explicit messages to teenagers. Matt Gaetz, Republican Member of Congress, had sex with a 17 year old—count that one if you like. Edward Coristine, one of Elon Musk's handpicked DOGE staffers, founded an image-sharing website tailor-made for sharing child porn. The list goes on and on. [...] When Slate went looking for an equivalent list of Democratic pedophiles, they were able to come up with: a random donor, the head of a local Young Democrats, and Anthony Weiner's sexts. Not a speaker of the House, a Chief Justice, and a President.

The underlying fact is that, of people with actual political posts, so many Republicans — and generally only Republicans — put themselves in these situations. That is why any variant of "pedocon theory" is catchy, even before you start looking into what sorts of bills Republicans propose or block.

"Comet Pizza" was 4chan, and sure, Clinton was seen in the Epstein files. But as more facts are revealed, the less this weapon can be wielded by Trumpist Republicans. It's too self-harming. The only factions that can wield it without self-inflicting damage are anti-Trumpists, and there aren't many of those in the Republican Party. It's a natural weapon for Democrats and other leftists to wield, simply because of whom the facts damage.

[marthajefferson]

Anniversary of APOLLO 11 MOON LANDING

On July 20, 1969, 109 hours and 42 minutes after launch, Neil Armstrong and Edwin ‘Buzz’ Aldrin entered the lunar lander ‘Eagle’, made a final check, and the Eagle undocked from the lunar orbiter ‘Columbia’, where the third member of the crew Michael Collins, stayed in orbit around the moon. Partially manually piloted by Armstrong, the Eagle landed 0 degrees, 41 minutes, 15 seconds north moon latitude and 23 degrees, 26 minutes east moon longitude. Armstrong stepped out, and Aldrin followed 20 minutes later: human beings stepped on the moon for the first time. The two men spent 21 hours and 26 minutes on its surface. One of the astounding aspects of the mission was the seeming simplicity of the technology used to get man to the moon. According to Oliver Gassmann, professor of Technology Management, the mobile phone in your pocket has one million times more memory than the Apollo 11’s computer. Same about the procesor: the latest phones typically have more than 100,000 times the processing power of the computer that landed man on the moon 50 years ago.

“It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” –Neil Armstrong

(gifs from the documentary Chasing The Moon, 2019)

[fredrin]

[crowns-of-violets-and-roses]

What pronouns would Sniper want fans of Terra Ignota to refer to Sniper with?

It/its

They/Them

Something else (say in tags)

I haven't read Terra Ignota/Show Results

Voting ended onJul 23

[irradiate-space]

Dreamt last night that my cat had been prescribed a 10mg/spray inhaler of nicotine, of all things, which was sized for human noses for some reason.

This might've been related to the smoke.

[irradiate-space]

Concerning Acknowledgements

1. Line

This fanfic was written in the traditional homelands of Kizh, Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Walapi, Yavapai, Havasupai, Hopilavayi, Diné Bizaad, Ute, Jicarilla, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Kaáⁿze, Osage, Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Miami, Shawnee, Ofo, Tutelo-Saponi, Powhatan, Conoy, Nanticoke, and Lenape peoples, and posted without editing as part of the 6 March 1990 'One Hour Post Without Editing' challenge.

[irradiate-space]

2. Tall

This story is best used with the '41km Tall' workskin in honor of the Jumanos and Mescalara Apache whose land it was composed over.

[irradiate-space]

3. Under

This fanfic written beneath the traditional homelands of the Akokisa.

[irradiate-space]

4. No land

posted from the traditional home of the Inupiaq, but composed on no land

[irradiate-space]

Concerning Acknowledgements

1. Line

This fanfic was written in the traditional homelands of Kizh, Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Walapi, Yavapai, Havasupai, Hopilavayi, Diné Bizaad, Ute, Jicarilla, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Kaáⁿze, Osage, Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Miami, Shawnee, Ofo, Tutelo-Saponi, Powhatan, Conoy, Nanticoke, and Lenape peoples, and posted without editing as part of the 6 March 1990 'One Hour Post Without Editing' challenge.

[irradiate-space]

2. Tall

This story is best used with the '41km Tall' workskin in honor of the Jumanos and Mescalara Apache whose land it was composed over.

[irradiate-space]

3. Under

This fanfic written beneath the traditional homelands of the Akokisa.

[irradiate-space]

Concerning Acknowledgements

1. Line

This fanfic was written in the traditional homelands of Kizh, Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Walapi, Yavapai, Havasupai, Hopilavayi, Diné Bizaad, Ute, Jicarilla, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Kaáⁿze, Osage, Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Miami, Shawnee, Ofo, Tutelo-Saponi, Powhatan, Conoy, Nanticoke, and Lenape peoples, and posted without editing as part of the 6 March 1990 'One Hour Post Without Editing' challenge.

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2. Tall

This story is best used with the '41km Tall' workskin in honor of the Jumanos and Mescalara Apache whose land it was composed over.

[irradiate-space]

Concerning Acknowledgements

1. Line

This fanfic was written in the traditional homelands of Kizh, Serrano, Chemehuevi, Mojave, Walapi, Yavapai, Havasupai, Hopilavayi, Diné Bizaad, Ute, Jicarilla, Arapaho, Comanche, Kiowa, Lakota, Kaáⁿze, Osage, Dakota, Missouri, Illinois, Miami, Shawnee, Ofo, Tutelo-Saponi, Powhatan, Conoy, Nanticoke, and Lenape peoples, and posted without editing as part of the 6 March 1990 'One Hour Post Without Editing' challenge.