Asklemmy

U.S. authorities are actively covering up the crimes 

They’re not even covering them up. Like so much of Trump’s criminal past he’s flagrantly showcasing his criminality and the fact that our justice system is so corrupt people with his wealth and power can do what they want and get away with it. It’s his “shoot someone on 5th avenue” moment.

the current regime remains in office despite its obvious criminality and is not forced to resign through mass civil disobedience. 

Mass civil disobedience is a failed effort in the US because the people in power have been striving make sure there’s never another movement like Civil Rights or Women’s Suffrage that can threaten their power. The wealth gap between the average citizen between the power holders and the is so vast 99% of us could spend a year not working and they’d still be some of the richest people in the world. Meanwhile, we’d destroy our lives. Add to that, around 30% of our population is all in on this. They’re not going to attempt to stymie the system. They’ll continue to purchase and invest, they’ll support their camp’s businesses and buy our foreclosing homes as an investment property while we peacefully practice “disobedience” and they’ll continue to occasionally drop by a protest to gun a few down or run a few over and see if they can’t get a pardon for it.

Police forces in the Civil Rights era were brutal- fire hoses, batons, dogs, but modern cops and ICE are lethal and immune to repercussions. Their ranks are filled with fascist zealots who stormed our Capitol building and even after their coup failed they were rewarded for their effort. 

Liberalism and Democrats shoulder some of the burden of this. For decades the Civil Rights movement has been framed as “if enough people remains peaceful in the face of violence, the state will eventually feel bad enough to change”. It’s conveniently covered up that all of our progressive movements weren’t above meeting violence with violence or occasionally threw the first punch. Now it’s much more difficult because our enemy didn’t forget and we live in a surveillance state that’s staffed with street executioners and a justice system that takes threats to capital and property very seriously.

Unless our rebuke is backed by people with access to power, like governors or even mayors of large cities, if we choose the more aggressive approach we’re marching out like John Brown. We’re lone wolves or a small cell that might take out a few of theirs but the people we get are as powerless as we are and easily replaceable. Even people like Brian Thompson and Charlie Kirk were replaced in days and the system absorbed the loss.

This regime and its network of oligarchs behind it are the reason why the most serious crimes, including those committed by Epstein’s accomplices, go unpunished. 

The French Revolution is one of the few historical moments where the have nots actually managed to get their hands on the haves with masses, determination, and a willingness for violence. Technology, police, and surveillance have made this something we can’t accomplish. Even for all of our guns, they have more. The Whiskey Rebellion happened just after the founding of the US, when both sides were using the same level of tech, and the Feds showed the 2A is just a feel good clause, no well regulated militia is going to pose a threat to the state and it’s benefactors. I’d also point out that what came after the French Revolution wasn’t as great as they’d hoped and it took a while for the nation to get to the democracy it is to day, one where protest and civil disobedience does have a voice and can get a bit violent at times but doesn’t result in mass casualties.

We gave up on Epstein not out of apathy or acceptance. We’ve known for a long time the truly powerful have a different justice system than the rest of us. We still do. Every week there’s another pro-MAGA politician, pastor, or supporter popped for less egregious sex crimes that doesn’t get a free pass because they’re not important enough to get a free pass. The fight for the files has itself almost become a distraction. Our system is broken by design, and the longer the people who think releasing them unredacted will change anything keep fighting for that, the more they’re not paying attention to the last vestiges of democracy being erased- districts being redrawn, executive orders as legislation, courts ruling by party principle Constitution be damned, daily acts of racial/orientation/gender violence that happen with no legal consequences, the plan to rig the elections to the point voting becomes a charade. They need to see justice, it’s that none of our systems will see to it and they’re flaunting that. Issue an arrest warrant for Trump and who’s going to execute it?

Even if someone was willing to try, could they actually physically remove him from office? His loyalists would swarm the jail like they did the Capitol to get him back if you managed too, but i suspect his deputized forces and military supporters would have the White House locked down before you could even get to him. At best it would be the line in the sand, the point we’re all forced to black and white anccept our democracy is dead and we have a fascist dictator. Democrats and their liberal/centrist supporters know this, they just don’t want to have to accept how we remove dictators when democracy fails.

Civil disobedience is great if you have a functioning democracy where elected officials fear public opinion and feel compelled to listen. When you have fascism and oligarchs it’s theater that keeps the masses peacefully occupied until you get around to grinding them out as well.

His supporters and his opponents both have zero doubt of what’s in those files even if we haven’t seen it all. They don’t care and will continue to fight for the regime’s goal because currently, they’re winning. It’s like slavery, the people who fought to preserve it weren’t so ignorant they actually believed the enslaved were inferior or sub-humans, they knew they were humans owning humans because it was convenient, everything else was excuses to normalize it. They fought to the death to maintain their privilege when told “your privilege is removed”, and the people who forced that change fought to the death to see it happen. A century and a half later and we’re up against the same mentality, except this time we have no leaders willing to call it and accept “shit, this is going to get messy”.

It's not just the US though. None of these people have been punished in any western country, none of them are in jail. The whole Epstein fiasco proves beyond all doubt that Marxists were right all along. We live in a class society, and the laws of this society are created by the ruling capitalist class which subjugates and exploits the working majority. Any democracy that exists is reserved for the ruling elites.

This in itself is, of course, a scandal that in any reasonably functioning country would inevitably lead to the government's downfall.

so, none, in the age of algorithm driven nonstop brain massage