The elites have killed off Jeffrey Epstein to protect their own reputations -- formally and in the precise details -- informally and big-picture, people already know what's going on.
I'm not interested in the Epstein case for its own sake, but rather how it relates to other topics I've covered over the past several years. So in lieu of a comprehensive and definitive post, below is a loosely structured series of remarks on the case as it relates to broader topics.
Partisanship
Mostly it's the Right who are following the case, since it straightforwardly advances their party's interests against its rivals. Almost all of the criminality and shadiness in the Epstein orbit was from the Left / liberals / Democrats. The only exception on the Left are the diehard Bernie realignment supporters, since they too want to see the Democrat establishment blown apart.
But this partisanship means nothing will be done about it. Something this big needs broad bipartisan support, and right now it's a large chunk of socially conservative Republicans and a small minority of Bernie Democrats. Even combined, that's too small to achieve anything.
Social conservatives can't even get their own party's politicians to uphold basic sexual morality, forget anything bigger -- the Reaganite Supreme Court defended internet pornography, struck down sodomy laws, and sanctified gay marriage, while the New Deal era was famous for moral censorship of movies, TV, music, and comic books, vice squads breaking up gatherings at gay bars (Stonewall), and so on and so forth.
And Bernie Democrats have yet to reverse the sanctification of deviance among their fellow Democrats. So far, they are deferring to the "do anything" sexual morality, and minimizing their concerns about the exploitation of the weak by the powerful. Once you go with laissez-faire sexual morality, you're committed to libertarian outcomes like obscenely wealthy elites buying underage girls from poor countries to sexually traffic them among fellow elite members in the first world. Hey, "no one held a gun to their heads"...
In order for there to be bipartisan action about a large-scale public sex scandal involving underage victims, the perpetrators would have to be enemies of both sides, perhaps in different ways. The last such event was the revelations during the early 2000s about the Catholic church's abuse of underage boys, mostly from the '70s and '80s. The Left hated organized religion, and the Right hated the particular church -- Catholic rather than Protestant, and representing Ellis Islanders rather than founding stock. That combined pressure caused the organization to conduct a massive internal review, which was made public, and the awareness of that scandal persists to this day on both sides of the spectrum.
So far, the organizations of the Right that are just as responsible for covering up widespread sexual abuse of minors, have emerged unscandalized and unscathed, because there was no buy-in from the Right on the attack.
The most notorious is the Boy Scouts, whose abuse was part of the broader trend during the '70s and '80s. During the early 2010s, the LA Times spent enormous amounts of media capital exposing the full extent of this abuse, making troves of original documents freely available online. But there was almost zero mainstream conservative / Right / GOP interest in this story, because they like the Boy Scouts in general. They may not like homosexuals serving as scoutmasters, but that's not inherent to the institution, which they fundamentally like and trust, leading the Right to circle the wagons around their own organized cover-up of homosexual underage abuse.
And it's a joke to imagine that none of the Protestant churches had a similar record to the Catholic church during the '70s and '80s. But again, the Right fundamentally likes and trusts these institutions, so they'll see any abuse of underage boys, and organized cover-up thereof, as a regrettable anomaly and not something inherent to it. That would leave only the Left that hates all organized religion as the ones who'd be interested in abuse among Evangelicals or Mainliners.
Sectors within elite society
The elite is not a uniform class on a material level, so it is not uniform on a cultural level either. Some sectors of the elite gain their wealth from overseeing activity that is labor-intensive, and other sectors from activity that is informational and not labor-intensive. The labor-intensive sectors are moral conservatives, the informational sectors are moral liberals.
This difference in the forms of economic activity within the elites, and the correlated difference in moral worldviews, gives rise to the informational sectors being more prone to sex abuse scandals like the Epstein case, the Weinstein case, etc. And why so many in academia -- but not so many in military contracting -- are implicated in Epstein's crimes.
That's the best way to explain the Jewish angle in all these cases -- they cluster in the informational sectors (high verbal rather than visual IQ, cerebral rather than corporeal), and will be over-represented in the evil done by such sectors. But so will the gentiles who are involved in those sectors, or their political vehicles like the Democrat and Labour parties -- Bill Clinton, Tony Blair, and so on.
The material sectors are not dominated by Jews, so any evil done there will reflect poorly on the Celtic and Germanic groups who dominate them. Rapes by the military stationed in Okinawa -- not Jews. Groping the immigrant peasant women who work on industrial-sized farms in Kansas -- not Jews. Texans trading underage boys with fellow oil barons from the Gulf -- not Jews.
The only solid Republican who is squarely involved in Epstein's crimes is Les Wexner, magnate of the Victoria's Secret (etc.) empire. Wexner's business is industrial-scale manufacturing, which means he supports Republicans, primarily so they can sign de-industrializing trade bills that allow his company to off-shore production to cheap labor colonies in the third world. Labor-intensive businesses have a vested interest in lowering the cost of labor. And yet, here he is mixed up with informational-sector elites. Why?
Because the Victoria's Secret fashion show, the Angels models, etc., made an interface between the media / entertainment sector (informational) and the manufacturing sector. Blind Gossip's insider source says that the VS models were among those who sexually served Epstein's clients, although it's unclear whether those models were underage or the more famous older ones.
This also explains why Trump ever got mixed up with Epstein. Contrary to widespread belief, Trump is not one of the rare Republicans who is linked to Epstein, and his link does not support a "both sides" argument. Trump only registered as a Republican in the early 2010s (after a stint as GOP during the '80s), preparing for his 2016 campaign. During the period of Epstein's underage sex trafficking ring, Trump was either Reform party, Independent, or Democrat (he publicly called for Speaker Pelosi to impeach President Bush, on CNN in the late 2000s, over the Iraq War).
And during the 2000s, Trump was not involved in the material sectors -- he was only a real estate developer back in the '80s, and gave it up after the early '90s recession wiped him out. He then pivoted to media / entertainment, and became the star of The Apprentice, and made big bucks by licensing out that media brand to actual real estate developers (and water bottlers, steak producers, etc.). During the Epstein years, Trump was a non-Republican from the media industry, who got Bill and Hillary -- not George W. and Laura -- to attend his wedding. He fit right in with the others in that world.
Still, I doubt that Trump did anything with the underage girls. His sexual deviances have been well known for a long time, and no one ever said he wanted to pay for or otherwise coerce young / underage girls into sex. He definitely gets off on pursuing socially taboo sexual targets -- his friends' wives, pornstars / Playboy bunnies, and most notoriously, his incestuous desires toward Ivanka. That's the only underage girl he's ever given a bad touch to, though desiring her because she was his daughter, not because she was underage.
Elite initiation ritual, or supplying demand?
On the general topic of elites having sex with underage boys and girls, in an organized and institutionalized fashion, there are two main explanations. The first is that the elites do not really want to have sex with underage people, but submit to doing so in order to assure their fellow elites that there now exists sufficient blackmail material that they can be trusted within the elite circle. It's an initiation ritual to cement trust within the in-group. The second is that the elites are guided by overweening ambition, given to an unusual degree of sin and perversion, and use their high degree of wealth, power, and influence to get what they want, even if it's not legal.
I favor the second, since initiation rituals are rare in frequency (usually one-time only), intense, and painful for the initiate. Getting jumped into a gang, getting hazed into a college fraternity, jacking off while sealed in a coffin to get into Skull & Bones (or whatever it is they do), and so on and so forth. In primitive societies, initiation rites may involve getting kidnapped without warning, beaten down, having to sexually service the older high-status males, and the like.
With the Epstein case and related cases, the events are periodic and ongoing, not rare or one-time only. They appear to be garden-variety sexual encounters, aside from the underage of the boy / girl -- not some incredibly intense sensation like getting the shit beaten out of you. High-intensity would be all-day orgies or some Rome-in-decline level decadence. And it doesn't seem painful for the "initiate" -- they seem to be eager participants who are getting pleasure out of it.
And it's not clear what organization or institution they're being initiated into -- "the elites" doesn't work, since they're elite by their wealth, power, or influence. Initiation is always into a particular gang, a particular fraternity, a particular secret society, a particular boarding school, a particular church, a particular monastic order. Commonalities can be found across all of these institutions, but they also come with their particulars to distinguish membership in their group as opposed to a rival group.
What is the organization that the Epstein activities are initiating the clients into, as opposed to some other elite organization with similar yet distinctive rituals? There's no answer.
So then we go with the "supplying demand" explanation. It could not be more obvious how sinful our elites are, and how willing they are to use their wealth, power, and influence to get what they want, legal or not.
This also explains why we didn't see such things during the New Deal era. We had elites back then, but they did not pursue hyper-competitiveness and laissez-faire -- they had bad memories of the near explosion of all societies by hyper-ambitious elites circa 1920. JFK had an affair with Marilyn Monroe, but did not retain the services of a sex trafficker of underage girls. Elites reined in their sins and ambitions more. Someone should look into the elites of the Gilded Age and the Fin de Siecle, who were more degenerate.
And yet there were still elite initiation rituals during the New Deal era, for fraternities, secret societies, churches, monastic orders, and so on and so forth. As usual, they were rare, intense, and painful.
Any theory of what's behind the Epstein-type sex rings needs to also explain why there was no such thing during the New Deal, and only the "supplying demand" explanation works there.
This also explains why Epstein-style revelations are doing so much to destroy the public's trust in the elites. If it were only a bizarre initiation ritual, we'd just write it off as the goofy stuff that weird elites get up to, to make themselves feel special. We would look down on their behavior, but not on the institutions they represent or control.
The public can tell that it's not just some initiation ritual -- can't you just beat the shit out of each other, or starve each other, or make each other clean up filth? That's how the institutions do it that the public still trusts -- the military, frats, churches, etc. Having sex with underage boys and girls? Uh, why do you need to do that in order to join the organization? Sounds more like you actually want to participate in that, knowing it's illegal.
So the public concludes that this Epstein stuff is just the elites abusing their wealth and power to satisfy their own individual sins, even if they're illegal, rather than pursue the collective welfare. That destroys our trust in them, in a way that their undergoing an initiation ritual does not.
Other topics in the comments
Those are the three big topics I've discussed over the years, and that relate to the Epstein case. But if I think of anything else, I'll write it up in the comments section.
The second is that the elites are guided by overweening ambition, given to an unusual degree of sin and perversion, and use their high degree of wealth, power, and influence to get what they want, even if it's not legal.
ReplyDelete-----
From personal experience, I second this one. I tell my daughters that the difference between a high school boy and an adult man when it comes to sexual aggression is a chasm so great, that they simply won't have the experience to be prepared for it.
I'll add to that that a similar chasm exists between normal men and men who are members of the ruling class. I don't have the experience with a full-on member of the wealthy, powerful elite, but I'm guessing it is a magnitude higher still.
Within that ruling class, again based on personal experience, there are differences. I've dealt with three journalists and all three crossed boundaries. The least worst was the national conservative at a tabloid type online place; he was harmless, but more forward than 99% of guys I've come across. Middle guy was local journo who used the power job to try and seduce me and in that horrible Game-negging way; I became afraid of him, though I didn't know why. Finally, the national elite liberal journalist, "Freddy". A difference so great between he and and the middle guy as to be a difference in kind: thinks he owns me though I'm married and we never dated. Abuse, death threats, landed me in therapy. When dealing with him, I feel an overwhelming need to humanize myself because that basic understanding of my human worth is so lacking in him; it's very much like a domestic violence relationship where the battered wife exists in her husband's eyes for his sake alone and is not allowed autonomy.
To bring it back to your point about this era vs the New Deal, I feel it intrinsically that a lot of guys, if they heard my story with the elite journalist, would be admiring of him, would find his position and status therefore worthy of striving to attain. Not most normal guys, but too many, I feel.
BTW, this really is an excellent post.
Epstein could have been blackmailing US elites for the benefit of some foreign intelligence agency (probably Mossad, possibly the Russians or Saudis). Ghislaine Maxwell's father, Robert Maxwell, was thought by British counter-intel to be KGB, and was identified before his death as a Mossad agent. Seems likely that the Epstein-Maxwell ring could have been a continuation of R. Maxwell's intel blackmail activities. In addition, former Israeli PM Ehud Barak is connected with Epstein. Finally, Alexander Acosta was told that Jeffrey "belonged to intelligence"...
ReplyDeleteIt's not blackmail. The elites would've killed him off a long time ago, but did not. Just because you have damning stuff on someone does not mean you got it for blackmail purposes -- insurance, maybe, but not to profit from it.
ReplyDeleteTry doing that to the wealthy, powerful, and influential -- and you'll be out of business for good.
Even if you see him as an agent for an intel service, which is conducting the blackmail operation -- that is a form of the "initiation ritual" argument. But that doesn't work. The CIA, Mossad, or whoever, are not initiating Epstein's clients into the CIA, Mossad, etc.
The extent of intel agencies' involvement would be spying on the "supplying of demand," letting both the customers and the procurer know that the CIA etc. are aware of what's going on, to gain an edge over those elite members in a future situation where they're at odds with the intel agency.
That's the various factions of the elite jockeying for status against one another, not the intel agencies masterminding the whole thing in order to have control over the other factions. The factions are peers and rivals, rather than the CIA or FBI being the puppetmaster over the finance / media / tech elites.
And if Epstein was such a protected intel asset -- how was he allowed to be arrested and, shortly afterward, bumped off in plain view under the state's watch?
He was more of a middling entrepreneur, supplying the demand of those with real wealth and power. Typical upward-failing Boomer yuppie biography, complete with "I didn't have to take on any student loan debt in order to make millions of dollars".
When it looked like he might spill some beans on the wealthy and powerful -- there he went.
Some serious mental acrobatics on display here. There's just no way he wasn't being used to blackmail high ranking officials. Blackmail still fits the elites vs. elites and Epstein as a mere foot soldier story.
DeleteDuring his first arrest, he got off lightly because it wasn't a national scandal. This may reflect what phase of the 15-year cultural excitement cycle we're in.
ReplyDeleteVulnerable phase now, when there tend to be sex-related panics (like the Catholic church scandal during the early 2000s, SVU, etc.). It resonates in a much more sinister way than it did during the second half of the 2000s, when we were out of the previous vulnerable phase of the early 2000s.
It was part of the broader Me Too phenomenon, going back to their attacks on Trump during campaign season. There was no such broader phenomenon during the late 2000s, since people were not in a vulnerable refractory phase -- but a restless, warm-up phase, wanting to come out of their shells and start mixing it up again.
The attacks on Trump mostly related to that period, too, like Stormy Daniels and the Pussygate tape.
Or Al Franken's joke picture about trying to fondle a woman who's wearing a bullet-proof vest.
Only when the culture shifted into the sex-negative vulnerable phase would those chickens come home to roost.
If the CIA is running a sex trafficking ring, it's like their drug trade -- not for the purposes of blackmailing elites, but supplying a demand. Certain demands are too illegal for just any old producer to fulfill orders -- but a powerful agency within the state, a faction of the elites, could supply the demand.
ReplyDeleteIf that's what turns out to be going on with Epstein, then he was like a drug dealer rather than the cartel kingpin. Not a corner dealer, but more like Scarface (another Boomer yuppie), who either got too big for his breeches or was no longer useful to the top of the pyramid.
"Not a corner dealer, but more like Scarface (another Boomer yuppie), who either got too big for his breeches"
ReplyDeleteI like this. I've been struck at how inherently unstable the Russiagate conspiracy was (and audacious and myopically confident) and it seems to me that the exposure of the Epstein Saga is kind of subject to the forces of this era that helped undo Russiagate. The latter doesn't involve sex, but people who sexually victimize also tend to ruthlessly victimize anyone they see standing in their way, especially political rivals with lower status.
Anyway, I'm struck by the pride, narcissism, and sociopathy of the conspirators and players in both groups and am no longer surprised at their exposure.
With the Epstein saga, how diseased are their souls, how broken are their minds, to be okay with hurting young girls? All these people, they're weak and their humbling was only a matter of time.
As a practical matter, there is no reason for people to be all doom and gloom over Epstein's death. Russiagate fell and a lot was exposed with Epstein. Most of this was done by uncorrupted, intelligent, but not necessarily the most powerful people. The fact that this guy was offed so nakedly was weak.
DeleteThese people have decrepit minds and souls. Support your good guys, some of whom are still banished as pariahs.
Blackmail was not central to his function, although he certainly had such material as a side effect.
ReplyDeleteJust like with a Scarface role -- his main function is supplying an elite demand. As a side effect of that role, he now has plenty of blackmail material on clients, partners, his cartel bosses, and so on.
But he's not "being used" to blackmail those people, by some intel agency or whoever. That's just the kind of material you get when you're part of a high-level illegal operation.
Epstein was not "being used" in order to produce and obtain blackmail on elites. No one, especially those with wealth and power, like being blackmailed -- they'll avoid you, and spread to the word to their allies not to get involved with you.
As a result, almost nobody can blackmail the elites -- just look and see, or try it for yourself. Try doing it as one of the billions of non-Westerners. You won't even get your foot in the door, and if you somehow did, they'd gun you down immediately.
Just because elites do drugs, doesn't mean their suppliers are "being used" by intel etc. in order to produce blackmail material.
Elites have sinful and illegal inclinations, somebody supplies them, and only as a secondary matter does somebody know about these transactions. The primary matter is supplying the demand.
"There's just no way he wasn't being used to blackmail high ranking officials."
The naive conspiracy theories about intel agencies posit them as part of a monotheistic demonology, or maybe dualistic with a good side and an evil side.
ReplyDeleteSo, the evil side has a single chief demon (or maybe a small group), then a layer of his underlings, then a layer of their underlings, on and on down the pyramid. If the conspiracist believes in a good side, the same structure holds there as well.
They may argue about which entity is at the apex, lording their status over all the other layers below them, but their basic picture of the social structure of the evil side is the same -- a pecking order, totem pole, food chain, chain of command, etc.
In that view, the CIA / Mossad / Whoever is more powerful than the individuals or groups that they're blackmailing (via their lower-ranking agents like Epstein). And the whole end-goal of the sex trafficking ring is to strengthen the CIA's status and control at their higher layer of the pyramid, relative to the lower-ranking people they're blackmailing. They accomplish that goal by producing the blackmail material.
That whole worldview is wrong -- I don't just mean that Epstein was at most a foot soldier, but that the CIA / Etc. is not some all-powerful group that lords their status over everyone else.
The reality of elite competition is closer to the polytheistic Greek mythology, where there are no clear good and bad sides, some groups may be more good than bad or vice versa, but most are mixed and have conflicting motives. None is all-powerful over the others -- each has its own unique strengths and weaknesses, opening up a tense game of one-upsmanship among peers, equals, and rivals. It's not a chain of command.
Look at individual gods as representing one of those sectors of society -- Hephaestus represents the entire sector of metalworkers, Ares represents the entire sector of the military, and so on and so forth.
That's what the CIA is like -- just one sector among equal rivals, peers, such as the finance sector, info-tech sector, media / entertainment sector, military, energy, etc.
They are more information-oriented, so they side with the other sectors on the informational side -- the coalition that uses the Democrats as their political vehicle. Notice how many feds and spooks are on MSNBC rather than Fox, or how blue Northern Virginia has become.
The material-oriented side would be the Pentagon, who are obviously on the Republican coalition.
Neither is all-powerful over the other, nor over any of the other elite sectors. As such, the CIA does not have the ability to blackmail, manipulate, and control whoever it wants in the elites.
In the Epstein case, they might have been spying on a sex trafficking ring that existed without their involvement. At most, their involvement would be to give official protection to the traffickers, understanding that they could use the intel about the trafficking as leverage in any competition they found themselves in with the traffickers or their allies.
It's not to set up the whole thing to begin with, and the elites just fell into their trap for decades with no way to protect themselves or get back at the intel agencies.
"the coalition that uses the Democrats as their political vehicle. Notice how many feds and spooks are on MSNBC rather than Fox, or how blue Northern Virginia has become.
DeleteThe material-oriented side would be the Pentagon, who are obviously on the Republican coalition."
Right, and you tend to see military officers and NCOs on Fox. Fits right in with what your material and cognitive framework analysis.
Yes I had considered that it would be hard to keep word from getting out that he was primarily in it for the blackmail, particularly in such small, well-connected circles...your right, it went on for so long there's just no way he could've stayed in business had blackmail been the primary goal, definitely an afterthought or at most, peripheral.
ReplyDeleteOT: Ever put together a recommended reading list?
"In the Epstein case, they might have been spying on a sex trafficking ring that existed without their involvement. At most, their involvement would be to give official protection to the traffickers, understanding that they could use the intel about the trafficking as leverage in any competition they found themselves in with the traffickers or their allies."
ReplyDeleteAg, you've made a very convincing case against a pyramid-type conspiracy as well as painting a good picture of what really happens. You also get at something else that I think bothers people: the pain and suffering of the girls and their families, and community wasn't being remedied by the justice system; these elites were exploiting these highly personal crimes for their own personal gain.
BTW, there's an explanation for the cameras: perverted people like cameras and are prone to voyeurism. I dealt with this kind of couple, Epstein and Maxwell, when I was a teen. I was unknowingly being groomed but other than being frightened and getting away, I got away unscathed and without incident; they were poor and did this stuff because they enjoyed it. I'm invited one day and there's a video camera set up and naturally I asked why; I don't remember, but whatever they said, it was not the truth, lol. Found out almost a year later, when they were busted, what they had been doing with that camera.
I was going back over some of the writings of a very indie journalist I had boosted in 2017 who has that mindset you describe so well here and I found something she wrote, but got wrong, which I know because I was involved...
ReplyDeleteShe wrote: "his assigned task of discrediting...." (Sorry, I don't want the quote to be searchable and out the people).
She's writing about "Freddy" and assuming he's taken a particular action because he was ordered to. She was wrong. Of course he his interests line up with his bosses and they'll almost always move in the same direction. And absolutely yes, he conspired to keep certain things out of the news and smearing to discredit was part of that. But Freddy's action here was personal against me and actually started a few days before the incident she focused on; she was aware of it, but ignored it because it didn't quite fit in with her construction of what was Freddy's motivation and action.
Freddy's actions she wrote of was broader than she realized and was entirely self-driven, not an assignment, and very personal.
I'm not sure why you're so quick to always dismiss Jewish interests when it comes to politics. They've been expelled by Europeans repeatedly for hundreds of years culminating in the 'shoah'. Not saying I want to see genocide, but the Madagascar Plan doesn't seem so bad, or a Zionist variant of it. And obviously there are various loose coalitions with varying interests but they obviously promote miscegenation, homosexuality, and mass immigration to displace/dilute white gentiles. Of course, powerful whites have to acquiesce to these to a degree for them to happen...
ReplyDeleteWill let Ag take this, but you don't believe non-Jews have agency? I've come to the opinion, not to pick on you, that scapegoating groups as instrinsically hostile to one is a sign of narcissism and thus why it's found out in the wings, amongst the young, and amongst the most powerful.
DeleteBTW, glad Ag mentioned the Bernie coalition in this post and look forward to an update on the man himself.
"Jews caused the Catholic church and Boy Scouts to rape little boys throughout their organizations, and systematically cover it up for decades" -- very insightful, thanks for playing.
ReplyDeleteNext up, why the military -- which has no Jews in high-ranking positions, but only Celts and Krauts -- is controlled by Zionists into expanding its empire back to the frontier days, the Caribbean, Southeast Asia, Japan, Afghanistan, and literally the entire world. Occupying Kandahar for the benefit of Israel -- another genius insight.
And why all those Dutch farmers in the Plains keep insisting on sky-high immigration to feed their cheap labor demand. They're all crypto descendants of Spinoza -- genius!
And why all those Celtic and Germanic industrialists flung the borders open during the Ellis Island Gilded Age, to supply cheap labor to their factories. When you look at their DNA the right way, Scots are ackshually one of the Lost Tribes of Israel!
When the Jewish-dominated finance sector was in the driver's seat -- the New Deal, led by Democrats -- we had airtight borders, zero off-shoring, censorship of all media, large families, rooted communities, and all the rest of that "Press ESC to go back" stuff.
Press ESC to go back -- to the New Deal.
Agnostic,
ReplyDeleteCraig Murray echoes you in his latest:
"The deeper question is why such a significant proportion of the rich and powerful have a propensity to want to assuage their sexual desires on the most vulnerable and powerless in society, as opposed to forming relationships among their peers. I suspect it is connected to the kind of sociopathy that leads somebody to seek or hoard power or wealth in the first place."
https://consortiumnews.com/2019/08/13/epsteins-death-the-investigation-of-powerful-networks/
Now there's a (good) guy who knows something about conspiracies, lol!
I don't mean to bring drama to your thread, I feel it's degrading to such great writing, but I've been upset since finding out how much "Freddy" hurt someone, Ed Butowsky, a man I just learned was involved with the Seth Rich stuff which wasn't ever something I got involved in. Many people hurt him, Freddy was just one more (which is why I don't have to worry about exposing Freddy though that's pretty sad). Now, Freddy, 2 years ago, taunted me about getting away with lying to people about the DNC being "hacked" and he was on a huge power trip over it. So, this shouldn't have been a huge surprise, but it still felt like I'd been punched when I learned of it.