Epstein was first convicted for sexual abuse of children in 2008 (11 years prior to this exchange). I, personally, will not extent the benefit of the doubt to Chomsky, (especially considering the age of his wife), but if you did, it would seem, to me at least, that you would have to conclude either that he was a phenomenally bad judge of character, and naive to a childlike degree; or so enamored with the level of access to people like the former prime minister of Israel which Epstein had that he was willing to not think about it too hard.
You're asking the wrong questions. The institutions which created the conditions for what we are seeing now will not be able to un-create those conditions without being fundamentally altered. The reality we Americans need to internalize is that "no institutional actor will be saving us". If we make it through the next several years without a significant, socially disruptive rupture, we will not have been saved. We will have mearly postponed it. If Democrats take power in the house, senate, and presidency, and try to recreate the pre-Trump political period, they will create a fallow field in which a less incompetent analog of Trump will grow.
The only way this stops is if Americans reject the things which have made it possible to occur, for instance, the expansiveness of the military, the legal imperviousness of the president, the inaction of the legislature, the "apoliticality" of the supreme court, the expansion of the surveillance and security apparati of the state, militarization of police forces, ect (by no means exhaustive). The people in power will not voluntarily give up power to allow this to happen.
Much of what we're seeing now has happened before, and Americans have never rejected it before. From this I can only assume it will take a lot more deterioration before we see it end.
I was doing this so thoroughly with one DM once, and - on account of my enthusiasm, I think - it took him two or three sessions before he told me he just doesn't give a shit if I count them.
Eah. A lot of "farmers" are land owners who hire other people to work on their farms. The average net worth of an American farming household is like, north of $1.5 million iirc.
That'd be an effective total ban, because noone would want to be on a social media platform with entierly 80+ year olds. It'd be all corny minion memes.
Thanks for the insight.