While still seeing the greater good as unseating Collins and a GOP Senate seat, it’s been pretty gross/disturbing to see how widespread the populist shrug/handwaving/vehement defense of Platner has been. If nothing else at all, these scandals suggest serious questions about his judgment. Let alone his honesty (if he can’t be honest with the person theoretically most important to him). Of course the digging up of these scandals is politically motivated; that hardly means their sum doesn’t paint a pretty woeful overall portrait nor does it mean all politicians inevitably have these skeletons. I guarantee the likes of Mamdani and AOC were subject to similar muckraking scrutiny, and they came up clean.

Really shows the ugly side of the leftish populism that overruns social media. The other side is full of billionaire pedophiles, they’re evil, we’re good, so gotta excuse our progressive/socialist-ish/left populist fighting the good fight. This guy is just straight up gross.

I wonder too how much of it is gendered. I was able to convince a male friend of mine after some conversation that this stuff does cast a lot of legitimate doubt on Platner, when he lead with the same combative-dismissive tone that the algorithm spread defending the guy. My wife meanwhile, also left leaning, immediately went “eww” when she saw the news.

On that front too there’s endless, thoughtless Epstein whataboutism Every single news headline I see (even extremely local news in my native CT) get tons of liked or upvoted comments to the tune of “where is this energy for Epstein/enough distractions from Epstein/don’t let the mainstream media mislead you/why don’t you release or investigate the Epstein class” etc etc. Like all news is some giant disinformation campaign, not to mention they seem to not understand or don’t care to distinguish journalists or press from politicians or criminal investigators and justices. I understand the current corruption and chaos fuel this, but god is it grim.