brendan halpin

I think something has been missed in the whole Ed Sheeran/Macklemore/Everybody but Ed quits the tour controversy.

First of all, even Bob Kraft, who got Macklemore tossed from the tour, doesn’t actually believe that criticism of the actions of the Israeli government is antisemitic. Kraft is a supporter of Trump. You know, the guy who famously said there were “very fine people on both sides” when incels with tiki torches marched through UVA chanting “Jews Will Not Replace Us!”

Kraft is a very rich guy and doesn’t care about antisemitism because he doesn’t believe it, or anything else, can touch him. But he cares deeply about preserving a status quo that has made him incredibly wealthy.

So what he doesn’t want, and what nobody with power in this country wants, is for the citizens of the United States to start being critical of the way “the good guys” use military power.

It’s probably hard to explain to anyone who didn’t grow up here the degree to which young people in this country are indoctrinated with the idea that the United States of America is not just a country; it is the best, most morally correct country in the world. And if the USA occasionally does things like incinerate entire cities full of civilians, well, that’s just because they were trying to save American and Japanese lives, see! Because if they hadn’t dropped the bomb, they would have had to invade, and so many more people would have died! So incinerating two cities full of civilians was the moral course of action!

They really told us stuff like this. And we really believed it.

And Israel is probably the only other country that we ascribe this level of virtue to. (And let me say this as a GenXer—when I was growing up, Holocaust survivors were alive. I met a couple. If you’re even like 40 years old, the Holocaust probably seems like ancient history to you, but for us it was a thing that happened to our grandparents. And so a lot of folks see any resistance against the actions of the Israeli government as a continuation of the Holocaust’s project of eliminating Jewish people from the face of the earth. I don’t agree with this perception, but I get how you arrive at that point of view. But that point of view is not driving billionaire and government overreaction to people pointing out that maybe the government of Israel should stop doing genocide.)

The position of the United States in the world is, in large part dependent on the implicit threat that the US government will use military force to accomplish its aims. But this threat rests on VERY shaky foundations due to the fact that we have a volunteer military. In other words, you have to convince people that they are signing up for a virtuous project when they join the US military, or else fewer will sign up.

The US establishment was stung by the widespread opposition to the Vietnam War. So much so that they abolished the draft in order to squash said opposition. It worked! As soon as they stopped drafting people, the protests stopped! And while we’ve protested other wars, they haven’t drawn the massive opposition that Vietnam brought because our wars are, by and large, fought by poor people.

But now the establishment is in a pickle. Because they really can’t bring the draft back without massive pushback. And they can’t continue to recruit people to project force across the globe unless they can get them to believe that they are soldiers of righteousness, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

So unquestioning support for Israel is where they’ve decided to draw the line. Because it’s not too far a step from realizing that the US is funding a genocide committed by our client state in the Middle East to realizing that maybe US military actions in the world aren’t really about spreading democracy any more than Israel is committing a defensive genocide. Maybe the aims of our military actions are actually venal and ignoble. While some people will still definitely want to sign up to be international bullies, it’s a smaller number than would want to sign up to do something brave and noble.

So this, I believe, it’s what’s behind the wild overreaction to people expressing the idea that Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank are human beings who deserve to exist. Because the United States is on the side of genocide in this conflict. We are not the good guys here. And the more people who believe this, the shakier American military power becomes.

I actually don’t enjoy writing about this stuff. You know what I enjoy writing about? Professional wrestling!

And speaking of professional wrestling, I saw a piece today about a wrestler who is having a hard time getting booked because they are a domestic abuser. They haven’t been convicted of anything—their former partner has just detailed the abuse, and people have been like, “this person is a piece of shit. I’m not booking them.” Plenty of pieces of shit continue to get booked in pro wrestling, so I’m not suggesting it’s some sort of piece-of-shit-free utopia. But it did strike me that this person has faced more consequences for their actions than most of the people who were friends with Jeffrey Epstein.

Indeed, while a lot of wrestlers who are pieces of shit are still working, most of them have lost their jobs at the promotions that offer the most money.

Sadly, this is not the case for Epstein’s pals. A LOT of them have faced absolutely no professional consequences for their association with him. (Though if you want a grim laugh, check out this post by former MIT researcher Joscha Boch about how very hard it was for him to have his association with Epstein exposed. The poor guy!)

Indeed, for many of these people, if you don’t search their name with Epstein’s, you won’t find any evidence that they ever knew him.

The press has tiptoed around this stuff—I don’t know their reasons, but they are timid about even saying people were associated with Epstein. Perhaps this is because they’re afraid of being accused of libel because of course just associating with Epstein doesn’t mean you broke any laws.

What it does mean, though, is that you’re a piece of shit. The good news about declaring someone a piece of shit is that there’s no legal standard. There’s no burden of proof. You just look at what you know about someone and go, “yeah, fuck that guy. He’s a piece of shit.” No legal proceedings!

We’ve done this before: even before his association with Epstein came out, we all pretty much agreed that Woody Allen was a piece of shit. Indeed, he’s such a piece of shit that his name was one of the least surprising ones to come up in the Epstein files.

Now, look, I don’t have time to comb through the Epstein files looking for everyone who ever met with him. But I did have time to search for Boston and Cambridge and see whose name came up.

There were a lot of familiar names whose association with Epstein has already been written about in the mainstream media and whose Wikipedia pages mention their association: Larry Summers, Joi Ito, Marvin Minsky, etc.

But Epstein met and corresponded with a WHOLE LOT of people in Boston and Cambridge, and most of them haven’t been written about. So let’s take a look, shall we?

There’s old pal Danny Hillis, my former employer, and professional smart guy currently affiliated with The Long Now Foundation and Applied Invention. I’m still the only person writing about his association with Epstein.

Psychologist Dan Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness and still employed by Harvard University.

Geneticist George Church, also still employed at Harvard.

Mathematician and Geneticist Eric Lander, still employed by both MIT and Harvard.

Neuroscientist Ed Boyden, still employed at MIT

Tech Writer Linda Stone

Former MIT Media Lab researcher Caleb Harper, already disgraced for faking research results but not yet disgraced for his association with Epstein.

Tech bro Greg Wyler

Harvard Medical professor Ted Kaptchuk

Statistician Don Rubin, professor emeritus at Harvard.

General tech guy and Wolfram Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram.

I’m not saying these people should necessarily be fired. I’m saying that insofar as they are known for other things, they should also be known for being pieces of shit.

Again, you don’t need any kind of legal proceeding to decide for yourself, as I have, that these people are pieces of shit. Please do!

So shines a good deed in a weary world: seemingly alone out of anyone Epstein reached out to in Boston or Cambridge, Palm and Handspring founder Jeff Hawkins rebuffed Epstein’s efforts to meet up thusly: I will pass. Our research is published. If Jeffrey has read it and wants to discuss it then we can start with an email conversation. Jeff.

You know who else could have cut this wealthy perv off with a cold blooded email just like Jeff Hawkins? Literally every single person on this list.