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My favoured conspiracy theory is that the main utility of this is somewhat similar to mafia initiation rituals: the participants know that everyone gets a nuclear level of dirt on everyone else, which establishes a level of trust that would otherwise be impossible among the powerful and eccentric crowd that is the Who's Who. Every member of the group is incentivised to cooperate with every other member of the group, at least to an extent that nobody feels sufficient spite and desperation to trigger MAD. (Imagine an Epstein Islander were to go to jail for the rest of their life for securities fraud, and felt that the others could have pulled strings to prevent this.) That most men would not exactly be repelled by sexual attention from 16 year olds is just a nice plus that makes recruitment go more smoothly (and perhaps allows participants to deceive themselves that they are just reaping the fruits of power, rather than entering a death pact). On top of that, shared experience of transgression probably builds a feeling of camaraderie.
It's worth noting that corresponding rumours from Europe (the Dutroux case) involves girls that are much younger, corresponding to Europe's lower social and legal age of consent (as American national politics operate according to California rules). This is also consistent with the illegality being the point. (Perhaps Europe's patronage networks are less effective than American ones because fewer men are actually into sexual attention from 8 year olds, creating a recruitment problem for the web of trust!)
The association with, and cultural memory of, secret satanic rituals might just be a holdover from when those were similarly grounds for automatic cancellation no matter how powerful the person engaging in them. The weakening of cultural Christianity, under that theory, necessitated switching from Satanism to underage sex. If the rise of Social Justice had not been halted, we could one day have lived in a utopia where the rich and powerful could just go to some island to hold secret blackface parties, instead of having to diddle kids.
Thus, Trudeau.
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True. I can also think of other factors. As far as I know, it has traditionally been normal for elite Western European families to send their sons off to expensive private boys’ boarding schools, where many of them got groomed by older pederasts in positions of authority and subsequently became pederasts themselves. In general, one trait that sets elites apart from the plebs is that they’re relatively isolated in their youths from normal rites of hetero sex. Also, I suspect there’s a strong correlation between the inherent traits that make one an ambitious, unscrupulous member of the elite and the usual traits of pedophiles, which means that kid touchers will always be overrepresented among the elite.
Having gone to an expensive private boys' boarding school, the rumours are greatly exaggerated. There was much to dislike about them but the kind of thing that CS Lewis wrote about isn't common.
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