Maybe I am, but I just need to rant about it

I'm Not a Conspiracy Theorist. I'm Just Paying Attention.

This isn't a normal FriedReads article. There's no snark here. No fun "what if." No jokes. This is just a rant I have to get off my chest. The regular programming—the stupid, hilarious stuff—will be back tomorrow. But tonight, I need to say this.

Last month, my team and I were supposed to go to the States for a competition. We're Canadians. We'd worked on this for months. We got the news a week before: our travel authorization was denied. No specific reason. Just a link to a page about "enhanced security protocols" and "ongoing ICE operations."

We found another competition in another country. We're fine. But that's the point, isn't it?

I built FriedReads to talk about absurd, funny things—to escape the noise. I never wanted to be a political guy. I do dip my toe into that realm from time to time, but it was never a major thing. I don't know the perfect policy for healthcare or the exact tax rate. But politics, it seems, has a perfect policy for me. It doesn't need my opinion. It just needs to know I'm on the wrong side of a newly drawn line. It can reach right into my life, into something I cared about, and say "No."

And you know what happened while I was coding and swallowing that particular brand of powerless anger?

The Epstein Files finally dropped. 3.5 million pages. A universe of horror in PDF form. Every billionaire, every politician, every oligarch, tangled in the same ugly web. And at the center of it, grinning from the past, was the current President of the United States.

For about six hours, the world stared, jaw on the floor, at the sheer scale of the crime scene.

Then, Trump posted a deepfake video of Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys.

Just like that. Poof.

The conversation didn't just shift. It shattered. The timeline exploded. Was it racist? Was it AI? Was it a joke? Was it an outrage? Debates about free speech, about technology, about decency, about the damn definition of racism swallowed everything. The Epstein files—the actual, factual evidence of a billionaire pedophile ring that ensnared the global elite—were now "old news." They were "distracting us from the real issue of AI ethics!" They were "whataboutism" if you brought them up.

The noise isn't a byproduct. The noise is the weapon.

This isn't chaos. It's a strategy. A firehose of filth aimed directly at our ability to think, to focus, to hold a single thread of accountability for more than five minutes.

Let's connect the dots, since that's apparently what "conspiracy theorists" do.

Dot 1: The Crime. The Epstein files are the single most damning artifact of our time. They don't just allege a crime; they document a system of impunity. They show, in black and white, how the ultra-wealthy and connected operated a grotesque abuse ring, and how every institution—media, law enforcement, courts—bent to protect them. It's the blueprint for how power really works.

Dot 2: The Classic Play. Remember the Texas floods last July? Right as the first big Epstein news was breaking? Trump went on TV. He didn't talk about disaster relief. He attacked the media for focusing on "disgusting, ancient gossip" instead of "real American tragedies." He framed it as a moral failing to even talk about Epstein while there was a flood. A human tragedy became a human shield for the powerful. He used the suffering of people in Texas to bury a story about his own connections to a pedophile. Let that sentence sit with you.

Dot 3: The New World. Now, the racist AI videos. The "shithole country" rhetoric. The constant, dripping dehumanization of anyone who isn't part of the "in-group." This is what they're building on top of the buried crime. If the old, corrupt system existed to protect billionaire pedophiles, then the new system—the one they're selling—is "pure," "strong," and for "real Americans." They're not just distracting from the crime; they're offering a "purified" nation as the solution. The racism isn't a flaw. It's the foundational myth. You need a common enemy to unite people, and "the other" is the oldest, most reliable enemy there is.

This is the pattern, clear as day:

1. A crime is exposed (Epstein).
2. A storm of chaos is created (Floods, AI videos, a new culture-war outrage) to bury it.
3. In the wreckage, they lay a new foundation built on racism and division.

   The end goal isn't just to win an election. It's to create a world where they can never be held accountable again. The white ethno-state is the ultimate safe space for a guilty man. In a country like that, there is no independent press to investigate you. There is no political opposition to subpoena you. There is no shared morality to condemn you. There is only the power of the in-group, forever.

   They call you a conspiracy theorist for seeing this. They say you're "connecting dots that aren't there."

   But the dots are there. They're throwing them at our heads, one after the other, so fast we can't pick them up. The crime. The flood. The racist meme. The dehumanization. The crimes. They're all the same dot.

   I'm writing this because I'm tired of feeling crazy. I'm tired of the gaslighting. I'm tired of being told the world is just "complicated" when I'm watching a magician's trick performed in slow motion. The right hand is waving frantically with a monkey video, while the left hand is shoving the evidence of a sex-trafficking ring into an incinerator.

   I don't have a happy ending for you. I don't have a plan to fix it. I'm just a guy with a dumb website who wanted to make jokes about philosophers and crypto.

   But I'm paying attention. And I see you. I see you trying to hold the single, devastating thread of truth in your hands while a hurricane tries to rip it away.

   Hold on to it. Even if it's just for yourself.

   The noise is the weapon. But silence is the surrender.

   ---

   A quick note: This was a lot. Thank you for reading. The normal, weird, snarky FriedReads will be back with the next post. I promise.