Bombshell articles in , and at pulled the covers off Epstein’s noxious racism. Reporters culling the most recently released Epstein files discovered numerous pieces of evidence in emails and other documents suggesting that he advocated the faux “science” of racial eugenics and held racist views not distinct from those Trump promoted for decades. Epstein built (or at least tried to build) ties and developed friendships with some of the most notorious eugenicists and white nationalists around the globe, including Nobel Prize laureate and geneticist James Watson, political scientist Charles Murray and artificial intelligence researcher Joscha Bach, among many others. He also circulated posts from white supremacist websites that promoted bogus, supposedly genetically-based intellectual differences between the races.

is the “race science” that was developed in the latter part of the 19th century to justify European slavery and colonialism. Proponents contended that humans were biologically and genetically separated into distinctly unequal “races.” Everything from intelligence, criminality and attractiveness to morality was, so the claim went, genetically determined. It should surprise no one that, in such an imagined hierarchy, whites were at the top and, in most configurations, people of African descent at the very bottom, with Asians and indigenous people somewhere in between. Those four (or five or six) categories were considered immutable. And it mattered remarkably little that, for a long time, social and natural scientists had overwhelmingly argued with irrefutable evidence that racial categories were social constructs invented by humans and distinctly malleable over time as political and social life changed.

The real-world impact of racial eugenics theory long shaped public policy, political status and life opportunities. In the United States, a belief in the genetic inferiority of blacks helped foster slavery and then Jim Crow segregation, and led to tens of thousands of African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and individuals with physical and mental disabilities, as well as prisoners being sterilized. By 1913, 24 states and Washington, DC, had passed laws allowing . President Theodore Roosevelt was a in such eugenics and supported sterilization in order to prevent what he termed “racial suicide,” a perspective that echoes today’s “Great Replacement .”

In Nazi Germany, eugenics led not only to the sterilization of Jews, blacks and the disabled, but to the state-organized mass murder of of people. It was a core tenet of Nazism that all non-Aryans were genetically inferior and a threat to the white race. The Nazis railed against Jews “ the blood” of white Germans, a term Trump used in describing non-white immigrants from the Global South.

Despite this history, Epstein came to deeply believe in eugenics and genetic determination, as has Trump. To that end, Epstein sought to connect with the notable race theorists of his day.

Epstein on race

Perhaps the most notorious in the modern era advocating a racial basis for intelligence and a social hierarchy that places whites on top and blacks at the bottom was The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life by Charles Murray and the late Richard J. Herrnstein, published in 1994. Since then, in multiple and articles, the research behind that book has been thoroughly debunked and overwhelmingly rejected by scholars in the social and natural sciences.

Yet, at the time, many Republicans and some Democrats embraced its racist argument in order to contend that the US government should cut back on its welfare programs. Murray aligned with Republicans in giving to Congress in the 1990s that blamed the morality of poor people for their poverty (as a debate unfolded around the future of programs).

According to the Epstein files, Epstein himself repeatedly tried to correspond with Murray. However, Murray claims he never received (or remembers receiving) any emails from Epstein and did not correspond with him. Regardless, it’s pretty clear that Epstein was writing because of Murray’s notoriety for his work on race and genetics. This was in 2018, more than a decade after The Bell Curve had been published and Murray had become famous for it.

Epstein, according to , was reportedly provided with Murray’s email address by Watson. He and Francis Crick had, of course, discovered the of DNA in 1953. Nine years later, they and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

Around 2000, Watson’s regressive views on race began to surface. That year, he told an audience that “dark-skinned people have stronger libidos,” leaning into a centuries-old racial stereotype. In 2007, according to a former in the London Sunday Times, he said that he was “inherently gloomy about the prospect of Africa” because “all our social policies are based on the fact that their intelligence is the same as ours — whereas all the testing says not really.”

Epstein also had ties to a number of other researchers and scientists, including Bach, who received from the convicted felon and was hired at MIT’s Media Lab with his help. In one exchange in 2016, Bach wrote to Epstein, stating that African American children “have slower cognitive development” and “are slower at learning high-level concepts.” With the release of those files in January, Bach tried to explain why his statements were not racist and that “scientific discussion about the heritability of traits… [is] very complicated and not my area of research.”

Epstein also spent time on hardcore white supremacist websites. For example, he sent a link to a racist article entitled, “Race and IQ: Genes That Predict Racial Intelligence Differences,” to left-wing scholar Noam Chomsky. The article came from the outright white supremacist website The Right Stuff, according to The Atlantic. Chomsky, over email, expressed his disagreement with Epstein about race science.

According to , the two had a “close friendship.” There is no evidence that Chomsky participated in or witnessed any of Epstein’s sex crimes, and Valeria Chomsky, his wife, admitted that the couple made “serious errors in judgment” in maintaining ties to him. While the vigorously denounced Epstein’s offenses, there was no mention of his racist behavior, which few focused on in all those years.

The “great gene” president

Epstein’s eugenicist views are in line with the longstanding genetic determinism of Trump. I believe there is no bigger racist science believer than the current occupant in the White House.

For decades, he has bragged about his genetic superiority relative to the rest of humanity. The examples are endless:

• “, I think I was born with the drive for success because I have a certain gene. I’m a gene believer.”
• “You have to have the rights — the right genes.”
• “Do we believe the gene thing? I mean I do.”
• “I have great genes and all that stuff which I’m a believer in.”

And, of course, in opposition to Trump’s “right genes” are those with the wrong kind. From the president’s perspective, that would include migrants. In an discussing them, he opined, “You know, now a murderer — I believe this — it’s in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Over the years, Trump has also shown little empathy for individuals with disabilities. He famously reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has arthrogryposis that affects his joints, by twisting and contorting his body to make fun of him. He also did not want to be around physically disabled soldiers, according to his former White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.

Trump often speaks with a strategic ambiguity so that he can later deny that he was disparaging migrants, people with disabilities or wounded soldiers. He fools no one.

It’s notable that one of Trump’s go-to insults is to call someone “.” In nearly every case, his target turns out to be a black person and disproportionately female ones. Examples include his opponent in the 2024 presidential election, Kamala Harris, and Congressional Representatives Maxine Waters, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Al Green, Jasmine Crockett, House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries, radio host Charlamagne tha God and New York Attorney General Letitia James, among others.

Trump has been careful, at least publicly, to not explicitly say that black people are genetically predisposed to criminality. However, he has endlessly attacked black-led cities as crime zones, without ever labeling white-dominated cities or states the same way. He also posted supposedly demonstrating that African Americans commit crimes at a higher rate, with the clear implication that race is the driving factor.

Trump’s racism and US immigration

His eugenicist views are most manifest in his immigration policies and dreams. Theoretically, he is not able to run for president again, so he has little incentive to hide his true feelings. After spending years denying it, in December 2025, he proudly admitted that he had referred to nations in Latin America and Africa as “shithole” countries back in 2018. In a speech he delivered in Pennsylvania on December 9, 2025, he plugged for white — and implicitly white only — immigration to this country:

“Remember I said that to the senators that came in, the Democrats. They wanted to be bipartisan. So they came in. And they said, ‘This is totally off the record, nothing mentioned here, we want to be honest,’ because our country was going to hell. And we had a meeting. And I say: Why is it we only take people from shithole countries, right? Why can’t we have some people from Norway, Sweden – just a few – let us have a few. From Denmark – do you mind sending us a few people?”

In January 2026, Trump essentially halted almost all refugees coming from Africa. The administration stated that it would admit only total refugees from around the world in 2026, the lowest number on record. This meant near-zero for black Africans.Ěý

At the same time, the Trump administration sought to process white South African refugee applications per month starting in January. The president also Executive Order 4204 in February 2025, falsely claiming that whites in South Africa were being mistreated and deserved an expedited process to become permanent US residents. The new target, contained in a previously unreported document from the State Department dated January 27 and by Reuters, signals a push to ramp up admissions from South Africa, while refugee applications from other areas have been severely curtailed.

Racial genetics is Trump’s defining worldview (full stop!). That he thinks of Barack and Michelle Obama as less than human should surprise no one who has followed his statements on race over the decades. A compilation of Trump’s views on the former president over all these years boils down to this: Barack Obama is an radical ( of ISIS) and socialist who was not born in the US, but engineered a conspiracy involving thousands to pretend that he was (or maybe he ), then assumed the presidency. He should now be arrested for and on the Trump White House. And no matter what your eyes and brain tell you, he is not as and healthy as I am.

A black woman’s contribution to medicine

Beginning in the early 1950s, real science, as opposed to the fraudulent versions embraced by Epstein and Trump, was able to make life-changing breakthroughs as a result of access to what became known as . Those cells would be responsible for understanding and creating vaccines and treatment for polio, cancer, HPV, Parkinson’s, measles, HIV, mumps, Zika and Covid-19, among other diseases. They would lead to the creation of the field of virology. It is highly unlikely (and would likely have been mortifying) that either Epstein knew, or Trump knows, that those cells came from an African American woman named Henrietta Lacks. They were cynically named HeLa, combining the first two letters of her first and last names.

In 1951, when she was admitted to Johns Hopkins hospital in Baltimore, deathly ill with cervical cancer, doctors took cell tissues from her body without her or her family’s permission. That unethical theft — legal at the time — would lead to countless billions in profits for pharmaceutical corporations. After the publication of Rebecca Skloot’s , The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, in 2010, her story became well known and family-initiated lawsuits proceeded. In 2023, the family reached a with Thermo Fisher Scientific, and, in February 2026, settlement with Novartis, a Switzerland-based pharmaceutical mammoth.

I argue that Trump is easily the most intellectually incurious, ill-informed, unread, vacuous and petulant president in US history. He will never acknowledge or even understand that his rise to power was not due to his having any extraordinary talents, skills or genetically-based genius. It was, without qualification, the result of a lifetime of perpetual race, gender and class privilege.

[ first published this piece.]

[ edited this piece.]

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Epstein had laid it out clearly as a strategic piece of stagecraft and also as a mischievous advertisement: In Sade’s novel, Justine is a 12-year-old girl who sets off on a trip through France to learn virtue and instead is subject to sexual exploitation and abuse by monks, a rich gentleman and other “sadistic” male torturers.

Sade is remembered today less for his most famous writings, Justine and 120 Days of Sodom, than for his reputation as offering a private theater of cruelty where privileged men could indulge their forbidden desires under a veneer of philosophy and high taste. He wrote about domination and the subordination of women, but, while his workwas considered obscene, modern scholars, even feminists such as , have argued that Sade was engaged in a radical critique of contemporary sexual and social power structures.

Carter observed that while Sade’s writing was violent and pornographic, it also served as a radical critique of the sexual and social power structures of revolutionary France. She framed Sade as a “moral pornographer” who used obscenity to analyze the power dynamics between the sexes. Sade believed that the new revolutionary republic was just as oppressive as the old regime. The tension in these contrasting perspectives reveals a key to understanding the meaning of Jeffrey Epstein’s legacy.

The dark allure of influence

A massive trove of over 3 million pages of documents, 2,000 videos and 180,000 images, including emails, photographs and correspondence related to Jeffrey Epstein, was by the US Department of Justice and the House Oversight Committee in late January and early February 2026. They constitute a nauseating catalogue of sycophancy, cruelty and misogyny.

Everyone is focused on Epstein’s depravity, but more interesting is the way they highlight the extraordinary hunger among late-20th and early-21st-century elites for a hidden space in which they could suspend the norms they spent their public lives pretending to uphold. If the Paris libertines of the late 18th century had their châteaux, salons and forbidden bestsellers, America’s donor class had access to a Virgin Islands foundation, a Manhattan mansion, a private jet and a small private island, among many other properties.

Epstein’s reputation was not based on the fact that he was rich or lecherous, since those features have been attributed to the rich and famous as long as celebrity has been an obsession of mass culture. Rather, once Epstein had made his money, he did not remain satisfied with the usual trophies of the newly arrived — bigger planes, fancier yachts or art pieces — that others desire. He built something more strategic, a small, flexible foundation and self-cultivation as someone with both scientific and humanistic interests. He then used that constructed persona to lure in a semi-secret court of intellectuals, politicians, financiers and celebrities. A foundation buys something much more valuable than expensive toys; it buys you influence.

The complex web of philanthropy and influence

Epstein’s main philanthropic arm, the Jeffery Epstein VI , “VI” for Virgin Islands, was established in 2000 in the same Caribbean jurisdiction where he based many of his businesses and owned his private Caribbean Island, Little Saint James. The foundation’s board included Cecile de Jongh, the wife of the then-governor of the US Virgin Islands, a detail that illustrates the formula: money equals proximity to power equals legal and ethical protection.

The VI Foundation’s was to fund “cutting-edge science and science education.” In practice, it operated as both a checkbook and a calling card. Epstein pledged tens of millions to elite universities and research centers. The most famous example was $9 million to , including a $6.5 million commitment to Harvard’s Program for Evolutionary Dynamics, which was ultimately only partially fulfilled, but enough to place Epstein’s name at the center of a prestigious research initiative and to grant him an advisory role on university committees. 

Through this and similar gifts, some routed through other vehicles, some quietly anonymized, Epstein cultivated a network of scientists and technology experts, including theoretical physicists, AI researchers, geneticists and roboticists. His VI Foundation international work on AI, brain science and futuristic robots. Epstein also sprinkled smaller grants on local Virgin Islands charities: a mental health clinic, youth programs, even animal welfare groups. These comparatively minor donations functioned as political grease, building goodwill in a territory whose laws and regulators he depended on, while his headline gifts went to institutions that conferred prestige on the East Coast and beyond.  

The scientists, students and patients who benefited from Epstein’s money were usually not complicit in his crimes. There is no evidence that the VI Foundation’s grantees, as individuals or as a group, knew about, much less participated in, Epstein’s sex-trafficking operation. The point is that by creating the appearance of a serious, high-minded philanthropic agenda, Epstein purchased something no amount of visible luxury could buy: a place inside the collective brain of the elite.

To be invited to his townhouse was to find oneself in a room that a parody of a New York Review of Books launch party. Nobel laureates traded bon mots with hedge-fund managers, movie stars were seated next to cabinet officials and tech founders, spiritual gurus, literary publicists and the occasional ex-prime minister mingled. The currency traded was visibility and access.

The recent email dumps show just how transactional this ecosystem was. They are full of the kind of correspondence you would expect from any donor network, requests for gala tables, pitches for new theaters, speculation about Saudi arms deals and quantum computers, but charged with the added frisson of Epstein’s notoriety and the intimacy of his circle. Some sought money from him, while others funneled money and introductions to him. He, in turn, dispensed access to his digital Rolodex, his planes, his islands, his image as a man who could make things happen and who rarely said no. From a distance, it looked less like a Bond villain’s lair than like something older, French hostess Madame de Goeffrin beamed up to the 21st century.

Libertinism and moral exemption in high society

The comparison to 18th-century France is not facile. Heirs to the Sun King, the court of Louis XV and his grandson were infamous for bifurcated morality. In public, Catholicism and royal authority demanded rigid observance. In private, aristocratic men and the women dependent on their favor constructed a parallel world of mistresses, brothels and secret clubs where the very taboos upheld in the daylight were gleefully violated at night.

The libertines of that era produced a whole literature of apology and celebration for their lifestyle. , imprisoned in the Bastille and then in asylums for his extreme pornography and alleged crimes, turned sexual transgression into a metaphysics. If God is dead, then power and pleasure are the only real currencies. His noble characters, bored by ordinary vice, required ever more elaborate cruelties to feed their lust.

The appeal was not merely sex but rather the sense of exemption from normal rules, an exemption that proved one’s status and power. To be an insider to libertine culture was to understand that the sermons and catechisms of the church, and the bourgeois insistence on decency, were all a kind of theater. The real life of the ruling class happened in the shadows.

Epstein’s life and relationships suggest he knew this history, or at least intuited it, and enjoyed seeing himself in that lineage. His three-volume bound 50th birthday with personalized greetings, assembled by Ghislaine Maxwell, contains bawdy and cruel jokes from scores of prominent people. The emails and party guest lists that have emerged in the files display off-color jokes, explicit musings about “girls,” and the casual tracking of who had which yacht, which villa, which art collection. The Wall Street Journal’s of the files as making Tom Wolfe’s Bonfire of the Vanities look “genteel” is less about criminality than about tone; the preening, the moral vacancy, the sense that nothing outside the game of status accumulation was quite real.

One email from Deepak Chopra to Epstein, unearthed in the latest tranche, crystallizes that mix of glibness and appetite. He writes, “God is a construct, but cute girls are real.” The line is juvenile, but precisely for that reason, so revealing. The guru of mind-body wellness casually inverts metaphysics to flirt with a convicted sex offender. He was not alone.

Recently released show that Chopra was in contact with Epstein between 2016 and 2019, trading emails about public figures and attending dinners with people like Woody Allen. Many of these correspondences, including his, may involve nothing more than bad judgment and vulgarity. But they point to a deeper truth, that in every generation, the people who preach balance and virtue in public still seek out private spaces where those rules are suspended.

The American paradox: public virtue, private taboo and Epstein’s sanctuary

What makes Epstein uniquely American is the particular historical moment in which he built his empire of influence, the 1990s and 2000s, years that saw the rise of what was first called “political correctness” and then, more broadly, a therapeutic, HR-managed public culture. The early 1990s were defined by the Clarence Thomas–Anita Hill , which forced workplace sexual harassment into national consciousness.

Universities built entire bureaucracies around stifling codes of conduct and speech. Corporations hired diversity trainers and forced employees to attend sensitivity training. The Clinton impeachment pivoted on sex and lying about sex. So-called “family values” became a mantra of both Republican campaigns and Democratic defensiveness. Public life was shot through with sexual righteousness and the language of harm, trauma and propriety. It appears quaint now, but George W. Bush was elected partly to restore “honor and dignity” to the White House.

In the digital age, mass-market pornography migrated from below the news store counter to the browser. The Playboy mansion gave way to internet webcams, and cable television mainstreamed shows and jokes that would have been unthinkable in earlier network eras. America’s libido did not vanish; it was displaced, driven out of official spaces, channeled into highly commodified, legally insulated industries, and wrapped in shame.

For a certain cohort of lawyers, financiers, academics and media figures who came of age in the 1970s and 1980s, this new dispensation felt constricting. Many had grown up with or at least in the fading afterglow of counterculture sex, drugs, and rock and roll, and now found themselves living amid unwelcome taboos, some progressive, some neo-Victorian, without any corresponding private world in which those taboos could be easily broken.

Here lies one of the keys to Epstein’s attractiveness. He offered not just luxury and sex, but a place where powerful men (and some women) could drop the stiff, careful personas that late-20th-century Anglo-American culture required of them. His planes and island functioned as zones of deniability and permission. The donor meetings, “science” seminars and off-the-record dinners were the front rooms of a house that had back rooms to which only a “lucky” few were invited. For special guests, the taboo was the feature, not the bug.

It is telling that many of the figures most embarrassed by the new documents are not outright villains but instead people whose brands depend on some form of respectability: wellness influencers, big-firm lawyers, tech philanthropists, global-governance mandarins. The emails expose not only their proximity to a criminal but the gap between their public images and their private appetites.

Navigating public morality and private vice in America and Europe

If America’s elites turned to Epstein for a kind of outsourced libertinism, their European peers often developed parallel structures within their own political cultures. France has long treated the intimate lives of its leaders as a private matter. François Mitterrand a second, secret family during his presidency; when his illegitimate daughter showed up at his funeral, much of the French press treated the spectacle with a shrug. 

Later, President François Hollande’s motor-scooter to visit an actress lover were tabloid fodder but not, for most French voters, disqualifying. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s “” parties, which blended showgirls, young women and off-color jokes, became a national spectacle; his brazenness was part of his populist appeal (and an early model for US President Donald Trump).

This is not to say Europe has been free of sexual scandal, or that its elites have been kinder to the vulnerable. The mass-abuse into Catholic institutions in Ireland, Germany and elsewhere, the British inquiries and the Gisèle Pelicot mass rape in France, among others, laid bare long-running patterns of exploitation. In some instances, these inquiries culminated in national commissions, official apologies and attempts at collective reckoning. In some respects, European politicians have been held to a higher standard than those in the US.

In the UK, Peter Mandelson, a former ambassador to the United States, was , and Prince Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor has come under as a result of the file dump. Ironically, the number of scandals under the Trump administration, sexual and otherwise, has made Americans almost numb to outrage.

The difference is not that European elites behave better, but rather that their public cultures have traditionally drawn the line in a different place. Consensual adult infidelity, long-term affairs and even relationships with much younger partners have often been treated as a matter for families and the boulevard press, not prosecutors or human resources (HR) departments. America, by contrast, makes little distinction in its rhetoric between private vice and public fitness. Business leaders and politicians (unless your name is Donald Trump) can be hounded from office for an affair without any allegation of nonconsent.

This divergence is not as stark as it once was. France’s response to #MeToo was initially ambivalent, but the movement has had real effects there, as in Spain, Britain, Sweden and elsewhere. Still, the United States remains notably more Puritan in its public sexual morality than most of Western Europe. That Puritanism breeds both openly moralistic politics and private workarounds, such as the “what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas,” the anonymous escort, the VIP club, the private yacht and, for a small subset of the very rich, someone like Epstein. In that sense, Epstein’s operation is recognizably transatlantic, an Anglo-American version of the old French and Italian systems in which power confers space to misbehave, and scandal is something to be swept into the realm of “private life” until it can no longer be ignored.

Epstein’s manipulation of wealth, influence and deception

What truly distinguishes Epstein from the archetypal libertine, however, is not just his setting but his method. Sade was a marquis whose power was inherited. Epstein was a striver whose origins were middle-class and provincial. He worked first as a teacher, then as a trader and money manager, moving through the lower and middle ranks of finance. His tool for entering the world of the very rich was precisely the thing that defined late-20th-century American power: philanthropy as a front.

The Germans have a word for Epstein: a Hochstapler, a social climber and fraudster. A friend of his, the CEO of Tiffany, Ross Monckton, of Epstein, “You think you know him and then you peel off another ring of the onion skin, and there’s something else extraordinary underneath. He never reveals his hand … He’s a classic iceberg. What you see is not what you get.”

The donor class in America is a caste unto itself, created not just by wealth but by participation in a particular set of rituals, such as charity galas, naming rights, advisory boards and campaign bundling. This world has its own currencies and its own hierarchies. One can be worth billions and still be a nobody at Davos, or a peripheral figure at Aspen. Or one can give a charity $10,000 and sit on a board with genuine bigwigs. That world is fluid. Epstein was not averse to using what he knew about the powerful as leverage. Some of his fortune might have been due to blackmail. In the recent email dump, one finds evidence of Epstein threatening benefactors like the billionaire Les Wexner, with like “I owe a great debt to you, as frankly you owe to me,” adding ominously that he “had no intention of divulging any confidence of ours.”

Epstein exploited all of his advantages, sexual and otherwise. His VI Foundation and related entities enabled him to join the club without matching the largest gifts. By focusing on a specific niche, frontier science, especially in mathematics, AI and genetics, he bought a disproportionate share of attention from a relatively small but symbolically powerful group of people: Nobel-level scientists, Ivy League presidents, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) lab directors, and the intellectuals and journalists in their orbits. Some needed his money. Others liked the flattery of being courted by someone who presented himself as a polymath investor, a man who could talk string theory in the afternoon and campaign strategy in the evening. He possessed desirable and nonpublic information.

There were also those, like wellness celebrities and certain tech founders, who saw in him a way to launder their own aspirations. Epstein’s connections eventually ran to a higher level of politics. He could make introductions to presidents and prime ministers for people who needed access. There is no proof that he was on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) or the Mossad, but the many tantalizing clues left behind that he worked as an asset for various intelligence services make a lot of sense. He had the kinds of and intel that spies covet.

The latest email caches confirm the asymmetry of Epstein’s relations to power. Scientists are thanking Epstein for his support and encouragement in their AI research. Media figures and lobbyists are looping him into threads about Trump, Saudi money and Saudi arms deals, clearly seeing him as a node in a larger power web. Epstein had to Saudi Arabia’s royal court and was in contact with individuals close to and with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS). There are invitations to awards shows and festivals, campaigns to place him at the right table next to the right director or star.

Many of these correspondents were not asking to fly to his island or use his massage table. They wanted introductions, donations or simply a chance to be close to someone they believed had pull. For them, Epstein’s sexual deviance was not necessarily the selling point. In some cases, it was a reputational risk to be minimized or ignored. But for others, the deviance was the real draw.

Power rarely travels alone. It travels along with sentimentality, cruelty, generosity, boredom and a Nietzschean aspiration to feel that the rules do not apply to select Supra-individuals. The Epstein files, incomplete and heavily redacted as they are, make this dichotomy visible in ways that are often excruciating. The are full of juvenile mockery about “girls,” using human trafficking code words like “pizza,” “grape juice,” “Chanel,” or “Snow White.” The files reveal assessments of women’s bodies in language that reduces human beings to anatomy and availability. In the vocabulary of one popular wellness influencer caught in the blast radius, this was “just banter.” For others, it was “locker-room talk,” as Donald Trump’s handlers once repackaged his own vulgar comments. The phrase is meant to reassure us that boys will be boys, and words are not actions.

Yet in Epstein’s case, the deeds were real. The “locker room” had an actual lock, with verifiable victims whose stories of coercion, grooming and violence have been documented in court cases and investigative reporting. The most recent United Nations on global trafficking underscores that sex trafficking overall is on the rise worldwide. Epstein’s operation was not an aberration, but an extreme link in a much larger system of exploitation.

Elite connections and compromised choices

What the new materials add is a context for how tempting that link was for some in the elite. They capture a range of attitudes: the fawning, the blasé, the vaguely curious, the opportunistic. To be included in the Epstein’s Files does not, by itself, mean crime. Many names appear only in a single email, or in Epstein’s own messages to himself. But alongside those incidental contacts, there is a smaller inner circle, people who continued to see, defend or do business with him long after his 2008 conviction for procuring a child for prostitution.

Some, like , were men already targeted in the culture wars. Accused in the early 1990s of molesting his adopted daughter, a charge he has always denied and for which he was never criminally charged, Allen became a symbol of an era’s failures to take children’s testimony seriously. By the 2010s, he found himself shunned by studios and festivals. Today, he makes films only in Europe. For a public figure like Woody Allen, Epstein’s continued hospitality would be both a risk and a kind of perverse refuge, one disgraced man lending comfort and introductions to another.

Others, like former Harvard president and Treasury Secretary , arrived with sterling institutional credentials and left badly singed. Summers’ appearances in the new emails, cordial, bantering, too cute by half, are a textbook illustration of elite myopia, a belief that proximity to a known sex offender could be managed as a private embarrassment rather than a public scandal. When those correspondences surfaced, Summers expressed regret and stepped back from some high-profile roles, but the damage to his and Harvard’s moral authority had already been done.

There are also the tech billionaires and philanthropists — most prominently Bill Gates — who acknowledged that their meetings with Epstein after his conviction were grave errors. Gates has he approached Epstein to discuss philanthropy and was wrong to do so. Reid Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has similarly for facilitating and attending gatherings where Epstein was present. Elon Musk continues to deny accusations that he had anything to do with Epstein, despite a message found in the recent email dump , “What day/night will be the wildest party on your island?”Musk characterized such correspondence as “a distraction” that could be “misinterpreted” by detractors to smear his name.

For some of these men, Epstein’s dark charisma likely lay as much in his promise of influence as in the sexual theater around him. He could arrange meetings, suggest investments, donate to pet causes and provide an environment in which the usual constraints of corporate public relations (PR) and institutional decorum fell away. Yet it is hard to avoid the sense that at least part of the attraction was precisely his willingness to go where others would not. He stood out as brazen in a world of timid titans.

A new Gilded Age and populist fury

The timing of the latest document release is not incidental. It lands in what many have called a new Gilded Age, in which the yawning gap between the very rich and everyone else has become impossible to ignore. The same period saw Trump win the highest office in the land despite, or perhaps because of, boasting about women’s genitals and shrugging off multiple . At the same time, the culture witnessed the rise and partial ebb of #MeToo, the largest public reckoning with sexual abuse and harassment in modern American history.

If #MeToo was often framed by the political right as the grievance of “angry feminists” and an example of cancel culture, the Epstein Files have a more bipartisan, even cross-ideological appeal. Social media reactions to the latest leaks have an almost revolutionary tone, a digital storming of the ramparts.

For many younger Americans — Gen Z, younger millennials, the underemployed and debt-burdened — the Epstein network confirms a suspicion that had already hardened into cynicism, that the rich and powerful live by different rules. The spectacle of lawyers, wellness gurus, academics and moguls hovering around a convicted sex offender for access and advantage looks, from the outside, like evidence of a rigged system. The rich and the powerful never pay for what they do. Populism of both the left and right is the result.

The political system, so far, has offered only partial answers. Epstein is dead. His collaborator, Ghislaine Maxwell, is in prison. Civil cases have produced settlements and some measure of accountability. But there is no independent commission charged with fully parsing the files, no formal truth and reconciliation process, no promise that everyone who ever requested a flight to the island will be hauled before a public tribunal. The redactions and gaps in the record fuel conspiracy thinking, but they also reflect the reality that the legal system is not designed to resolve every moral question.

This gap between public rage and institutional response is itself part of the story. California Representative Ro Khanna, who introduced the Epstein Files Transparency Act, called on Congress to haul in every single person who emailed Epstein about visiting his island, , “The American people are frustrated with the rich and powerful getting a different set of justice.” Epstein is less an anomaly than a symbol, not just of male predation, but of class impunity.

It is tempting, in the face of all this, to focus exclusively on the roster of names and their individual sins and stupidities. Who was at dinner? Who flew when? Who wrote “cute girls are real”? The files lend themselves to this sort of scavenger hunt. The dark fun involves watching the high-brow brought low.

But as with earlier waves of scandal, from Watergate to #MeToo, there is a risk that the obsession with individual downfalls will obscure the conditions that made those downfalls possible.

The structural enablers of elite abuse

Epstein flourished because he exploited at least four structural features of modern elite culture. First. a philanthropic system that trades money for access and moral cover. The donor class is invited, even begged, to treat their giving as a path to virtue. Institutions know that some of their benefactors are dubious; they accept the bargain anyway, often reassuring themselves that the money will be put to good use. Epstein did not invent this arrangement; he simply exploited it.

Second, a public discourse about sex that combines moralism with repression. America’s mix of religiosity, litigation and media outrage makes it hard to talk honestly about adult sexuality, power and desire. That pressure does not eliminate bad behavior, but rather drives it underground. Some people who spend their days policing language in conference rooms will look for opportunities at night to say and do what they can’t at times when people are watching.

Third, a global economy of trafficking and exploitation that treats the bodies of young women and girls as commodities. Epstein’s operation tapped into broader flows of vulnerability: runaways, migrants, poor teenagers. The UN’s finding that sex trafficking is rising globally suggests that, absent systemic change, there will always be an Epstein or someone like him ready to monetize that market demand.

Finally, a culture of elite impunity, in which reputations are protected by networks of lawyers, PR firms and institutional allies. The names in the Epstein files are a cross-section of this ecosystem, people who can expect, in most circumstances, to avoid the worst consequences of their actions. When justice does arrive, it is often partial, delayed or depersonalized, as settlements without admissions, resignations without clear reasons and apologies that use the passive voice.

If there is a lesson in the contrast between Epstein and, say, the grooming-gang inquiries in Britain or the Pelicot case in France, it may be that some societies, under sufficient pressure, are capable of treating sexual abuse not just as a collection of individual crimes but as a systemic failure. They commission reports, revise laws and, at least, claim to seek a kind of national deliverance. Whether the United States will ever mount a comparably comprehensive reckoning with the culture that enabled Epstein remains an open question.

After Epstein: reckoning or repetition?

Epstein is gone. Maxwell sits in a federal prison. Archives are being pored over; pundits and politicians are virtue-signaling and displaying outrage. Yet the underlying arrangements that made his world possible are, in many ways, intact. The philanthropic complex still offers the wealthy a path to soft power and air-brushed reputations, even if due diligence departments are marginally more cautious. Global sex trafficking remains profitable; encrypted apps and the dark web have replaced some of the email channels that boomers like Epstein used. Pornography and commercialized “sex work” are growing industries whose labor conditions remain deeply compromised. Who knows what new methods of exploitation will occur with the turbo-charged power of AI?

Meanwhile, the cultural pendulum swings back and forth. #MeToo has spawned both reforms and backlash; a muscular online “manosphere” offers young men a set of misogynist scripts that would not look out of place in a Sade plot, stripped of elegance. is alive and well in finance, tech and politics, even if its public presentation has been smoothed and focus-grouped.

The risk, as with all moral panics, is that Epstein will be remembered primarily as a monster, a freakish outlier whose biography can be safely quarantined from the rest of us. That is the opposite of the truth. He was, in many ways, a concentrated expression of broader patterns of male entitlement, of class privilege, of the seductions of secrecy, and of the uses and abuses of philanthropy.

The paperback copy by the Marquis de Sade seen in Epstein’s office was, whether he intended it or not, both a secret confession and a sleight-of-hand. Like Sade, Epstein was a libertine who mistook his own appetites for a kind of higher philosophy, who thought that because he could act without consequence, his actions had some larger meaning. But where de Sade belonged to an old regime that fell to the ire of the masses, Epstein belonged to a new one that has yet to face its own revolution.

The question the Epstein files leave us with is not simply “Who else was on the plane?” or “Which guru wrote which gross email?” It is whether a culture that has outsourced its conscience to HR policies and its moral imagination to social media can find a deeper, more honest way to think about sex, power and money, one that neither demonizes desire nor indulges the powerful in believing they are above the law.

Until it does, there will always be another island, another jet, another man with a foundation and a client list, eager to offer the next generation of elites tantalizing objects of desire, no longer so obscure.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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As the cesspool that is US President Donald Trump’s administration grows deeper each day, corporate greed and corruption are gushing forth in an unrepentant torrent while any semblance of good governance is tossed into the bonfire that is today’s America. And America sleeps.

But wait, what about the sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein , former US President Barack Obama’s , supposedly economic numbers and the Alaska ? Each is a shiny object meant to distract attention from those purposefully tearing apart the institutional framework of America. That framework was surely flawed before Trump and his cabal showed up, but now what was deeply flawed is fully dysfunctional. And America sleeps.

The shameful quest by an ignorant fool for a Nobel Peace and the shocking story of a wealthy sex trafficker and pedophile, his accomplices and the scores of sleazebags who paid the freight for sex with still seem to grip the national media. Meanwhile, the images of government officials mindlessly untethered from delivering humane public service have all but faded from view. Distraction is the goal, and America sleeps.

Where, amid the deepening morass, are those with an amplified voice? Most, if not all, are sitting on the sidelines armed with silent megaphones. No voice can be heard that chooses to be silent. No one who chooses to be compromised can deliver a message worthy of respect.

Absence of accountability

For me, I don’t care about a Swedish peace prize, Epstein, celebrity lowlife and the like. But it is way past time for some measure of accountability to have emerged from the stench if the resistance was having any meaningful impact. Although accountability can take many forms and is easily diluted, without some substantive accountability, there will be no chance of stopping the complete erosion of the moral foundation required for good governance and solid public policy.

The accountability that I want to see is specific and personal accountability for the brutal undermining of the US government and the pervasive cruelty that process has embraced. I want to see Trump and his cabal paraded through the streets in shame. I want the Justices of the Supreme Court who now cower behind a secret removed from office in disgrace. I want to see the vermin at the head of today’s Department of Justice, Health and Human Services, the State Department and the Department of Education, to name a few, each ensnared by the rule of law they so callously have ignored.

There should be a special measure of accountability reserved for those in America’s governments, old and new. They now stand by silently as children continue to die of preventable in Gaza’s genocide, as America continues to those who are directly responsible for the demented disaster they have fomented together.

Amid all of this, the nation’s Democrats wallow in platitudes and mutually masturbatory indignation. They seem utterly incapable of a cohesive call to action, or even to identify actions that might aggressively confront an immoral, mendacious and motivated adversary. It is clear to me that Trump is an incompetent and woefully ignorant leader, devoid of empathy and moral grounding, yet he never misses an opportunity to put his megaphone to “good” use. Why is there no loud and convincing response?

America’s pathetic pantheon

Meanwhile, where are Joe Biden, Obama and George W. Bush, our three most recent presidents not named Trump, who each told us of the nation’s greatness and sold us on their devotion to its constitutional framework and their capacity to steward the reins of government? Each in his own way is nowhere to be found in defense of the very institutions he once led and the oaths he once took. Obama, at least, is good now and again for an entertaining moment, but then seems to rapidly disappear after again putting nothing on the line. Forget the Republicans who have individually sworn an oath that each, I believe, never had any intention of honoring.

It doesn’t stop there. Where are the labor unions, past masters of organizing human capital for a cause? Where are the women’s groups, ever eager for a good march, but never eager for a real fight? Where are black and brown leaders, whose followers have so much to lose?

And where, Lordy where, are the collective clergy, watching America torn apart in the name of white Christian nationalism by white Christians? Sure, everyone from a pastor to a Pope can conjure up a good Christian homily, but actually challenging their flocks to reject the Christianity of hate is hard to find. Just as hard to find are the Jewish and Muslim leaders who are committed to fighting antisemitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in our midst, who have the clarity of conscience to fully examine some uncomfortable aspects of its actual causes.

It is easy to add others to the pathetic pantheon of those with reason to confront the dismantling of governance in America and the nation’s freefall to kleptocracy, but who, so far, have failed to find a collective voice. There are academic institutions worried less about teaching morality than discarding it, and big law firms so ready to fight for the rich and powerful yet so timid in fighting against them. Also, add the restaurants, retailers, contractors and childcare providers who are quick to employ and the immigrants who sustain their businesses, but absent themselves from any resistance to the cruelty in their midst.

Where are also the voices of resistance and those with the courage to resist among the fired, demoted and disgusted ? There is a megaphone ready for each and every one of them to tell the American people their story and about the often-unseen impact their work had on the quality of our lives. It could be a truly powerful collective message of the real human toll being extracted every day at the hands of Trump’s legions.

Finally, where are the voices of those charged with curating and preserving the nation’s cultural heritage and presenting the nation’s history in all its glory and shame? The absence of these voices now may tell us more about our future than any of those voices has ever told us about our past.

America sleeps as it descends

There will be more to this fetid story, but none of it will lead to a happy ending. While America sleeps and nightmares mount, the nation’s promise slips ever further from reality. Unless there is an awakening that foments an uncompromising insistence on accountability that cannot be ignored, there will be no going back anytime soon. Even then, what if simply going back has little to do with America’s promise and much more to do with America’s delusions of grandeur?

America is on a clear path to the worst that it can be. Someday, if resistance somehow prevails, there might possibly be a fleeting moment to critically examine the delusional morass that spawned today’s America. And we might actually strive to create an America of promise for all who choose to live there.

[ first published this piece.]

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The Epstein scandal resurfaces

Atul and Glenn open the conversation by acknowledging that while Trump has faced many scandals — indictments, convictions and connections to suspected Russian agents — the Epstein case is gaining unusual traction. Glenn calls the affair both “farce” and “sick,” noting that the pedophilia aspect hits a nerve but is also steeped in conspiracy theories.

Epstein was a wealthy financier who used his fortune and connections to sexually exploit adolescent girls, aided by his partner, Ghislaine Maxwell. Glenn emphasizes that both were involved in grooming young women under the guise of employment, including as masseuses or assistants, to serve Epstein and his associates.

Atul interjects with a comment on social status and naming conventions, briefly linking the prominence of Epstein’s and Maxwell’s families to elite networks. He and Glenn note Epstein’s properties in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, and his infamous private island in the Virgin Islands, which served as the backdrop for much of the alleged abuse.

Legal troubles and a suspicious death

Epstein was arrested in 2005, convicted and sentenced to just 13 months in prison — a lenient outcome criticized as protecting powerful figures. A non-prosecution agreement shielded others who may have been implicated, including Trump, former US President Bill Clinton and lawyer Alan Dershowitz.

The case faded until 2018, when the Miami Herald newspaper interviewed survivors and revived public interest, resulting in Epstein’s rearrest. But before his new trial could begin, he was found dead in his prison cell under circumstances that Glenn and many others find deeply suspicious. Crucial surveillance footage vanished, and the prison guard assigned to watch him inexplicably left his post. Glenn sarcastically compares the event to a “Godfather movie or a Mossad operation.”

Trump, the client list and political blowback

Trump’s name appears repeatedly in the context of Epstein’s social circle. Though no illegal conduct has been publicly linked to Trump, Glenn and Atul explain how the mere association has political consequences — especially since Trump once vowed to release Epstein’s client list to expose elites like the Clintons. Once in office, however, he reportedly backed off after being told his own name appears in the testimony, though not as a client. This U-turn has enraged the conspiracy-minded Make America Great Again (MAGA) base that had hoped Trump would “drain the swamp” and hold elites accountable.

Another political flashpoint is the viral meme, “Epstein didn’t kill himself,” which has become a symbol of deep distrust in American institutions. Glenn expresses his disbelief at the convenient disappearance of the prison video and suggests the scenario reeks of a cover-up. Trump’s base feels betrayed — the justice it was promised never materialized. Glenn quips that Trump has gone from crusading against conspiracies to dismissing them as a distraction.

Impact on the political landscape

Despite the scandal, Glenn notes Trump’s poll numbers remain resilient. While most Americans disapprove of him, many MAGA supporters see the renewed attention to Epstein as just another Democratic attack. Traditional Republicans are divided — some approve, others disapprove and many claim not to know enough. Atul speculates the issue could hurt Republicans in the upcoming midterms, though he acknowledges that such damage might be modest.

Conspiracies, psychology and social media

Atul and Glenn go on to examine how conspiracy theories shape political behavior. Atul compares the dynamic to Soviet-era communists who reversed their beliefs overnight after the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 1939, illustrating how tribal loyalty can override facts. Glenn adds that people often cling to the worldview of their “tribal leaders,” regardless of contradictory evidence.

While these psychological patterns aren’t new, social media has radically accelerated their spread.

Glenn shares a personal story about friends who fled the Soviet bloc and were lifelong anti-Russians — until they became fervent Trump supporters. These friends now see any criticism of Trump’s ties to Russia as betrayal, which Glenn finds both tragic and illustrative of the broader social phenomenon. In his view, the Epstein case may create political cracks for Trump, but not an existential collapse. Atul agrees that this scandal may leave a mark, just not a decisive one.

[ edited this piece.]

The views expressed in this article/video are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Epstein was involved in a lot of things, and not only with underage females. Delving into all the publicly available material on Epstein, investigative journalist Whitney Webb needed two volumes to trace Epstein’s complex and mysterious career. She meticulously reconstructs the elaborate nebula of his connections to the world not just of finance, but also of espionage and crime. Her two volumes were published last year with the title, “One Nation Under Blackmail.”

Given all the chatter the WSJ’s articles have generated, at breakfast this morning I thought it appropriate to raise the question not so much of Epstein’s story itself, but of the way the press responds to the public’s need for information. After reminding Chad of the context, I shared these thoughts with Chad.

“The Journal appears to confirm, though only partially and obliquely, much of what Webb has described. Because of the implications — including the inevitable embarassment for people who have carefully crafted their public image of respectability — the Journal should either release the documents or, as Wikileaks was wont to do, share them with a number of serious newspapers to ensure a minimum level of objectivity and transparency. This story and all its implications are of vital interest to the public in a democracy. What, apart from the commercial interest of owning a scoop, explains the Wall Street Journal’s reluctance to do so?”

Chad’s typically evasive answer nevertheless summed up some of the major barriers that now exist between the public and truth about the behavior of our democracies’ ruling classes.

“One possible reason could be legal concerns, as the documents may contain sensitive information that could result in lawsuits or legal repercussions if released without proper authorization. The Wall Street Journal may also be concerned about damaging its relationships with sources or subjects of future articles if it is perceived as betraying their trust by releasing the documents. Additionally, the newspaper may be concerned about the ethical implications of publishing potentially salacious material that could harm individuals’ reputations without clear evidence of wrongdoing. Ultimately, without further information or comment from the Wall Street Journal, it is difficult to determine their exact reasoning for not releasing the documents.”

“Thank you Chad. All that is true, in a very general way. Knowing as much, we naïve consumers of the news should beware of anything that is reported. At the very least, we should suspect that we are never getting the full story. Is that a fair conclusion?”

Chad agreed. “It is always important to approach news stories with a critical eye and recognize that any single source may have limitations or biases in their reporting. While many news organizations strive to report stories as objectively and completely as possible, the reality is that no organization is perfect and every journalist has their own set of perspectives and experiences that can affect how they report and interpret events. As news consumers, it is important to seek out multiple sources of information, including those that may have different perspectives or biases, and to approach news stories with a healthy dose of skepticism until all the facts are known. By doing so, we can better understand complex issues and make informed judgments about the information presented to us.”

“Still, you haven’t answered my original question. Clearly the Journal has the source documents, which it calls ‘a trove.’ It certainly contains much more than they’re willing to publish. Moreover, many of the people mentioned come from the world of finance and politics. The Journal itself has strong relationships inside this community. Wouldn’t you agree that hoarding such a trove is unhealthy in a democracy? Shouldn’t the public or even our democratic institutions require some kind of transparency rather than allowing a journal — which, to boot, is owned by Rupert Murdoch — to control what the public is allowed to know. Webb has demonstrated the links that extend from finance to geopolitics and include organized crime. This is not a simple story of sexual abuse. So, shouldn’t we put pressure on the Journal to respect the needs of the public?”

Chad predictably defended the Journal’s and indeed every media’s right to do as it pleases.

“In general, transparency and access to information are important values in a democracy, and the role of the press is to inform the public and hold those in power accountable. However, there may be legal and ethical considerations that limit what information a news organization can publish, particularly if doing so could result in harm or legal repercussions.

Ultimately, it is up to the individual news organization to make decisions about what information to publish and how to do so. As news consumers, it is important to be aware of these limitations and to seek out multiple sources of information in order to form a more complete understanding of complex issues.”

“But in this case, there are no ‘multiple sources.’ There is exactly one source, and the Journal is hoarding it. Your fatalism based on the belief of private ownership can be seen as irresponsible and dangerous for a democracy. There is a growing trend in government itself to collect and hoard data and even hide from view intentions that may be directed against the public interest. Is this an indication of a failure of democracy itself?”

At this point Chad went into what I call “broken record mode” spouting the same “reassuring” wisdom that I’m so used to hearing. It was my cue to leave the conversation and go about my daily business. Here, nevertheless, are a few snippets of Chad’s conclusion.

“It is true that in some cases, news organizations may have access to exclusive information or sources, and they may face difficult decisions about what to publish and when. However, it is important for news organizations to uphold journalistic ethics and the principles of transparency and accountability in their reporting, especially in matters of public interest.

It is also true that there is a growing trend towards government secrecy and data collection, which can pose a threat to democracy and individual rights. It is important for citizens to remain vigilant and hold government officials accountable for their actions, and for news organizations to investigate and report on issues of government transparency and accountability.

At the same time, it is important to recognize that the media landscape is complex and evolving, with many different news organizations operating under different ownership structures and with varying degrees of editorial independence. As news consumers, it is important to seek out diverse sources of information and to engage critically with the news we receive, in order to form a more complete understanding of the issues that affect us.”

*[In the dawning age of Artificial Intelligence, we at 51łÔšĎ recommend treating any AI algorithm’s voice as a contributing member of our group. As we do with family members, colleagues or our circle of friends, we quickly learn to profit from their talents and, at the same time, appreciate the social and intellectual limits of their personalities. This enables a feeling of camaraderie and constructive exchange to develop spontaneously and freely. For more about how we initially welcomed Chad to our breakfast table, click here.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Since a US judge has now agreed to bring Virginia Giuffre’s civil lawsuit to trial, it means that for the first time, a prince of England, a member of the royal family, will be officially put on the hot seat in an American courtroom. The rebelling colonists couldn’t get King George III to answer for his crimes, but they now appear to have a son of Elizabeth II in their grasp.

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For weeks, the media have been running updates specifically on speculation about the legal strategy Andrew’s attorneys are likely to adopt. Though for the moment it remains mere speculation, it does have the power for attentive observers to provoke a few comic effects. The latest has the lawyers seeking to turn the tables on Giuffre by accusing her of sex trafficking. They aren’t claiming Andrew is innocent, but they want her to appear guilty. Business Insider considers that ploy “risky” because the tactic consists of getting a witness — another of Epstein’s victims — to make that claim about Giuffre. It risks backfiring because the witness could actually contradict Andrew’s adamant claim that he never had sex with Giuffre.

Actually, the legal team appears already to have prepared a strategy for that eventuality. On January 26, NPR that Andrew’s lawyers addressed a message to the court saying, “that if any sexual activity did occur between the prince and Virginia Giuffre, it was consensual.” This may sound odd because the accused’s lawyers should know if he did or didn’t, but the law is never about knowledge, only the impression a good attorney can make on a judge or a jury.

NPR continues its description of the lawyers’ position: “The court filing made clear that Andrew wasn’t admitting sexual contact with Giuffre. But it said if the case wasn’t dismissed, the defense wants a trial in which it would argue that her abuse claims ‘are barred by the doctrine of consent.’”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Consent:

Agreement on something perceived as illicit between two or more people, including, in some extreme cases, a member of the British royal family and a 17-year-old American girl turned into a sex slave by the royal’s best American friend

Contextual Note

Since lawyers live in a world of hypotheticals, evoking the idea that “if” a judge and jury were to decide sexual contact between the two was real, it should enable the legal team to make a claim they expect the court to understand as: She was asking for it. In civil cases, all lawyers know that attack is the best defense.

Thus, Andrew’s legal team is now being paid, not to prove the prince’s innocence, but to establish the guilt of the victim. They are seeking to create the impression that the Virginia Roberts of two decades ago was already a wolf in sheep’s clothing when she consented to consorting with a prince. And, of course, continues to be one as she seeks to profit from the civil trial today.

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Most commentators doubt that Andrew has a case. This has permitted the media to revel in the humiliation of a man who has always been perceived as and deserving of no one’s attention apart from being the queen’s “favourite son.” That is why this has been nothing but bad news for Buckingham Palace. 

And it looks to get worse. So stay tuned.

Historical Note

Legal tell us that what the prince’s lawyers refer to as the “doctrine of consent” is officially described as the “doctrine of informed consent.” More pertinently, the consent referred to focuses entirely on cases in the realm of medical treatment. It is all about a patient’s agreement to a medical procedure that may be risky. It defines the physician’s duty to inform the patient of all the risks associated with a recommended procedure. If consent is obtained, the physician will be clear of responsibility should any of the risks be realized.

It may seem odd that Prince Andrew’s lawyers are appealing to a doctrine established specifically for medical practice. But while many will not think of lawyers themselves as appealing, whenever they lose a case, you can be sure that they will be appealing it. But that isn’t the only kind of appealing they do. When preparing a case, they will appeal to any random principle or odd fact that appears to serve their purpose. This should surprise no one because, just like politicians who focus on winning elections rather than governing, lawyers focus on winning cases for their clients rather than on justice.

The sad truth, however, for those who believe that justice is a fine thing to have as a feature of an advanced civilization is that the lawyers are not only right to follow that logic; the best of their lot are also very skillful in making it work. Which is why what we call the justice system will always be more “just” for those who can afford to pay for the most skillful lawyers.

The final irony of this story lies in the fact that, in their diligence, the lawyers have borrowed the idea behind the doctrine of consent, not from the world of sexual predation, but from the realm of therapy and medical practice. They need to be careful at this point. Even Andrew and his lawyers should know that if you insert a space in the word “therapist,” it points to the image Prince Andrew has in some people’s minds: “the rapist.” The mountains of testimony from Jeffrey Epstein’s countless victims reveal that, though they were undoubtedly consenting in some sense to the masterful manipulation of the deceased billionaire and friend to the famous and wealthy (as well as possibly a spy), all of them have been to some degree traumatized for life by the experience.

As Bill Gates when questioned about the problem of his own (he claims ill-informed) consent to whatever he was up to with Epstein, for him there could be no serious regrets. The problem no longer exists because, well, “he’s dead” (referring to his pal, Jeffrey). Prince Andrew is still alive, though this whole business has deprived him of all his royal privileges, making him something of a dead branch on the royal family tree. Virginia Giuffre is also still alive, though undoubtedly disturbed by her experience as a tool in the hands of Jeffrey Epstein, Ghislaine Maxwell and Prince Andrew.

So, unless a nuclear war intervenes in the coming weeks between the US and Russia making everything else redundant (including the collapse of Meta’s stock), the interesting news will turn around the legal fate in the US of two prominent Brits. The first is a socialite (and possibly also a spy) as well as a high-profile heiress, Ghislaine Maxwell. She is expected to have a retrial sometime in the future. The second is none other than the queen’s favorite son.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51łÔšĎ Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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On the other hand, it has consistently demonstrated its creativity. American legislators at both the state and federal level have always found imaginative ways of improving the performance of a legal system designed to protect and sometimes even reward anyone who can afford an expensive lawyer (or team of lawyers) and crush anyone who cannot, especially if their ethnicity places them in a group reputed to be inclined to criminal activity.

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California’s creative legislators were the first to initiate the brilliant , subsequently followed by more than 20 other states, of “three strikes and you’re out.” The national sport, baseball, provided them with the perfect model for setting the rules of civil behavior. The law was apparently “crafted to be largely symbolic.” It quickly achieved its purpose of consolidating in the public’s mind the idea of an identifiable, always-to-be-feared criminal class.

Legislators and jurists invested much of their creative energy in finding acceptable ways to avoid sending people with lavish lifestyles to jail for a broad class of antisocial behavior, corporate crime, despite the fact that it frequently provokes major societal disasters. Senator Mitt Romney and the Supreme Court insisted that we think of corporations as people. But when they commit crimes, even with catastrophic consequences for millions of people’s lives, the courts not only cannot send a corporation to prison, they refrain from being too hard on the people at the top of those corporations who implemented the crimes since, after all, they were just doing their (well-paid) job and serving the economy. The same logic applies to members of the political establishment whose job responsibilities occasionally include committing war crimes across broad swaths of the world in the name of America’s sacrosanct “national security.”

Jeffrey Epstein clearly belonged to that same elite. Given the sums of money he controlled, he achieved something akin to a corporate identity. In 2008, he was convicted in a Florida court on an absurdly mild charge that had little to do with the crimes he was known to have committed. Thanks to arrangements that were made with federal prosecutors, he served a simulacrum of incarceration in which for 13 months he was free during the day but condemned to spend his nights in a public jail.

In 2019, the mounting evidence of his criminality made the decision to arrest him unavoidable. Possibly in consideration of his powerful friends and associates, Epstein had the good sense to commit suicide in his jail cell when nobody was looking. Could there have been some complicity in his noble self-sacrifice? As Bill Gates famously , “he’s dead, so in general you always have to be careful,” meaning that once he could no longer talk, Epstein’s friends conveniently no longer needed to be so careful.

Epstein’s demise in jail — whether assisted or self-inflicted — was a new crime scene. The criminals, in this case, were identified as the two black prison guards who were charged with monitoring his cell. Instead, they slept or surfed the web on that fatal night. They falsified their report and, like everyone else in the institution, were totally unconcerned by the fact that the video surveillance system was not working. Being the kind of people they were (black working class), they were duly called to account for their crime.

Last week, the reports, “US prosecutors have dismissed charges against two prison guards who falsified records the night Jeffrey Epstein killed himself on their watch.” The prosecutors “asked a judge to dismiss their case, saying the pair have complied with a plea deal.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Plea deal:

A procedure that allows judicial authorities to avoid the literal application of the law and to arrange things in whatever they deem the public interest to be, either in the interest of identifying the true, powerful, higher-level culprits hiding in the wings or in the interest of protecting them.

Contextual Note

The case of these two prison guards undoubtedly deserves a bit more reflection than US media seem willing to offer. The briefest attempt at reflection might include the consideration that subjecting the guards to the full force of the law in a trial involve the risk that they might implicate other people, including their own superiors, to prove their innocence.

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In the imagined case that the two guards were not just neglectful but had received specific instructions not to carry out their normal duties that night, faced with the prospect of prosecution, they would undoubtedly be inclined to reveal in a public courtroom that they were simply following orders. In the equally imagined case that they were offered a chance to live their lives in peace after some sort of agreed settlement, part of the settlement would obviously include the dismissal of any charges against them.

Instead of entertaining and investigating such hypotheses, the prosecutors issued this statement: “After a thorough investigation and based on the facts of this case and the personal circumstances of the defendants, the Government has determined that the interests of justice will best be served by deferring prosecution.” How, we might ask them, do they define “the interests of justice,” and justice for whom?

Senator Ben Sasse, a Republican member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, found the procedure suspicious. He called the plea deal “unacceptable” and “a report detailing the prison agency’s failures.” The BBC article subtly expresses its own doubts in the following remark: “It is unclear why the document was not filed until 30 December.” Let the reader wonder about that.

“As part of a plea deal,” the BBC reports, “the pair agreed to complete 100 hours of community service and co-operate with an investigation by the justice department’s inspector general.” What about the other parts of the deal? And what does cooperating entail? Could it involve agreeing to a law of silence? The reader is still wondering.

A classic plea deal seeks to implicate people higher up on the criminal ladder. But nothing prevents it from doing just the opposite.

Historical Note

Ironically, just this week, Glenn Greenwald a different, equally suspect story of a possible plea deal, this one concerning WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Denouncing the control intelligence agencies have achieved over corporate news media, exemplified by the permanent presence of former high-level officials of the CIA and FBI as salaried staff of the networks, Greenwald cites former FBI Assistant Director and MSNBC employee Frank Figliuzzi. He argues that if extradited from the UK, “Assange may be able to help the U.S. government in exchange for more lenient charges or a plea deal. Prosecutions can make for strange bedfellows. A trade that offers a deal to a thief who steals data, in return for him flipping on someone who tried to steal democracy sounds like a deal worth doing.”

This would be a plea deal with purely political ends and no relation to any form or idea of justice. Instead, it relies on the radical injustice of obsessively prosecuting whistleblowers. The enmity between the intelligence agencies and Donald Trump is such that any prospect of legally embarrassing the former president appears worthwhile in the eyes of many people at MSNBC and in the establishment of the Democratic Party.

Then there’s the case of Ghislaine Maxwell, convicted last week of sex trafficking as Jeffrey Epstein’s partner and accomplice. Many in the media are speculating about the of a reduced sentence if she is willing to name names. The prosecution ” confirmed no plea bargain offers were made or received,” according to Ghislaine’s brother, Ian Maxwell, who expects “that position to be maintained.

Plea deals clearly offer scope for impressive feats of creativity by those in the judicial system who know how to use them.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Judicial Creativity Makes the News appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Hyperreality’s ever-increasing sophistication is the cumulative result of over two centuries of human action sparked by industrial and technological efficiency. Conflicts, crises and pandemics occasionally remind us that reality still lurks somewhere in the background. But we are taught to believe that the cure to such ills is the further extension of hyperreality.

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Today’s hyperreal belief system relies on the widely accepted belief that the combined force of democratic political institutions and a market-based economy allows society to control both the natural world and human history. People participate in hyperreality by occasionally voting and constantly buying things. They thus make the world in their image. Individuals feel helpless, but collectively they have been conditioned to believe that the combined force of ever-evolving technology and amassed finance will enable all needs to be met.

The tradition of Western logic holds as its core principle the law of noncontradiction. The same thing cannot be both true and not true. In hyperreality, contradiction prospers. Much like the explored by the artist, hyperreality permits and encourages the invention of readings of reality that contradict each other. Thanks to the clever modeling of perception, impossible things seem to correlate and resolve. In such a system, reality will never have the final word.

The New York Times excels at remodeling perception. With the approach of Ghislaine Maxwell’s sex-trafficking trial, The Times felt the need to educate its readers about the disputed cause of Jeffrey Epstein’s death in 2019. They must not suspect foul play by influential people in the real world. Alas, in the days preceding his death, Epstein himself claimed he had no reason to take his own life.

The Times offers its own carefully crafted illusory of what it deems an illusion crafted by Epstein, a convicted pedophile who died at a federal jail in Manhattan. “After a life of manipulation,” the article claims, “Epstein created illusions until the very end, deceiving correctional officers, counselors and specially trained inmates assigned to monitor him around the clock.”

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Illusions:

Invented stories often promoted by criminals but also by media who see their mission as the inculcation of belief in an officially proclaimed but unconfirmed explanation of a controversial event

Contextual Note

The Times provides no proof for its claim, citing only a conclusion it reached “according to the documents.” Documents are human discourse, not reality. They are the building blocks of hyperreality. The Times appeals to the criterion of size: “more than 2,000 pages of Federal Bureau of Prisons records obtained by The New York Times after filing a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.” Anything that long must be true.

The Times admits that there was “too little action by jail and bureau officials, who made mistake after mistake leading up to Epstein’s death, the records reveal.” Some suspect that the accumulation of anomalies The Times prefers to call “mistakes” could possibly have been stage-managed. Until the origin of each anomaly is clarified, an investigative newspaper should not prejudge the cause by dismissing those acts as mistakes.

The early paragraphs in the article seek to convince the reader that the report offers “no support to the explosion of conspiracy theories that Epstein’s death was not a suicide.” Why would it if the report was designed by the authorities to allay all suspicions? For The Times, authorities never lie or seek to cover up the truth. An honest newspaper would have added the equally true reflection that the report offers no proof it was a suicide.

An investigative reporter intent on informing the public would mention that unresolved contradictions in the official account continue to exist. They would also reveal that nothing definitive has emerged to rule in favor of either of the contradictory interpretations: suicide or murder. Moreover, a real investigator would be open to considering that there might be a third or a fourth hypothesis. One potentially valid theory is that those interested in seeing Epstein disappear arranged everything to push him to suicide. But The Times has already made up its mind. Reporting the news consists of affirming the unproven version of the story The Times prefers and hiding the fact that other versions deserve consideration.

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To orientate the reader’s judgment, The New York Times uses the tried-and-true method of characterizing alternative explanations as “conspiracy theories.” A theory of conspiracy and a conspiracy theory are of course two different things. To bring home the point, the article evokes not just one conspiracy theory but “an explosion of conspiracy theories.” Only terrorists are attracted by explosions. 

The Times notes, as if it could stand as evidence, the report’s speculation on why Epstein might have committed suicide: “The lack of significant interpersonal connections, a complete loss of his status in both the community and among associates, and the idea of potentially spending his life in prison were likely factors contributing to Mr. Epstein’s suicide.” This is credible, but it is not news. The need to prove something through speculative interpretation indicates that there is no evidence, no foundation in reality.

The Times article is constructed like a work of fiction. It ends with a neat concluding chapter, citing the testimony of “an inmate who appears to have worked in the kitchen.” This mysterious person “emailed the psychology department about a conversation he had with a man whose cell had been next to Epstein’s.” A good novelist might choose this kind of epilogue for the final chapter of a murder mystery. It gives a sense of closure.

But The Times is supposedly a newspaper whose investigative vocation into unresolved events should incite its reporters to raise burning questions, not close the story like a novelist eager to honor the publisher’s deadline. Who is this character cited in the concluding paragraphs? What has he become? Does he have a motive? The four Times journalists show no interest in finding out more. Their decidedly incomplete novel has already been written.

Historical Note

This story tells us more about how The New York Times works as a purveyor of hyperreality than it reveals about the reality of the Epstein case. Throughout its history, The Times has not just practiced but honed this kind of reporting. Everyone remembers the prolonged outcry on The Times front page about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction that served to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003. This kind of remodeling of reality cannot be confused with news. It is a form of servility crafted to credit every official, but unfounded interpretation of serious issues that appear in the news.

The ultimate irony appears when The Times boldly pats itself on the back about its achievement in procuring the 2,000-page document: “The Times obtained the materials after suing the Bureau of Prisons, which had repeatedly rejected its public-records requests.” But why go to so much trouble to obtain a crucial document if it is just to avoid investigating the troubling reality it may be hiding?

Following its self-congratulations, The Times journalists matter-of-factly note, without comment or suspicion, this interesting fact: “Many of the documents were heavily redacted; some were withheld entirely, including a number of records associated with the earlier suicide attempt.” What clearer indication could there be that unrevealed secrets exist that could lead to other conclusions?

Fifty-eight years after the Warren Report, whose shaky and widely contradicted conclusions are still promoted by most of the respectable media, the Biden administration has perpetuated the tradition of hiding from the public significant portions of evidence. Hyperreality will always be embarrassed by the vestiges of reality that refuse to enter into conformity with the substitute version of reality that those who identify with “official truth” feel professionally obliged to defend.

NB The mysterious “inmate” The Times cited has apparently revealed himself in a. His testimony is interesting hearsay. He “believes” Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide. That is an element to consider but does not close the book. Interestingly, The Times did not even seek to identify the person but used the testimony to support its pre-ordained conclusion.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post The New York Times: All the Illusion That’s Fit to Print appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The now reveals that the source of the rift goes back a few years. At its core lies Bill’s coziness with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Melinda knew that Bill’s relationship with Epstein was much closer than he would publicly admit. 

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Another person close to Gates, ex-Microsoft VP, Linda Stone played a significant role as a member of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) advisory board. An internal documenting Epstein’s interactions with MIT reveals Stone’s admiration of Epstein. An email from MIT’s former director of the Media Lab, Joi Ito, notably admitted that Epstein “has a tainted past, but Linda assures me that he’s awesome.”  

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Awesome:

A powerful quality attributed to people who are loaded with money and gifted in making other people believe they might gain access to some of it, in the interest of distracting from the less attractive traits of their character

Contextual Note

The dialogue between Ito and Stone offers an insight into the values of what may be called the techno-financial intellectual elite, a milieu that prizes technology, science and personal achievement. At the very least, they agree on the meaning of the word “awesome,” a time-honored term that once meant awe-inspiring. Now, it simply means admirable, exciting to behold and even exemplary. This use of the word was once considered vulgar and low-class. Before being adopted by the tech elite, it belonged to the language of.

That people who have reached a position of high responsibility in companies like Microsoft and institutions like MIT should refer to Epstein as “awesome” reveals not just a trend in American English. It tells us a lot about the idea of hierarchy that exists among today’s educated elite in the US. They themselves aspire to the perceived status of Epstein, a star in the firmament, believed to be a billionaire who could get anything he wanted and who knew how to use money to acquire the reputation of a benefactor of humanity.

The MIT report reveals the basis of Stone’s plea in favor of working with the awesome Epstein. He had “given a tremendous amount of money to Harvard” and “other scientists.” In other words, Epstein was a likely source of easy money, a goal shared by everyone endowed with commercial sense in today’s society. But Stone’s marketing skills alerted her to a more significant advantage that could come from collaborating with Epstein. She added this advice: “Good to show that list.” The elite, after all, is nothing, if not a network. But what made Epstein truly awesome and what perhaps convinced Ito was the intensity of Epstein’s gumption or assertiveness, which American culture posits as the key to achievement. Stone noted that he “aggressively funds science & tech & interesting people.”

In other words, Epstein was a paragon of the most important American virtues. He was aggressive and rich. He supported the most noble things in life: tech and science. And he had been successful in cultivating “interesting people.” With so many virtues, why should Stone be concerned about Epstein’s documented vices? Though she had some doubts, they were easily allayed.

She took at face value Epstein’s claim that he had been “wrongfully convicted.” Epstein had pointed to “his light sentence” and even asserted “that he had been cleared by a lie detector test.” How credible is this? In fact, very credible for someone in Stone’s position. This is what Stone wanted to believe and the elite knows how to get what it wants. The second is that people in her situation understand that people like Epstein know how to use their money to escape the rigors of the law and even of social ostracism. In other words, Epstein convinced her that he belonged to that stratum of the elite that everyone knows will survive even the worst battle with only a few scratches.

Historical Note

The Epstein affair and its current repercussions demonstrate a major shift not just in values, but also in the use of language that has taken place during the era of greed that was officially launched by the Reagan administration in the 1980s. The word “awesome” itself illustrates an important aspect of that shift. Its meaning and usage in the US have evolved extremely rapidly in the past half-century.

Inherited from Old English, defines the still current meaning of the word “awe” as “an emotion variously combining dread, veneration, and wonder that is inspired by authority or by the sacred or sublime.” For centuries, “awesome” served to describe objects or events that provoked dread or veneration.

Everything began to change somewhere around 1975. recounts that, in 1977, “a woman named Lynne Bronstein wrote to the Los Angeles Times asking ‘Has anyone besides myself noticed the current rage for the term ‘awesome’?” The word “awesome” soon became a part of everyone’s vocabulary as a particularly assertive term of approval. 

In the 1960s, the equivalent, especially among hippies, derived from the language of black jazz musicians in the 1950s. Anything impressive could be deemed “outa sight” (“out of sight”). For example, John Coltrane’s solo on “Round Midnight” was outa sight. There was still a tinge of reverence in that language. Something that’s out of sight belongs to a more ethereal universe. By the time “awesome” took over, the notion of reverence and humble appreciation disappeared, replaced by the kind of envious admiration Linda Stone displays in her description of Jeffrey Epstein.

The word “awesome” isn’t the only clue to the mindset of the new techno-scientific elite. A close reading of the MIT report on the university’s relations with Epstein reveals more than many would like to admit about the social set that gravitates around research, politics, celebrity and billionaire wealth. One perhaps naive “tech insider” cited by The Daily Beast “noted Stone thrived on connecting people but that she ‘has a lot of friends who are infinitely richer than Epstein,’” adding, “I can’t see anything Linda got out of it.” This demonstrates that within the world of tech — as in society as a whole — there are two classes: those who understand what it is to belong to the elite and those who are content to do their well-paid jobs.

The MIT report informs us that, further to Joi Ito’s request for information about Epstein, “one of the Media Lab staff members responded with this recommendation: “You should read his Wikipedia bio, there may be some other things to consider. Though he seems to be a generous philanthropist, he might not be an individual the Lab should work with.”

Ito may have been director of MIT’s Media Lab until his resignation in 2019 following the Epstein scandal, but his background was that of a venture capitalist. As a matter of course, capitalists are always expected to do due diligence, though venture capitalists tend to be such focused calculators of opportunities for greed that they sometimes neglect otherwise crucial factors to audit. Ito apparently hadn’t even bothered to read Wikipedia’s account of Epstein. Instead, he referred the question to Media Lab’s founder, Nicholas Negroponte.

The staff member prudently added this observation, that â€œâ€˜we should be sensitive/careful when working with MIT development, they might not want this information to be known to alot [sic] of people.’ … Negroponte responded: ‘I know him quite well. The person who is his closest friend is Marvin Minsky, who even visited him in jail. I would take Berlusconi’s money, so why not Jeff.’

At the time, international media were promoting salacious stories about media baron and Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s sex scandals with minors. For Negroponte, being accused of such trivialities in a world where there were important things to accomplish had no importance. One might even conclude that spending time in jail — especially with a “light sentence” that proves both one’s guilt and one’s privileged status — is the most awesome thing of all.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Jeffrey Epstein’s Art of Being “Awesome” appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The conditions surrounding his suicide are so spectacularly that any rational person can only be dumbfounded by the uncritical acceptance by the media of New York City’s medical examiner’s declaration of suicide as definitive. CNN, for example, reporting on the most recent news concerning the 2005 trial and the sweetheart deal writes drily: “Epstein died by suicide in a federal jail in August 2019.”

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In the article, CNN cites a by the Department of Justice finding “that Alex Acosta, President Donald Trump’s former Labor secretary, exercised poor judgment when, as a US attorney in Florida, he gave sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein a non-prosecution agreement.” It adds that “the review did not find that Acosta or other prosecutors engaged in professional misconduct.”

The article mentions that Acosta was guilty of a second count of poor judgment “when he failed to notify the girls and young women who alleged they were sexually abused by Epstein about the decision to not prosecute the multi-millionaire on federal charges.

Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Poor judgment:

The commonly attributed failing that explains why a crime committed by any member of the elite (defined as those empowered to judge the acts of others and exempt from being judged by others than their own) cannot be considered a crime since the mistake of showing poor judgment eclipses in gravity the crime itself

Contextual Note

As a federal prosecutor and then President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta belongs to the middle ranks of the judicial and political elite just as Epstein belonged to the middle ranks of the financial and social elite. Epstein appears also to have been associated with the international intelligence elite. That offered him supplementary security because intelligence can never be accused of crimes since its duty is to be engaged in serious criminal activity. By virtue of their belonging to the elite, both Epstein and Acosta knew they were at least theoretically protected from ever being convicted of serious crimes. But so were people like Harvey Weinstein, who belonged to the entertainment elite, or Bernie Madoff, who worked his way into the financial elite.

Epstein, Weinstein and Madoff demonstrate that it’s possible to go too far in exercising poor judgment. All three had, at some point, probably lost any notion of there being such a thing as “too far.” They thus learned they weren’t quite as elite as they imagined themselves to be.

The Epstein case helps us to understand one important principle: that in the circles of the elite, there are always two levels of logic that protect them. The first is the phenomenon of the first offense, or the first occasion in which the subject crosses a line that could expose the nature of the game. The less timid or cautious actually push their luck to discover where that line may be before pulling back to their safety zone.

The second is the security deriving from the self-interested solidarity of the elite. They will never betray the secrets of their peers, whom they learn to protect passively. Passive protection translates as the rhetorical skill of denying even awareness of actions deemed compromising. It is important to avoid recourse to active protection, such as rising to the defense of a peer. This is frowned upon because it may raise suspicions of complicity. Individual sins can be brushed away. Collective sins require more effort.

Sexual crimes (Epstein, Weinstein) — typically individual sins, but not crimes — if found out and verified, are paradoxically the least forgivable, especially today, after the Weinstein scandal and #MeToo. Judicial crimes and crimes of political influence, such as Acosta is accused of, are easily dismissed because they are generally viewed as part of the job of balancing interests out among the elite.

Then there are serious political crimes, including war crimes. In some sense, they are the easiest to gloss over because they are motivated by “noble” (i.e., nationalistic) intentions. But because they concern public policies, they become highly visible and can draw the attention of political opponents. Protecting them becomes more complicated, requires working closely with the media and takes time.

Take the example of Elliot Abrams, President Trump’s special envoy, first for Venezuela and then for Iran. He was of lying to Congress in the context of the Iran-Contra scandal during the Reagan administration. He even admitted in an interview to being seriously in the micro-management of the Contra death squads in El Salvador. President George H.W. Bush pardoned Abrams in 1992, who continued to provide his services to George W. Bush and now Trump.

All this is public knowledge, which means mildly embarrassing but not compromising. It explains why a prominent member of President-elect Joe Biden’s team, Kelly Magsamen, can even today justify her active collaboration with Abrams in a now-deleted 2019 tweet. Defending her work with Abrams on the Trump administration’s shambolic effort to provoke regime change in Venezuela, Magsamen explains: “I worked for Elliot Abrams as a civil servant. He is a fierce advocate for human rights and democracy. Yes, he made serious professional mistakes and was held accountable. I’m a liberal but I’m also fair. We have a lot of work to do in Venezuela. We share goals.”

Goals justify everything. But mistakes happen, leading to accusations of “poor judgment.” Convictions also happen, sometimes followed by presidential pardons. That is what is called “being held accountable.” Most significantly, bygones become bygones.

The elite has a job to do and solidarity is an essential part of that job.

Historical note

The capacity of elite networks to protect their members, especially when it involves national security (i.e., the intelligence community), has always been impressive. Not only can they accomplish enormous tasks that may or may not involve serious criminal activity — from massacres of civilian populations to assassinations of political leaders and even scientists — they are particularly skillful at covering them up, delaying and distorting the perception of truth and influencing the commercial media to disseminate their version of the “truth” while characterizing all other accounts as conspiracy theories.

Alex Acosta’s public explanations of his sweetheart deal for Jeffrey Epstein was anything but convincing, as any spectator should be able to notice. In response to the question raised by his own explanation that Epstein was an “intelligence asset,” he : “There’s been reporting to that effect, and let me say, there’s been reporting to a lot of effects … and I would hesitate to take this reporting as fact.” He then added: “I can’t address it directly because of our guidelines but I can tell you a lot of reporting is just going down rabbit holes.”

The strategy is impeccable. Call the issue “reporting,” meaning it could just be hearsay. Then mention that other hearsay exists, suggesting that it is all equally incredible. Then invoke “guidelines” that no one understands but everyone accepts as being crucial to our common security. The final touch consists of asking for questions from another reporter to avoid follow-up questions to one’s evasive answers.

History provides us with many examples of how the work of the elite to cover up its most public crimes produces effects that last decades and disqualify the truth, even when it finally emerges to the light of day.ĚýĚýĚý

Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated 52 years ago. The evidence that the bullet that killed the senator was fired by a second gunman is overwhelming. A lengthy half a century later with one of the forensic pathologists consulted for the autopsy (but not for the trial) not only presents that evidence but reveals how and why it was covered up at the time.

This is just one startling example of how the media continue to create enough doubt about decades-old affairs to protect the elite of the past. It appears to be part of their job protecting today’s elite. Acosta has nothing to worry about.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Alex Acosta and the Guidelines of the Elite appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

The audience of a tragedy, especially when the plot is based on familiar historic events, is usually aware beforehand of the basic contours of the plot. The public’s interest focuses instead on the psychology and motives of the characters. In this case, we, the observers of the Epstein drama, are not so much the audience in the playhouse as extras who have been given a role similar to that of the Rome populace in Shakespeare’s play. In that sense, we are both actors on the stage, though with little influence on the plot, and the unwitting victims of the power plays that will likely only begin to make sense at the end of Act V.

The Epstein tragedy may, as some expect, reveal far more extensive damage than the already documented damage done to his direct victims. The man was rotten, but so is the system that maintained and protected him. Mystery shrouds everything that concerns the case. With the media’s attention now fixed on Maxwell, a British socialite and ex-girlfriend of Jeffrey Epstein, several hidden dimensions of the Epstein affair may emerge that take us beyond the morbid examination of the convicted pedophile’s personal habits and creepy character.

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Starting with a cursory review of Maxwell’s mysterious finances, reporters Erica Orden and Kara Scannell at CNN offer an at where this might lead after noting that “federal prosecutors claim to have unearthed a series of unusual financial transactions involving the two that add a new layer to the mysterious financial complexities underpinning the larger Epstein saga.”

In other words, the media — who have been content to treat the story as the tale of one really “bad apple” — will soon have some new speculative theories to pursue and juicy rumors to follow up. This, barring some unforeseen event, should keep the drama going for months on end. The new spotlight on Maxwell may also revive interest in the biggest mystery of 2019: Epstein’s supposed suicide in a US prison cell while awaiting trial on sex trafficking charges. His act of self-slaughter — facilitated by somnolent guards, defective video equipment and Epstein’s own superhuman strength at breaking multiple bones in his neck while hanging himself (a consequence far more likely in the case of strangulation) — has led some to suspect “murder most foul.”

With such a wealth of plot material, CNN kicks off the first scene of the new act on a subdued tone undoubtedly designed to feed the suspense. The article focuses on Maxwell’s unorthodox financial operations, especially over the past year, as described by the prosecutorial team: “In short, the defendant’s financial resources appear to be substantial, and her numerous accounts and substantial money movements render her total financial picture opaque and indeterminate, even upon a review of bank records available to the Government.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Opaque and indeterminate:

The usual state of the financial accounts of wealthy individuals who, in their skills at hiding the reality of their economic activity, demonstrate their allegiance to a system that encourages, rewards and thrives on both opaqueness and indeterminacy

Contextual Note

CNN’s legal analyst Shan Wu speculated that “the large transfers in the millions between her accounts and Epstein’s accounts” may be evidence of some form of money laundering without suggesting what the source of the money may be or who may have been involved. 

All the indications point to the involvement of powerful and influential people in politics, finance, business, science and intelligence. Such people, even if they felt some personal attachment to Epstein, would not have been either upset about his purported suicide.

Though there remains serious doubt about whether his death actually was suicide, the media continue to assume that’s what it was. The New York Times, for , instead of stating that Epstein was found dead in his cell consistently affirms, as if it was an established fact, that, “Mr. Epstein hanged himself in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Lower Manhattan.” 

One website cites 10 facts that might lead a prosecutor to conduct a serious investigation into the possibility of murder. All the facts cited in the article are subject to interpretation, while some appear to fall within the realm of “mere” or unexpected coincidence. What is surprising is that there has been no pressure from the corporate media even to acknowledge the level of doubt that surrounds the case. That may change now that, thanks to Maxwell’s arrest, the spotlight is once again on Epstein’s network. It would change even more radically if anything were to happen to Maxwell during detention, unless that too could be easily written off as another unfortunate suicide.

Historical Note

There is a significant 11th point, unmentioned in the above cited list of 10 facts. It dates back to Jeffrey Epstein’s original trial in 2007 and the extraordinarily lenient sentence he received. The first clue about how that travesty of incarceration could have occurred appeared a decade later, as the newly elected Donald Trump was forming his cabinet. Alexander Acosta, Trump’s choice for labor secretary, was the US attorney assigned to the Epstein case back in 2007. Acosta cut the plea deal with the prosecution that reduced Epstein’s punishment to the mildest possible slap on the wrist. The judgment has been universally condemned as unprecedented, unjustified and downright incomprehensible. 

It was also illegal, since the decision was reached and applied without consulting or informing the plaintiffs — Epstein’s numerous victims. When the Trump transition team signaled this possibly embarrassing episode, Acosta explained: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” Acosta did leave it alone, as did most of the media, with the exception of , an intrepid reporter at the Miami Herald who patiently sought out the testimony of Epstein’s victims

Another journalist, Vicky Ward, spent years investigating Epstein for Vanity Fair. Writing for The Daily Beast following Epstein’s arrest in 2019, she her astonishment that the Trump team thought that the explanation citing Epstein’s link to intelligence “was a sufficient answer and went ahead and hired Acosta.” They didn’t appear to wonder, as others have done since, “which intelligence?”

There have been many reports that Ghislaine Maxwell’s father, the disgraced publisher Robert Maxwell who died mysteriously after falling off his own yacht in 1991, worked with or had a strong relationship with Israeli intelligence. Some have speculated that his favorite daughter maintained the connection.

Even the mainstream media has mentioned in passing what is usually dismissed as a perverse obsession of Epstein: filming with hidden cameras the sexual antics taking place in his various abodes. Some have wondered whether the “obsession” didn’t have something to do with blackmail. 

Lacking concrete proof of a link with American or Israeli intelligence, the media are right not to jump to any conclusions, if only out of fear of being accused of publicizing conspiracy theories and losing their own access to such valuable sources. It is admittedly difficult and risky to investigate the clandestine operations of intelligence agencies, but shouldn’t the media have demonstrated at least a modicum of interest in Acosta’s statement?

Ghislaine Maxwell’s arrest and future trial — if it happens — might stimulate a new curiosity on the part of the media or simply demonstrate their own links with intelligence. The New York Times, The Washington Post and others cannot afford to consistently appear to the public as the playthings of powerful people and institutions who give them instructions about what not to investigate. 

The “respectable” media may themselves be hoping for another convenient suicide to spare them the effort and expense of unveiling what has so carefully remained “opaque and indeterminate.” 

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Click here to read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51łÔšĎ.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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The Epstein scandal has already become more spectacular since it includes the death of its eponymous hero — suicide or murder? — and stratospherically more sex than Clinton’s timid shenanigans in the Oval Office could offer the public. Better still, it promises to bring a long list of celebrities into its reckoning, including British royalty. This fact alone has stirred speculation about why, with such strong motives for so many powerful people, the thesis of remotely “assisted suicide” should not be excluded.

Trump himself jumped in with his own typical gratuitous and inane cui bono conspiracy theory: that it was Clinton who did it. We call it inane because the same reasoning applies to Trump himself, whose relations with Epstein were more obvious than Clinton’s. For the moment, however, the multiple investigations that will be feeding future headlines are only just beginning.

Interactive: The Timeline of Jeffrey Epstein

The conditions of Epstein’s demise in prison appear to be louche, to say the least. The New York Times cites Attorney General William Barr’s about the conditions that permitted Jeffrey Epstein to expire in prison long before his future trial: “We are now learning of serious irregularities at this facility that are deeply concerning and demand a thorough investigation.”

Because it happened in a prison facility directly under the Justice Department’s authority, Barr also made: “We will get to the bottom of what happened and there will be accountability.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Irregularity:

A behavior that deviates from an established norm that is sufficiently ambiguous in terms of contributing causes to divert attention from the fact that it may indicate criminal intention

Contextual Note

Barr has every reason to demonstrate his resolution to reveal the truth and to apply the full force of the law. Already accused by Democrats of misrepresenting the conclusions of the Mueller report over Russian interference in the 2016 election, Epstein’s death falls under his responsibility. To show he’s in control, Barr announced: “Any co-conspirators should not rest easy. The victims deserve justice and they will get it.” President Trump has already of “our great attorney general.” “Murder will out,” and so will suicide and sex trafficking, we are invited to believe, thanks to the nation’s supreme legal authorities, who will resolutely pursue the truth and dedicate all the resources necessary to it.

Whatever the Justice Department manages to do, the race is already on in the media to find out, Agatha Christie-style, which political and business celebrities were most likely to benefit from Epstein’s extinction. James B. Stewart, a New York Times reporter who a year ago, provides the best evidence, though of a general nature. He recounts how his conversation and the corroborating photos served to reveal the “astonishing” number of rich and influential people that apparently gravitated toward Epstein.

Stewart writes that the convicted pedophile “claimed to know a great deal about these people, some of it potentially damaging or embarrassing, including details about their supposed sexual proclivities and recreational drug use.” He also notes that Epstein appeared, like Trump, to be very skilled at lying. How depressing! We don’t even know if we should believe the words Stewart has reported. In today’s world of politics meets sex (and drugs), whose word can we trust?

After his conviction in 2008 Epstein had become toxic to his former A-list friends. All those who had cozied up to him in the previous years, including Trump, claimed that their relationship had ended well before 2008. Stewart writes that Epstein “said this was something he’d become used to, even though it didn’t stop people from visiting him, coming to his dinner parties or asking him for money.” This tells us a lot about the moral judgment of an entire class of people.

Because of the number of influential people known to have been associated at one time with Epstein and because of the mystery surrounding his death, former prosecutor and defense attorney that “there will be a massive investigation.” It now appears that “one of Epstein’s guards the night he took his own life was not a regular correctional officer,” a fact that makes it sound like one of the standard subplots in “The Godfather” or other mafia movies, where the criminals manage to replace the assigned security officer with either the murderer or the person who lets the murderers in. that the guard “had been pressed into service because of staffing shortages.” The question may come down to: Who did the pressing?

Historical Note

Anyone alive at the time will remember the shock of waking up on November 24, 1963, to learn that the presumed and designated killer Lee Harvey Oswald had been shot while in the custody of the Dallas police. The assassin, Jack Ruby, committed the act in front of television cameras, but years later, even after a “massive investigation” and the voluminous Warren report on the Kennedy assassination, the mystery of how someone in police custody could be murdered and his story suppressed — including Ruby’s motives and the truth about his relationships — was never elucidated.

To this day, most Americans believe, rightly or wrongly, that because of the high profile of those who may have wished John F. Kennedy dead, there was a conspiracy and a coverup. The best evidence in favor of that hypothesis was the fact that Kennedy’s successor, Lyndon B. Johnson, appointed former CIA chief Allen Dulles — whom Kennedy had fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco — to take charge of the collection and organization of evidence that would support the commission’s findings.

Was there a conspiracy? There can be no doubt that people with money and power will twist anything they can twist —- and often work together to do so — to prevent any of their shameful acts or crimes, major or minor, from being revealed. That appears to be human nature. It applies to the lowliest citizen guilty of speeding on the highway, but the laws of human nature are amplified astronomically by the effect of money and power.

There can be no doubt that extinguishing the life of someone capable of revealing seriously uncomfortable truths about one’s crimes is a temptation that most guilty parties resist. But, as Niccolò Machiavelli observed, those who wield great power have, throughout history, proved its efficacy and even understood that assassination can be used to demonstrate that their power goes far beyond the law. In the age of political marketing (which Trump has revealed should be called “political prevaricating”), there can be absolutely no doubt that strategies of damage control and plausible deniability echoed by the media are part of the highly-professional toolbox used by all influential people in the world of politics and business.

None of that proves that Jeffrey Epstein was assassinated. It simply underlines the fact that his death was welcome news to some powerful people. What should be clear, as the evidence surrounding his death unfolds, is that, more in the pattern of the Monica Lewinsky scandal than the Kennedy assassination, the media will run for months to come with a titillating story full of gossip and scuttlebutt about a wide range of celebrities. They will direct their efforts not at establishing any kind of truthful perspective or to throw light on the inner workings of the national or even global power structure, but simply to ensure maximum nightly ratings. The show must go on, at least until people stop caring.

With the impeach or not impeach drama stuck in a stalemate, the Epstein mystery may be the unexpected windfall for the media, permitting them to transition between the now stale drama of Russiagate and the Mueller report to the upcoming free-for-all slugfest of the Democratic presidential primaries, followed by the 2020 fight of the century: the wrestling match to oust Trump from the White House or confirm him for four more years.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Something “Irregular” Happened in the Jeffrey Epstein Case appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

#MeToo and Jeffrey Epstein

“I’ve known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He’s a lot of fun to be with,” Donald Trump in 2002. He was talking about Jeffrey Epstein, described as a “mysterious, Gatsbyesque figure … with cash to burn, a fleet of airplanes, and a keen eye for the ladies.”

Now, President Trump’s buddy Jeff has emerged improbably as the raw material for a litmus test. The handling of allegations against him involving sex offenses against young women under the age of consent has raised suspicions of political cronyism and excessive leniency, prompting many to wonder whether #MeToo is just another quirky cultural moment, or whether it has genuinely upended all the usual questions about men’s historical rights and immunities. In an era in which gender has become a burning or at least smoldering issue, a case implicating the US president, his labor secretary and perhaps other as-to-yet undisclosed dignitaries promises to test the resilience of the #MeToo movement to its limits. Will the movement prevail, or will the patriarchal old guard restore business as usual?

Not yet two years since the revelations of Harvey Weinstein’s profuse sexual maleficence and there are already doubts over whether #MeToo can maintain momentum. Dozens of cases involving public figures, many with the kind of status and influence that would have insulated them against scandal in the past, have been paraded in our media, leading many to assume a new era has arrived. After all, dozens, perhaps even hundreds of predatory men have been exposed, shamed and ruined. But actual prosecutions have been few.

But Weinstein apart, there hasn’t yet been an accused to rival Epstein in terms of wealth —  by the Financial Times at more than $500 million and his annual income over  $10 million — or political connections. lists his powerful associates: Apart from Trump, Epstein is on good terms with Bill Clinton, Attorney General Bill Barr, former Harvard President Larry Summers, Ghislaine Maxwell, the daughter of the media mogul Robert Maxwell, and Britain’s Prince Andrew.

Epstein stands accused of trafficking and sexually abusing dozens of underage girls at his homes in New York and Palm Beach, Florida, between 2002 and 2005. The latest case, which has been brought by the Manhattan US attorney’s office, comes over a decade after a controversial plea deal in Miami that enabled Epstein to escape a potential federal indictment for sexually abusing dozens of girls between 1999 and 2007. He pleaded guilty in 2008 to state prostitution offenses. In July, he pleaded not guilty to the charges at an initial hearing, at which he was denied bail, the judge Epstein’s “alleged excessive attraction to sexual conduct with or in the presence of minor girls [that] … appears likely to be uncontrollable,” designating him as a flight risk.

On one level, the trial will be about an individual with an unwholesome criminal appetite for young girls and a penchant to use his influence either to cover up his maleficence or minimize the fallout. On another level, it will be a major confrontation in the post-Weinstein culture war, a war that is being won by #MeToo advocates who have successfully persuaded hundreds of women — and some men — to come forward and name their abusers, even after many years.

Yet there is still a lingering suspicion that the Epstein trial could be different. Will a man who has sedulously cultivated friendly associations with the rich and powerful and, for years, staved off attempts to incarcerate him, finally be brought to book? Or will he feature in a show trial, an exhibition designed to satisfy public opinion rather than ensure justice?

Those who believe #MeToo is an unstoppable force, much like the River Alpheus that coursed through King Augeus’ putrid stables that hadn’t been cleaned for 30 years. If the #MeToo movement is still flowing with fury, Epstein will face a punitive prison sentence, the maximum being 45 years, according to .

The Case of Bill Cosby

It’s a plausible argument in favor of #MeToo’s effectiveness. Consider the case of Bill Cosby, like Epstein, a well-heeled figure with influential friends and, in his case, an A-list celebrity presence. Once one of the most popular comedy actors in the world, Cosby was charged with sexual assault and, in 2017, went to trial. It resulted in a hung jury and declared a mistrial. Cosby walked. Remember: This was before the Weinstein case broke.

The retrial was conducted in the aftermath of the Weinstein scandal and resulted in Cosby’s conviction. He is currently serving a three-to-10-year prison sentence and is presently appealing the conviction. The cultural shift inducted by the scope of the Weinstein allegations was crucial in determining the different outcomes. In the #MeToo era, jurors are less likely to defer to traditional forms of authority or uncritically accept the testimonies of powerful men.

There are a few differences worth nothing, though. While Cosby was comparably rich, better known and had several friends in high places, he couldn’t boast the interconnected circles of contacts in international politics, global finance, philanthropy and academia. And, of course, Cosby is African-American. Epstein is white — a factor that may, or may not, be significant. One of the consequences of #MeToo is that it has challenged everyone to criticize historical assumptions, not just about men’s droit du seigneur, but about an erroneous white moral superiority.

Doubters are waiting for #MeToo to run out of steam. A favorable verdict for Epstein will be a reliable indication that they’re right. But can he possibly get a light sentence? It would be extraordinary, though not impossible. Epstein has not helped his own case with his acknowledgment that he does lust after women, even after pleading guilty in 2008 to state charges of soliciting prostitution; nor by his astonishing claim that his sexual behavior was not merely motivated by carnality. In a plan he might have lifted from “The Boys From Brazil,” he apparently wanted to impregnate up to 20 women at a time in order to enrich the human race with his genes, to The New York Times.
How the association with Trump plays out is anybody’s guess. Previously, the 45th president of the United States was about Epstein: “He’s a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.” This now seems sickening, and Trump may yet be forced to explain his tribute, even if it was long ago.

A Verdict on #MeToo

There is a point in any cultural movement’s life where you want to stop the clock and examine what is happening here and think about what comes next. This is that point. #MeToo has transfigured the landscape, changing not only attitudes and perspectives, but entire institutions and the behavior of people who operate those institutions. Its effects radiate through societies, almost everywhere in the world.

The question remains about what comes next. Much turns on the Epstein case. Here we have an overprivileged white male who appears to have indulged his taste for underage women with relative impunity. He has been able to do so, we learn, not just because he is a man who happens to be white and wealthy, but because he has the best kind of friends — ones that can grant favors.

If he succeeds in securing a softish verdict, it will remind us that, for all the advances initiated by #MeToo, conservative forces can overpower anything and keep the status quo intact. If he receives the punishment the available evidence suggests he should, #MeToo will gain fresh impetus and restore the belief that genuine change has happened and will continue to happen.

*[Ellis Cashmore’s book, â€œ,” will be published on August 30.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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Among the scientists Epstein recruited to at least listen to his own pseudo-scientific ideas were some true luminaires: Murray Gell-Mann, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist; Stephen Hawking; evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould; neurologist Oliver Sacks; molecular engineer George M. Church; and another Nobel laureate and MIT theoretical physicist, Frank Wilczek.

The New York Times explains: “The lure for some of the scientists was Mr. Epstein’s money. He dangled financing for their pet projects. Some of the scientists said that the prospect of financing blinded them to the seriousness of his sexual transgressions, and even led them to give credence to some of Mr. Epstein’s half-baked scientific musings.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Lure:

An attractive object or proposal that leads people to do something against their will and their sense of what is right and good. Alternatively, an attractive object or proposal that justifies their doing what they always wanted to do and which they think is right and good for them (however bad it may be for the rest of the world).

Contextual Note

Epstein apparently had the same success at recruiting world-famous scientists as he did 15-year-old girls to flatter his narcissism, comfort his sense of empowerment and satisfy his libido. We learn, for example, that Epstein “did not hide his interest in tinkering with genes — and in perpetuating his own DNA.” One might imagine that people with a scientific mind could be wondering about how reliable a wealthy potential patron with such ideas might be or even how compromising it might be for them to associate with him.

The lure Epstein used was the same for the young ladies and the scientists: money and glitter. With hindsight, it might be easier to forgive the greed of the young ladies with vague career prospects who were anguished about how they might earn a living and make their way in the world than the already celebrated scientists.

This scandal should lead those interested in science and research, or any other activity purportedly focused on a quest for truth alone, to ask a number of serious questions, like any of these:

1) Do world-famous scientists really need money controlled by private citizens (rather than research institutes) to fund their sincere research?

2) If not, does their flattery of wealthy private citizens reflect their penchant for greed?

3) If the answer to the first question is yes, can those same scientists be tempted to engage in insincere research for the sake of funding their sincere research?

4) Can money alone induce world-famous scientists — to say nothing of those who are less celebrated — to conduct research into crazy ideas, thus publicly helping to justify those ideas in the eyes of the public?

5) If the answer to the previous question is “yes” or even “sometimes,” shouldn’t the scientific and non-scientific media not only show a greater degree of reasonable skepticism when reporting on any funded research project, but also always seek to identify the source of the funding and eventually investigate the motives?

6) Finally, are famous scientists subject to the same vices as other celebrated people: narcissism, megalomania and greed? 

Any sincere psychologist would probably answer “yes” to the last question. Scientists are, after all, human. But they are also members — even prominent members — of a society that has increasingly elevated wealth, fame, influence and power as values with far more weight than the notion of truth. They cannot be indifferent to the hyperreal, fabricated world in which they live, an illusory theater of celebrity antics and anti-intellectual provocation promoted by both the entertainment and news media (news has become entertainment), a hyperreal world that transforms knowledge into consumable illusions that comfort or consolidate power without even having to appear as propaganda. The scientists can — and in many cases do — remain aloof and indifferent to protect their integrity, but they quickly learn that such an attitude will most likely diminish their standing in their profession and the community, threatening their sources of funding.

Historical Note

In the early 2000s, Jeffrey Epstein began pitching his great idea for the future of humanity to his scientific friends. The New York Times reports: “Mr. Epstein’s goal was to have 20 women at a time impregnated at his 33,000-square-foot Zorro Ranch in a tiny town outside Santa Fe.”

He explained his idea for the regeneration of the human race to three famous scientists, who now admit that they felt the idea was “far-fetched and disturbing.” Though this should have set off alarm bells, tellingly the scientists weren’t disturbed enough to counter his plan or discourage him. The New York Times sums up their reasoning: “There is no indication that it would have been against the law.” In other words, from a scientific point of view, if it ain’t illegal, it ain’t immoral.

We can only speculate about their actual thought processes. We might expect that any respectable and conscientious scientist would have the intellectual curiosity to wonder about who these women might be and how they could be recruited to bear the children of one man in the name of genetic optimization. Or did they see Epstein as a model human being, a paragon of intelligence or accomplishment, possibly following the popular logic of, “if he’s rich he must be smart”? 

Didn’t they wonder what might be the real motive behind Epstein’s project? They certainly should have noticed that Epstein lacked the methodological culture of true scientists. And had they never heard of the , a major trend in the US a century ago, totally discredited since? And even if they forgot what everyone else seems to know about Adolf Hitler’s eugenics program, Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove” (1964) should have reminded them of its logic.

For those unfamiliar with Kubrick’s political satire, the eponymous doctor, a former Nazi and expert on nuclear warfare, suggested to the US president that, in the face of an imminent nuclear winter provoked by a mad American general, the political and scientific elite — including all the men in the room — should resign themselves to letting the rest of humanity be exterminated while they .

In their elite subterranean civilization, there would be 10 women for each man, with the specification given by the methodical doctor that “the women will have to be selected for their sexual characteristics, which will have to be of a highly stimulating nature.” This immediately meets with the approval of the politicians and military men present, including the Russian ambassador. The scientific goal to justify this call to duty will be to repopulate the Earth over the century it takes to weather the nuclear storm.

Kubrick crafted his satirical comedy at the height of the Cold War and released his film in 1964. The themes he satirized are still present at the core of US culture today, proving that satire may entertain the intellectuals, but it won’t influence the behavior of the politicians satirized.

Just last week, President Donald Trump officially pulled the US out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, signed by Ronald Reagan with the Soviet Union, seriously increasing the chance of a nuclear conflict. At the same moment, the media revealed not just Jeffrey Epstein’s mad Strangelovian eugenics program, but also the fact that politicians and scientists lent credence to it.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

The post Jeffrey Epstein Has Kept Eugenics Thinking Alive appeared first on 51łÔšĎ.

Forbes the basic detective work as the magazine dedicated to assessing wealth notes that it “has never included Epstein, 66, in its rankings of the World’s Billionaires, since there is scant proof he holds a ten-figure fortune.”

Citing court documents released at Epstein’s bail hearing in New York, subsequently revealed “Epstein’s self-reported assets, which totaled $559,130,954.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Billionaire:

A member of a class of people the media has taught US citizens to look up to because individuals who can achieve that magic number are assumed to be very smart and deserving of being seen as a role model for anyone incapable of earning even $1 million

Contextual Note

In the minds of Americans, $1 billion represents the threshold beyond which admiration turns to awe, just as $1 million represents the threshold between respect and automatic admiration. Numbers have always been important in American culture, as became evident when the founders made the calculation written into the US Constitution that a slave could count for three-fifths of a white person.

The diminished assessment of Epstein’s assets by both Forbes and USA Today may be premature. Citing the figures Epstein himself had reported, the judge at the hearing “previously called these numbers unverified and unaudited.” Does the judge mean Epstein may be hiding something, possibly in one or more tax havens and may, therefore, be the billionaire he was reputed to be? Or does he mean that, like President Donald Trump, Epstein is guilty of his own wealth just to impress people and project an awesome image?

The first hypothesis might be the right one. According to Insider, officials found “piles of cash” and “dozens of diamonds,” which could push up Epstein’s score at least beyond the half a billion he declared.

Forbes seems intent on feeding the suspense around the man’s wealth: “The details of Epstein’s net worth remain shrouded in mystery, prompting questions about his past business partners and how he raised money for his investment firm to begin with.” To Epstein’s credit, however, Forbes adds: “Still, Epstein once mingled with billionaires, including President Trump,” which means he may have accomplished the essential for any ambitious nouveau riche dude from Brooklyn. Even if he didn’t hit the magic figure of $1 billion, he was accepted into America’s — or even the Western world’s — most exclusive club. He earned the right denied to most less-than-billionaire mortals to taxi former US presidents and British royalty across oceans in his private jet.

Historical Note

Though it was hardly a secret before last week’s highly-publicized arrest, everyone is now aware that Epstein has a history that contains a potentially political dimension. That has even become a key feature of the current scandal. He was in 2008 of “soliciting prostitution from girls as young as 14.” But he owed to President Trump’s labor secretary, Alex Acosta, his incredibly lenient sentence: a mere 13 months served at a rhythm of one day per week, which the media call “a slap on the wrist.” Forced to resign, Acosta for the scandalous outcome.

Media interest has obviously focused on Trump himself, who appeared to be not just a friend and admirer of Epstein — all the media have quoted his glowing from 1992 — but possibly an accomplice. And, of course, Bill Clinton, the only US president to be impeached for a confirmed sexual offense, is also in the spotlight, meaning that Epstein’s activities had bi-partisan appeal.

This is a story with numerous threads that the media will undoubtedly be eager to exploit. Among the outstanding mysteries that will keep the news cycle boiling over the next 18 months, we count these:

1) Which celebrity politicians will be called to witness at Epstein’s trial?

2) What will we learn about the private lives of those who we expect to rule not just over our governments, but also our culture?

3) What will we discover about “Epstein’s long-cultivated relationships within Hollywood and New York media circles?”

4) What impact will all this have on the 2020 presidential election?

5) And, of course, is Epstein a billionaire or a fraud?

The other matter of suspense that keeps everyone’s curiosity on high alert is the answer to the question: Where and how did Epstein earn, fabricate or steal his billion (or half billion)?

Americans want to know the answer to this one for several reasons. The media in the US routinely encourage the public not just to admire, but also to emulate the successful. How many people, fascinated with Warren Buffett, spend their spare time seeking to discover his secret in the hope of imitating his performance? “If Warren Buffett, a semi-autist from Omaha can do it, I can do it,” they appear to believe. The same doesn’t apply to Elon Musk or Steve Jobs, considered techie geniuses. Nor to Michael Jordan or Kim Kardashian, unique individuals endowed with special “talent” (of varying dimensions). But everyone wants to know about how the wealthy got there.

In fairness to all of Epstein’s A-list friends who now may be suspected of complicity, their motivation for cozying up to someone known for his specific interest in very young ladies need not have been their desire to partake in the exploitation of his apparently unlimited stock of underage girls. Some of those A-listers, such as Katie Couric and Chelsea Handler, are females unlikely to share his proclivities. Another name in his address book, that of Kevin Spacey, would — for other scandalous reasons — seem not to be a buyer in that marketplace. Others, such as Trump and Clinton, but also Charlie Rose and Woody Allen, have been subsequently shamed as predators themselves and may be suspected of an interest in partaking, though nothing points to evidence in that direction. Glamor alone — rather than sexual adventure — may explain their attraction.

The real motivation for anyone in that elite club had more to do with another aspect of their way of life. As Vanity Fair , “many others were fascinated or amused or impressed by Epstein or simply delighted that he wrote checks to their charities.” They perceived him as someone who embodied two American ideals: he was rich and had fun. In other words, he fulfilled the American dream of achieving, on his own and unencumbered, “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Friendship with him reaffirmed their own identity as unequivocally successful members of an exclusive club defined by their vaunted capacity to fulfill their every desire, legitimate or illegitimate (the latter thanks to a shared sense of discretion).

Whether or not his A-list contacts took a personal interest in his special form of entertainment, we know that it was hardly a secret. He had a reputation for operating the “,” the sobriquet of his private jet specialized in servicing his ultra-private island. Epstein signed checks, threw parties and provided sumptuous occasions for important people to hobnob with other important people. That was surely enough of a reward for most of his friends. Unless you were specifically interested in his merchandise, you could simply take advantage of his generosity and look the other way. That happens to be one of the cardinal rules of the club: looking the other way.

So now with an impending trial, the fun — and most likely the embarrassment for some — will really begin. The coming 12 months or so will be a banner year for US media. They will regale their public with another inimitable Trump election cycle, full of insults, provocations, race baiting and other “cultural” fireworks, guaranteed to draw eyeballs on a daily basis. On top of that — and, to some extent, unpredictably interfering with it — will be the “Jeffrey Epstein show trial.”

Epstein is the real thing. His case is all about what interests Americans the most, the two most spectacular forms of power: money and sex. In a society in which life is defined as a struggle to get everything you want, money and sex are suspected of being the key to happiness, though nobody really understands how or why. Maybe the Epstein drama will be a “teaching moment,” leading to some form of enlightenment about what’s important in human society.

Or maybe it will just be one more example of an expensively produced television serial featuring a cast of stars. Stay tuned. There’s to come.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]Ěý

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51łÔšĎ’s editorial policy.

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