We've Got the Epstein Story All Wrong

In the midst of our national Epstein-mania are we missing what's really important?

Despite the fact that we seem to have entered a 24/7 Jeffrey Epstein news cycle, it is striking to me how misleading much of the coverage of the pedophile and his network of vile pals has been.

Because in the end, despite the very natural focus on Epstein’s relationship with Donald Trump, the story is not at its core about Trump. Trump is clearly petrified of further Epstein revelations and has spent massive amounts of our tax dollars to comb through the records of the Epstein case. Most recently, he pulled a classic Trump and seemingly reversed his opposition to sharing the files by indicating in a Truth Social post that the House should vote for their release.

What he did not mention, of course, was that he could release the files in an instant. Indeed, they have been subpoenaed and he and his cronies have thus far blocked their release. And they continue to do so and it is not clear that they won’t even after the House votes to release them.

Perhaps his fear is due to revelations that have yet to be made about him, his interactions with Epstein, crimes he may have committed or some other subject, like Epstein’s relationship with Trump’s wife or close friends. Perhaps he is afraid that the longer the case remains front and center in the news cycle, the more likely it is that has base of his support within MAGA will erode. There is also plenty of evidence of that happening.

But whatever remains to be revealed, one thing is clear: It is unlikely to change our view of Trump. Because we already have massive amounts of information tying him to Epstein and other instances of serial sex abuse. We know Trump is as corrupt and repugnant as any figure in U.S. public life. The vast majority of likely additional headlines that might emerge seem likely only to confirm the perceptions of Trump that are already held by those who are disgusted by him as well as those who will defend him to the bitter end.

Whatever the consequences of further Trump-Epstein news, that angle of this story remains less important in human terms than the damage that has been done to the hundreds or perhaps more than 1,000 victims of Epstein’s sex trafficking. They are the original victims of this story and they have been shunted aside not only by a legal system that ignored them but also by media elites who were chasing the celebrity scandal side of this story while underplaying the toll that the behavior of Epstein and Trump was taking on women who had already been subjected to abuse, mistreatment and threats.

Surely the fate of the victims should be more important to us than the fate of their victimizers.

Having said that, I would argue that the Epstein case may have historic and social consequences that are also extraordinarily consequential and indeed, may in the long run prove to be of more lasting significance than other elements of the story.

That is because the case both represents and has come to symbolize perhaps the defining conflict of our era—one with profound political, economic, and geopolitical consequences. The Epstein case is an example of the degree to which the very rich have been able to carve out roles that while occurring within our society are not of our society. They live above us, exploiting us as they require or desire to but not subject to our laws or moral codes.

Hadden Syndrome and the Culture of Impunity

I’m reminded of the character in the movie “Contact,” S.R. Hadden, played by John Hurt, who spends most of his life on his private plane, circling the planet but seldom landing. That is the lives of the billionaires and other super-empowered people who have systematically accumulated power and wealth while shaping laws and social codes for us that do not apply to them.

Not only do they fuel inequality and many of the gravest divisions within our communities, they exist in a bubble or on a separate plane (figuratively or literally). There is a culture of impunity. Criminal consequences and social norms are for the little people. They do as they see fit, believing they deserve such special treatment because their bank accounts and hives of employees who serve them and the media coverage they control all say that they do.

The Epstein case is clearly emblematic of all this. But it is only part of the story. The sweetheart deal that Epstein struck with a prosecutor (who later won a top job in the cabinet of Epstein pal Donald Trump) is precisely like the corrupt deals that Trump’s children and the children of his friends reap from the government that Trump now controls. In their world, whatever adds to your power can be defended by batteries of lawyers and endless resources, and so crimes or behavior of any sort can be excused, defended and negative consequences can more often than not be avoided.

In this respect, the Epstein case resonates with and should be seen as yet another item in the growing list of outrages associated with the excesses of the oligarchs who have hijacked and perverted our democracy: Elon’s trillion dollar contract at Tesla, the way Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg and Ellison and their friends have gobbled up media institutions and are using them to twist the truth and public perceptions to serve their greed-centric agendas, the brazenness of the corruption of Trump and his cronies, the indefensible theft at the center of MAGA’s big hideous bill that literally and in manifold ways steals from the vast majority of us in order to give more and more and more to those who already have too much, and the interplay of oligarchies worldwide who excuse each other from some crimes while abetting others each other may commit.

Inequality has exploded in our society. CEOs get geometrically richer while the minimum wage does not rise. The percentage of our wealth controlled by a tiny fraction of people rises while that for which the rest of us must struggle shrinks. A handful of families and kleptocrats control more wealth than the majority of humans on this earth. And as a consequence, they set the rules by which the rest of us live…and where it suits them, they violate those rules if only to prove to us that they are different.

Wealth and power concentrated in the hands of the few has always been a problem. Indeed, virtually every social contract ever constructed was a deal by which those with the power to control a nation granted to everyone else just enough wealth or freedom for them to be placated, for them not to upset the status quo. We are placated with a trickle of income, a smidgen of hope, perhaps the philosophical salves offered up by the priests or authors who work to promote systems of belief that in the end serve the interests of their sponsors.

And there is stability until, typically, the super empowered over-reach and another group of elites who aspire to the top roles stir up the masses and harness their anger to produce upset…and a new social contract that disproportionately serves the few and gives just enough to all the rest of us.

It is the circle of life, socio-political division.

The question is, are the excesses of this particular Gilded Age, the Age of Trump and Epstein and Musk and Bezos and Zuckerberg and Thiel and Andreesen nearing the point at which we say, “Too much! No more!” It has happened periodically in our history. The American Revolution was one such example. The Civil War was another. (Look at the economic roots of both conflicts and who in society was most served by them.) In the wake of the Gilded Age of the late 19th Century new reforms came. You’ve heard of the reform movement led by Robert LaFollette or trust-busting of Theodore Roosevelt or the demands for greater economic justice of Eugene V. Debs. You may even have heard of the warnings of what too much concentrated wealth would do to our democracy that came from our founders or Justice Brandeis or FDR. But I would urge you look deeper. These questions have haunted us. Just to choose one example, President Rutherford B. Hayes warned of the wealth he saw being concentrated in the hands of the barons of early industrial era capitalism in the 1870s and 80s. And like so many others he saw it as a threat to both democracy and stability in the U.S.

Interestingly, in his later years, Hayes also said that to avoid the worst such consequences of too much concentrated wealth and power that we ought to consider…wait for it…socialism. It was an idea that was gaining tractions across the Western World as industrialization produced greater and greater returns for the people who, as one philosopher had recently warned, controlled both capital and the means of production.

It is striking because what Hayes saw and felt, helped produce a reform movement in the U.S. around the turn of the century. And now very similar words are being heard in very similar times (although the excesses of our oligarchs are even more excessive excesses).

Which is heartening. Because sometimes the abuses of aristocrats or kings or oligarchs or robber barons don’t produce revolution and chaos. Sometimes strong political systems bend—and adapt—rather than breaking.

The question for us in this moment is whether we at a breaking point or a point at which bend and rebound to a healthier system and set of priorities within our nation (and among the nations with which we work who emulate or influence us).

It is striking that both New York and Seattle have elected mayors who are unafraid to use the word socialism—one city the home of America’s financial elite, the other a home to a cluster of our tech elites. While their rise frightens some (you can guess who), it can also be seen as an encouraging development, one that suggests we could be heading not for the civil war some have predicted but instead for another great era of (long overdue) American reform.

Were either to happen, however, one thing is certain. The Epstein case and the entanglement in it of a president who also personally represents and has advanced many of the most egregious aspects of our age, will play a role in what happens next and will forever be remembered as a sign of what happens when capitalism becomes not an economic system but a warped theology in which the appetites of the greediest drive us to dysfunction and great suffering.