Pulling the Threads

Will Epstein be the Unraveling?

Note: This is the essay I’ve been writing for the past three days. I’ve decided to publish it. If this topic is disturbing to you and you’d prefer not to read further, please know that I understand and in no way want to cause anyone undue stress. I’m sharing this because I think it is crucial we speak up not just about this week’s news, but the bigger picture reality of human trafficking and the sexual abuse of children globally. That is the only way it will ever end.

Unraveling Silk, 1915 Frederick Carl Frieseke PUBLIC DOMAIN WIKIMEDIA COMMONS

Hello, Friend,

Our current Predator in Chief has been convicted of sexual assault and accused by dozens of women of similar acts. He was friends with Jeffrey Epstein for years. They were accused together of sexually assaulting and abusing a 13 year old girl. She brought and dropped her case three times claiming she and her family were threatened into silence. If you’ve never read her testimony, I caution you it is deeply disturbing.

It is estimated that Jeffrey Epstein sexually abused over 1000 young women and children (as young as 11 years old.) Even if no one else participated directly in that abuse, by turning a blind eye to what they knew was happening they are complicit. Aiding and abetting a crime by concealing it makes you an accomplice. Just so we’re clear on that front.

These young women and children and their trauma are getting lost in the salaciousness of the narrative. I am using the world children to emphasize the pedophilic aspects that are core to the horror of this story. We talk big talk about wanting to keep children safe, but the truth is we don’t walk our talk. To me, that is the core reason why this story exists and these kinds of stories continue to exist as they have for centuries. These children’s stories are treated as after thoughts while we focus on the files and the lists and the videos and the photographs of the men. Media focus is almost always on the perpetrators and rarely on the victims. If we care about children, why is no one talking about the children shackled and kidnapped by ICE last week? What about the fact that children can be forced into marriage with no agency to escape in 38 of our 50 states? What about the draconian abortion laws that do not make exception for incest and rape regardless of the age of the victim? Where is our concern for these things?

Do you think Epstein’s best friend Donald, seen ogling women with him on video and hanging out with him in photos, who joked about Jeffrey being a ‘terrific guy’ who liked his women ‘on the younger side,’ bragged after he bought beauty pageants he could walk in on teenagers in various states of dress, hypersexualized his daughter Ivanka as a child and young woman and his one year old daughter Tiffany, whose ex-wife (who died in an accidental fall and is buried in a non-descript grave on his golf course in New Jersey) accused him of a brutal rape, who told Billy Bush he could do anything he wanted to ‘beautiful women’, do you think that guy didn’t participate? It’s not as if Donald hid any of this, he said they let you do it.

What choice would a child held in sexual slavery have when her ‘master’ demands that she service his friends?

We live in a patriarchy. It is a linear construct that places wealthy, white, powerful men at the top. There’s a different set of rules for these men, and because of this hierarchy horrific things like the Epstein story (that are happening every day) rarely break through to our collective consciousness. They are concealed, excused, ignored, downplayed, discredited, and trivialized.

Boys will be boys, after all.

By allowing anyone to hoard unfettered amounts of wealth and power, we are also allowing them to see themselves as existing beyond normal social, legal, and moral codes. This is particularly dangerous when they have narcissistic, sociopathic, and, in some cases, psychopathic tendencies. #MeToo only scratched the surface before the movement was delegitimized by propaganda, disinformation, and media manipulation.

Epstein was a broker of children for the prurient pursuits of himself and the degenerate, well connected, and legally protected. Was he also a broker of kompromat and blackmail? Does it seem like that much of a stretch? It only makes sense that he would do what he felt was necessary to protect himself and his financial interests. Note that the source of his extraordinary wealth has never been fully explained. It’s unlikely the files, videos, interviews, and any lists compiled from the vast troves of gathered evidence will ever see the light of day. The parsing of language by Bondi is meant to confuse, Epstein may not have had ‘a list’ and there is no singular ‘file’ one could fit on a desk, but the people with access to the massive amounts of information could easily create a list of names of his co-horts and release the files with the identities of the children and young women involved concealed to protect them and their families.

I don’t believe our intelligence agencies are the only ones in possession of the information. I don’t think it can easily be destroyed. I don’t think this is just about Epstein. I don’t think we’ll ever know the entirety of it.

This scandal extends to all sides of the political spectrum and across the globe and Epstein is a part of something far larger and far more insidious. It’s likely tied up in all manner of other salacious scandals, secret agreements, special contracts, covert operations, favors, deals, suspicious deaths, and complex complicities. It seems likely that our predator in chief and former friend of Roy Cohn, Jeffrey Epstein, Les Wexner, Robert Maxwell, and various and sundry Russian mobsters and American crime syndicates is so thoroughly enmeshed in all of this depravity it would blow the minds of his true believers. The rot reaches from the respected to the notorious, including a host of sketchy, nefarious, and crooked figures that have lingered within and lurked around the edges of American and global politics for decades who are all part of our president’s orbit. Isn’t that his M.O., though? Projection, misdirection, denial, distraction…admitting out loud the things he has done and is doing with such braggadocio and lack of shame that his followers don’t hear him. Imagine the cognitive dissonance required to believe this man a force for righteousness and good. Imagine frantically searching for answers that are staring you in your face.

If they do release anything, they may do what Trump is suddenly accusing Hillary, Biden, Comey, and Obama of doing, make it all up and present it as fact. The DOJ just fired James Comey’s daughter Maurene Comey, the main prosecutor on the Maxwell case as well the Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs case and a prosecutor in the Epstein case. That’s no coincidence. He is always, always projecting and confessing. The ineptitude of his cabinet offers a bit of hope that much like the mysteriously missing 3 (not 1) minutes of the ‘raw’ video they released earlier this week, it will be easy to detect if they attempt to fake the facts. Will that matter, though? They’ll do whatever it takes to get the true believers back on board. Or maybe they don’t need them anymore. Donald just said as much. He did tell them they’d never have to vote again and in the constant chaos of our current reality the GOP has been hard at work on a variety of voter suppression and manipulation agendas. It’s all a grift and ‘idiots’ are only useful until they’re not useful anymore.

Both of Trump’s administrations have been filled with conspiracy theorists and Epstein adjacent characters like William Barr, Howard Lutnik, Rudy Giuliani, Steve Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross, Tom Barrack, and Alex Acosta. It seems that’s by design. Capture the purveyors of disinformation and the people in the know so you control the narrative. Is there incredible hubris involved in campaigning (twice) on this powder keg, lighting it on fire, and then gaslighting the supporters you’ve enflamed? Is this the denouement or another mirage designed to further scramble the minds of his followers while distracting our attention span deficient press?

Our republic has been hanging on by a thread for a while now. Perhaps this is the thread that unravels it all. Is it possible? I hope that there are some good people willing to risk their security to do the right thing and keep pulling at it.

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