If there are three things I dislike writing about intensely, they are sleaze, crime, and stupidity. Life on this planet is suffering badly from all of them. Epstein on face value seems to be the incarnation of all these things. The interesting thing about Epstein is that the sheer range and scope of his contacts is so vast that forgettable as he must have been, he’s a window into something big and highly connected.
This article is written on the as yet unproven assumptions that Epstein was as sleazy as alleged. Allegations and mysteries abound. Some of the allegations are so bizarre that they seem to be pure hype. Others, however, have a ring of authenticity, at least given the subjects and the seemingly endless known connections of a guy who was otherwise a nobody to the very rich.
The rich don’t mix with nobodies, with good reason. Typically, any contact is checked, because all contacts can be dangerous. Epstein, however, seems to have strolled into the A list without a murmur. That alone is a very unusual situation.
For younger readers – Getting dirt on people used to be a major industry last century. Any type of information which could threaten anyone was valuable. This was particularly the case in the very strait-laced American upper tiers of the conservative environment. Where liberals would tend to overlook minor quirks and misadventures, conservatives used them as weapons. Blackmail equated to leverage, and it was used extensively.
They also used them as good sources of income. A lot of money, even by modern standards, flew around under the radar. It was well-known but doesn’t seem to have entered the history books, for obvious reasons. A lot of influence was peddled, too. You can still see it in some of the grotesque things that populate American public life.
The unasked questions about Epstein
The first unasked question is this – What is the role of a hyper-parasite in sleaze and stupidity at this level, and how does one make so much money out of it? According to indictments and allegations, Epstein was a facilitator, in many ways. The fact that he was glued on to the American and international A list tends to bear that out.
He must have been useful to a lot of people to the point of making very big money. This New York Times article is interesting reading, not so much for its content as the sheer range of its subjects. From Tesla and Elon Musk to “secrets” confided to Epstein, undefined, but a word which makes a lot of sense in context. The interview is strained, but it opens up a few areas of enquiry pretty effectively.
Let’s leave out the grim and apparently getting grimmer allegations of sexual things for a moment. Those are for a court to decide. The other unasked questions are more interesting, and potentially more indicative, of how this situation and the people involved actually worked.
Those questions include:
- If you assume Epstein had such a vast, almost unthinkable range of high profile contacts, what else was he doing? He can’t have been making small talk in that league, so what the hell was he doing in that environment?
- What possible use could Epstein have been in something like the so-called privatization of Tesla by Elon Musk? Epstein was never a top financier. His own influence must, therefore, have been in some other form.
- What political connections ran through Epstein’s international router of contacts, and how, and to some extent why, did they connect through him? Seems like a pretty risky avenue, doesn’t it?
- I never buy conspiracy theories, ever, but Epstein seems to have died rather quickly, you could say efficiently, soon after his arrest. Who knows how to do that?
- How stupid must these trainloads of VIPs have been, to allow anyone that close to their most vulnerable secrets? Are they really that dumb? Trust is priceless for the rich, and they trusted this guy?
- Why didn’t Epstein bug out and take the more obvious ways out of the legal risks? He had the contacts to disappear anywhere on Earth to the no-go zones for the law, and he didn’t do it?
- Could one person have single-handedly created this network of people? Probably not. You’d need a database of respectable size to put together this list of people Epstein new, even over 20 years or so. Everyone knows everyone is done on a needs basis, not as a result of parties and red carpet events, etc. Nothing important is done in public, anyway, when it comes to business or personal things.
- Was Epstein a front for someone or something else? Pretty clumsy, if so. The guy was too flashy, too conspicuous, and too verbose. The most valuable people are those who say nothing or less and never mention names. Epstein routinely tries to be evasive, but he includes himself in practically everything he says about anyone or anything. That doesn’t mean he didn’t have associates, but it hardly proves they even exist.
Epstein is dead. The remaining legal wrangles have to go through the courts. What he did or didn’t do must be proven, not simply processed for the media as something to be outraged about.
What is clear is that this spectacularly uninteresting, rather repulsive, guy was in the middle of the financial and in some cases social leadership of the world. What the hell was he doing there? Couldn’t these ultra-rich people just go out and rent a cockroach, or something? There’s very little they can’t do with a phone call, but they need to know him on a personal basis? None of it stacks up.
If these questions are ever answered, don’t expect to like the answers. Something smells very bad.
