(C) Daily Kos This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered. . . . . . . . . . . Epstein is just a symptom [1] ['Gregg Matson', 'View Profile', 'Greg Dworkin', 'A Pagan In Arizona', 'Eric Yonce'] Date: 2026-05-01 “In medieval England, there was no law if your pockets were deep.” Daniel Moattar, Mother Jones, March/April, 2026 We now have a war with Iran, started unilaterally by Donald Trump in order to keep us from thinking about his romantic romps with girls and naive young women who were trafficked by his old pal, Jeffrey Epstein. The frantic extent to which Trump has been trying to put people off the scent, and the desperate, sycophantic efforts by Republican politicians to help him do it, indicate that some episodes in those numerous pages must be extremely incriminating. That solid 40% in the MAGA cult will probably overlook the facts, no matter how disgustingly guilty Trump turns out to be…by now, even true believers know what he is like. But independents, “moderate” Republicans, and occasional voters could get upset enough to change Congress, which is desperately hanging on to narrow GOP majorities. In the long run, however, even if the Republican Party joins the Federalists and Whigs on the dustbin of history; even if Trump is impeached, convicted, and boiled in oil; the malaise that brought about these attention-grabbing scandals will still be very much with us. In the autumn of 2025, Americans made it clear that they wanted the Epstein files brought to light; so Congress passed, and Trump signed, a bill complying with the public’s wishes. In the spring of 2026, it is obvious that neither Trump nor the Republican lawmakers had any intention to obey the law they made. Straight from the corporate playbook, the boss said one thing, and it was up to the underlings to know, and act upon, what he actually meant. In the corporate world, those who can detect the chief’s real intentions beneath the words he says, rise in the organization. Those who cannot read the signals correctly get vaporized. Republican politicians, now composed entirely of corporate climbers or MAGA fanatics, could tell that Trump wanted the law passed, but not enforced. They did their jobs. Protecting the higher-ups from scandal, embarrassment, or punishment for their mistakes or misdeeds is expected of anyone who wishes to rise in the organization—thus propping up the system that puts individuals like Trump into supreme power. The Epstein story is not just about a rich man with some disgusting ideas of fun, and the highly placed individuals who liked partying with him. The scandal goes beyond unbridled, made-to-order sex, with huge helpings of forbidden fruit. Epstein’s now infamous exploits are merely some of the extra rights and privileges claimed by rich people, who consider themselves, in Scott Fitzgerald’s description, “different from you and me.” In the United States of America, although we boast about our commitment to the rule of law and equality under that law, we let people in the upper-crust do what the law prohibits everyone from doing. In the twenty-first century, some Americans really are more equal than others. It is common knowledge that one set of rules exists for the middle and lower classes, and another for the uppers. The laws on the books for everyone are enforced rigidly and cruelly for the lower class, slightly less so for the middle, and scarcely at all for the wealthy and powerful, whose legal, financial, and social resources allow them to avoid responsibility while doing pretty much as they please. In cynical, corporate terms, “this is the way it is.” “It“ has been this way since social classes emerged, as mankind took up agriculture. Before farming, when people survived by hunting and foraging, all members of each particular tribe were equal, in classless societies that took from each according to his ability, and gave to each according to his need. Tribal socialism gradually disappeared, because farming depended on and rewarded individual effort—each man worked his own land. Some individuals became wealthy, which brought power and privilege, allowing the fortunate to abuse those less fortunate—socially, economically, and sexually. The scandals performed on Epstein’s Isle, which we now view with shocked revulsion, were common practice in castles and palaces worldwide, over the last ten-thousand years. People only began to seriously question such behavior when we began to consider strange, new concepts such as “all men are created equal”—matters which people did not openly, routinely discuss until the eighteenth century Enlightenment period. Over the last few centuries, the principle of human equality has been adopted in slow, piecemeal fashion. Though it is now quite common, in theory, even by law in most countries, the principle has not been very faithfully carried out, in reality. The principle did inspire the American Revolution, which has its quarter-millennium birthday this year. Given such a short length of historical time, it is no wonder we have not practiced the ideal very well. Like individual lifestyle changes, turnarounds of collective human thought require considerable struggle over time, before they become comfortably accepted. As the Epstein files indicate, that struggle is far from over. The nation’s shock at stories in the files, as told by victims, tell us not only how strongly we believe in equality, but how poorly we practice it. And our state of economic and social inequality has gotten much worse over the last fifty or sixty years. Basically, Epstein and his party pals sexually abused girls and women because they could. Modern Americans are accustomed to granting more privileges to people of wealth than we did a few decades ago. Although Americans probably were, and still are, unaware of the consequences, they chose to elevate privileges for our upper class beginning in the 1970’s. Since the 1972 presidential election, when voters overwhelmingly chose Richard Nixon over George McGovern both popularly and electorally, the country has been gradually abandoning the New Deal in favor of plutocracy. Democrats are still reeling from that landslide, and subsequent Reagan and Bush 41 landslides, which explains why the only Democratic presidents elected since then have leaned conservative. Furthermore, what progressive reforms Democrats did achieve were small and hard-won, against fanatically uncompromising Republican opposition. Trump’s election and reelection prove that American voters still back these trends. Trump’s oligarchy is the logical conclusion of longstanding pro-wealth attitudes among millions of American voters, who have often voted against their self-interests over the past half-century. By allowing more wealth and power to concentrate in the hands of the obscenely rich few, we have arrived at an obvious crisis in the traditional American way of life. Despotic, venal, irresponsible, and completely self-absorbed, Trump’s social class is living a reality unknown to us commoners. They do what they want to do, regardless of morality or law—and regardless of Trump’s fate. Epstein is gone, but the world of wealth, power, and privilege that allowed him (along with Trump and others in the upper crust) to take advantage of girls, young women, and everyone else, is stronger than ever. Members of that privileged caste still commit, and get away with, many other unnamed crimes against humanity, because they can. If we wish to see real justice for Epstein’s victims, we need to dismantle the oligarchy we have nurtured for half a century. We could start by raising high-end taxes. If we wish to restore true justice in our society, we must seriously return to our founding principles of equality for all, and rule of laws, not men. Hard work and constant vigilance lie ahead. 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