What's Really Happening with The Epstein Files?

A few words after a lot of noise.

Photo by Ben Wicks on Unsplash

Well, we’re back on the Epstein files.

Barely a week after Establishment Democrats burned the last ounce of their credibility by caving on a shutdown, then essentially admitting it was all a campaign move and never designed to save healthcare, they’ve deftly shifted public discourse back on Trump. Currently, the internet is yelling at Megyn Kelly. Sure, she deserves to be yelled at. Megyn Kelly should not have a podcast or a career in journalism. She should be serving Chick-Fil-A sandwiches to her MAGA comrades.

But we’ve been yelling at her for ten years.

And she seems to enjoy it...

My take:

Yeah, we already know Megyn Kelly is a terrible person. I’m not surprised at all that she’s suddenly trying to draw technical distinctions between pedophiles and guys who “like girls on the younger side.” Here’s the thing:

Megyn Kelly is articulating something that a large portion of evangelicals have believed for a long time. It’s always been deeply wrong, and deeply disturbing. And yes, you can draw a distinction between someone who legitimately struggles with a psychological disorder and a gutter variety predator like Trump. But when you do that, Trump and his goons come out looking worse. Why? Because they’re not struggling with a psychological disorder, unless that disorder is a much deeper psychopathy.

Was Epstein a pedophile or a psychopath?

What is Trump?

We can leave it to psychologists to classify just what kind of monster they are. After all, we have subcategories of serial killers to help us understand what’s going on with them, so we can do a better job of stopping them. But a serial killer is a serial killer, and a predator is a predator, regardless of why they do it. In the end, everyone who went to that island to prey on girls belongs in a gulag.

There’s only one question I’m interested in:

Will releasing the Epstein files actually land Trump in prison, where he has belonged for the last ten years? Or will this become another Mueller report, another Stormy Daniels case, another January 6 hearing?

Only time will tell.

I’m all in favor of releasing the files. Yes, release the files. Let’s hope they’re the real files, and not something Trump had his allies cook up. Don’t forget: Fascists control the CIA, the FBI, Homeland Security, and the DOJ. It’s entirely within their power to scrub those files of Trump’s name. They won’t do it completely. That would look too suspicious. But they can remove any smoking gun evidence.

In the end, everyone seems to be crossing their fingers that releasing the files will finally wake up Trump’s base, putting them in such an overwhelming state of disgust that they reject him once and for all. Sure, it would be nice.

I’ve got just one thing to say about that:

If you honestly believe MAGA will turn on Trump over the Epstein files, you’re giving them too much credit. You still think there’s a shred of humanity left in them, that they’re not just a bunch of brainwashed cultists.

I don’t share your faith.

Take it from someone like me, who grew up in the deep south, right in the middle of all the evangelical nonsense. The racism, the sexism, the bigotry, the ignorance, the self-sabotage, it’s been there for much longer than Trump. These people won’t turn on the predators in their own communities. They attack the survivors. They drive them out of public life. I’ve seen it too many times.

A lot of people on our side are going to feel deeply and bitterly disappointed when the Epstein files fail to cause a stir in the core of MAGA. You can add those poor girls to the thousands who’ve already been preyed on by their pastors, coaches, teachers, guidance counselors, uncles, neighbors, and so on...

Trumplandia knows all about the men who prey on underage girls. This whole time, they’ve been turning a blind eye to the monsters in their own midst while projecting all the righteous anger and condemnation at nonexistent satanic cannibal cabals. That’s what they do. In reality, they don’t actually care.

Their deep desire to protect children is saturated in hypocrisy. They’re going to come up with a million excuses for why it doesn’t matter what their hero did, only what their enemies did. Watch it happen.

Trump’s base only cares about the Epstein files because they want to attack Democrats. They’re only angry at Trump because he won’t find a way to give them what they want while exonerating himself, as he’s done before.

As we speak, Trump’s DOJ is gearing up to launch a full investigation into Epstein’s ties to everyone except Trump. Nobody can predict how exactly it’s going to play, but I won’t be surprised if it goes over really well with his base.

It’s what they always wanted.

I’m not saying it’s pointless. Epstein’s victims deserve justice. I’m just saying, there’s a good chance this won’t be the silver bullet that takes down Trump. We have other tools, like national strikes and boycotts, or (maybe) running a candidate in 2028 that isn’t completely owned by corporations. You know what they always say: Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. But that’s what Democrats have been doing. They’ve moved their eggs from the Mueller basket to the January 6 basket, and now they’re all in the Epstein basket, and I don’t think it’s going to turn out well.

If you think you’ve seen the bottom of MAGA’s capacity for lies, deception, and self-delusion, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Strap yourselves in.

Things are going to get wild.