The Epstein story is not a conspiracy.
Beware of conspiracy theories, which mean secret cabals of people out to overcome established authority through their hidden stratagems. A good example was the QAnon conspiracy where Democratic leaders were thought to be engaged in pedophilia in under the guise of a pizza parlor. Obviously absurd. Why is all they would plan, and why as lowly as a pizza parlor, rather than a stately mansion? But just a few years later the shoe is on the other foot. Important Republicans have encountered and dealt with Jeffrey Epstein, even after he was a convicted pedophile, and visited with their own families to his own island and there were messages exchanged with him about the young women at his parties, only hinting, as Trump did, that the underage women entertained him. Has there been uncovered a gigantic undercover collusion to entrap and use underage girls by people who are monied and among the most powerful? I think not. Parse your categories carefully.
The most careful view of this theory is provided in the NY Times, courtesy of Ezra Klein by Ananal Giridheradas. She says that these wealthy and prominent people are largely boring even if they have money and validate themselves by associating with one another so as to be known by their associates. They go to the same parties and restaurants and, not by the way, engage in business dealings with one another, trusting to one another on loans and investments, the go ahead of one to another allowing transactions to take place. Pedophilia is just an additional perk for those inclined, but those not inclined, still relativistic about sexual morality. To each their own.
Look at it another way, where the stratagems are not secret however devastating in the results, which is unbridled capitalism and child exploitation. The rich are just doing what the rich do. It is their class in their society that leads to their distinctive culture. Rich people are used to delegating authority. They have nannies and chauffeurs. They have travel agents to do the paperwork of getting tickets and booking hotels and so they rely on other rich people to provide them with services such as arranging bank loans and hiring escorts. Moreover, the coin of the realm is trust because any complicated deal relies on judgement rather than certainty. A banker can decide whether a farm is likely to be foreclosed. Most people have credit ratings. But should Deutsche Bank decide to give Trump a big loan considering his past bankruptcies? How high an interest will it charge? Who, maybe the Russians, will; underwrite the loan? Decisions have to be made and a circle of influentials help because big time finance is always guess rather than a calculation, some people, as in Tom Wolfe’s “The Bonfire of the Vanities”, thinking investment banking mainly the collection of the crumbs picked up from fees from the roiling of money, justified by thinking that making capital liquid is enough reason to endure a major recession every decade or so.
And as to the girls and the women? Men have been exploiting women since the time cavemen were dragging women into their lairs many an eon ago. The victims of Jeffrey Epstein, and victims they were, were probably in more complicated relations whereby poor girls got a chance to meet with the rich and famous and perhaps somehow advance themselves, as was documented by Defoe’s “Moll Flanders” who treated prostitution as a form of entrepreneurship, as was true as way back as in “Genesis”, where the rape of Tamar showed prostitution as a well established industry. The question that arises to my uneducated mind is why a billionaire or multimillionaire would have to resort to Jeffery Epstein to get girls? Aren’t there other bordellos available? Eliot Spitzer found a way. Maybe rich men feel entitled to get whatever sex they want, but all men rich and poor have urges. Only Marie Antoinette thought sex was too good a thing for the peasants to do.
What difference does it make whether the Epstein circle is a conspiracy theory or not? It means, among other things, that it is not the crucial issue however much Democrats are highly engaged with it. More important things are overt, such as ICE goons in Minneapolis trampling on civil liberties, the violation of the constitutional principle that the executive can only spend money allocated by the Congress and required to spend money Congress has established and funded, and the three trillion dollars given to the rich by the very legal beautiful bad bill. Something bigger than the exploitation of girls, however bad that may be, is at stake. It is the fate of the Republic.
Remember that Karl Marx was not a conspiracy theorist. He thought that rampant greed would be covered by the natural social processes, however embellished through government. These were patriotism, religion and ethnic strife. The poor would be distracted from their enemies and the rich could evolve a sense of entitlement and even a veneer of benevolence, deluding themselves, and so the terrible system continued on its own without any original or ever rising Iagos to spread the poison. The solution is also unconspiratorial, totally in the open. As Obama regularly said: Don’t boo; vote.
A cautionary note. During the McCarthy Era following the Second World War, there was a craze for guilt by association, which meant people were shamed or punished because of the people with whom they associated rather than for crimes they had committed. Dr. Peress was questioned for why as a dentist he was promoted to Major given that his parents were communist. People were asked to come clean about the parties they went to and some were blacklisted for refusing to name names. The same thing is happening today, this time from the left. Newscasts show pictures of the names of people who visited Jeffrey Epstein and those whose names were subpoenaed, some of these people disgraced so as to resign from their positions, even though the only people convicted so far are Epstein and Maxwell. It may well be that the Justice Department has become so corrupt that it will not prosecute criminal behavior but the previous rule was that names would not be named for people not indicted on the ground that the people never had a trial and so could not face their accuser. It is a good idea to preserve that principle even if the Justice Department is withholding indictments. That is an aspect of law that can be retained until the legitimacy of the Justice Department is restored in full.