I honestly don’t care whether the Epstein files are released. My indifference doesn’t make me an elitist, nor does it make me uninformed; it reflects my priorities.
In every era, the health of a nation is measured not only by its laws and institutions but by the collective focus of its people. When a society’s gaze drifts from the crucial and foundational to the captivating and lurid, it risks not only distraction but erosion—from within. History warns that spectacle can serve as an anesthetic; that outrage, if misdirected, is as useless as apathy.
Today, we find ourselves at the edge of a precipice, our attention drawn to the glare of scandal and salacious intrigue. At the same time, in the shadows, the frameworks that safeguard democracy are quietly and systematically being dismantled. Ours is an age awash with information, yet paradoxically starved of wisdom—not because truth is unavailable, but because the truth gets eclipsed by the most tantalizing diversions of the day.
What is the cost, then, of a society mesmerized by the sensational? Investigative energy is squandered on bread-and-circus distractions, allowing policy and power to be reshaped almost unopposed. It is precisely at such moments that vigilance is most needed—when the headlines dazzle while the footnotes carry the real story.
Thomas Hobbes warned:
“During the time men live without a common power to keep them all in awe, they are in that condition which is called War; and such a war, as is of every man, against every man.”
—Leviathan, Chapter XIII
Hobbes saw how spectacle could corrode the social contract. Today’s spectacle is the supposed Epstein client list—a list that may never have existed—while the real list, Project 2025’s blueprint for dismantling government, lurks in relative silence. Through the defunding of agencies like the USDA, PBS, the Department of Education, and FEMA, through slashing staff and shifting power to the presidency, this administration edges us closer to Grover Norquist’s long-held dream: a government so small “he could drag it into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”
Norquist may soon see his vision realized—provided the public remains fixated on distractions like the Epstein files and other contrived spectacles that work in Trump’s favor. These diversions obscure what he and his acolytes are quietly doing: dismantling the institutions that sustain democracy.
I believe the conversations we choose to have—and the attention we choose to give—are crucial to whether we can “keep” our republic, as Franklin famously replied to Elizabeth Powell.
Let’s be honest with ourselves. Governance requires involvement. If, as Franklin put it, ours is a republic built for the people and by the people, then what does it say about us when public focus centers on sex traffickers like Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell? These individuals preyed on troubled young girls, degrading them into sexual commodities for financial gain and perverse enjoyment. Something is broken in our values when voyeurism outpaces civic responsibility.
I don’t say this to sound elitist. Unless the files lead to restitution for the victims—those stripped of their humanity, driven to suicide, like Virginia Giuffre—the public’s craving for salacious details has no redeeming value.
Epstein and Maxwell ran a high-end operation in sexual enslavement. They weren’t in financial desperation—they had “f-you money.” Enough to gain access to Mar-a-Lago, enough to mingle with power. Both had a penchant for exploiting young girls—Epstein through chattel-like trafficking, Trump through ownership of the Miss Teen USA pageant. He boasted about walking into dressing rooms unannounced “to inspect things.” If you believe that can of horse pucky, I’ve got bridges in New York and toll booths on I-95 to sell you.
The clamoring for the release of the Epstein files echoes the Greeks climbing the Pnyx to debate laws—or the Romans reveling in Bread and Circuses. Gladiators weren’t killed en masse in the arena; they were property, trained investments. Likewise, Epstein and Maxwell treated young girls as profit-making entities—leveraging sexual gratification and potential coercion, all held together by whispered threats of exposure.
Those shouting for Bondi to release her supposed cache aren’t decrying inhumanity—they’re feeding a voyeuristic appetite. This obsession with depravity comes as the architects of Project 2025 are quietly dismantling democracy.
The right seeks a scandal that can “own the libs.” The left wants confirmation of elites misbehaving, meanwhile, gutting the institutions underpinning our republic. We’ve shifted from being a nation of opportunity to one of indulgent depravity. Some now claim democracy is too messy—that autocracy would be simpler, cleaner, more efficient.
There’s an undercurrent of racism, elitism, and denialism driving this push to replace democracy with autocracy. It seeks to convince us that 2 + 2 = 5—Orwellian gaslighting on a massive scale. That’s the heart of Project 2025. It’s not reform; it’s profiteering cloaked as efficiency.
We stand at a crossroads. We can remain summer soldiers, indulging scandal-fueled indignation, or we can recommit to the hard work of citizenship. That means showing up—in school board chambers, at town halls, and in state legislatures. It means demanding transparency and supporting civic education. It means refusing to trade our attention for ephemeral bytes of gossip.
It means seeing the hype around the Epstein files for what it is: a distraction from a systematic effort to dismantle our government and normalize autocracy.
Don’t be lulled into believing it can’t happen here. It can. Our form of governance only survives because we choose to uphold it.
As Edmund Burke put it:
“The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”
Our modern circus will never cease—there will always be a new Epstein-style enticement. But democracy endures only when citizens choose engagement, vigilance, and responsibility over escapism.
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