If I hear people at this late stage in history dismissively spit the phrase “conspiracy theorists,” I can only assume they haven’t been paying attention to the news lately.
For example, we all spent the past few years being told by everyone from late-night comedians to censorious tech companies that only deranged people who hate science and want their fellow citizens to die would think Bill Gates might be evil enough to slip undisclosed substances into us under the pretext of vaccinating us against a virus. Yet we now know from his personal email correspondence with Jeffrey Epstein that Gates was seeking advice about how to slip his then-wife Melinda antibiotics on the sly to combat the viruses to which he’d likely exposed her after secretly sleeping with Russian girls known to Epstein.
If Gates was willing to dupe his wife in that way—and likely tell himself he had the whole situation safely under control, medically speaking—what might he have condescendingly thought of us ignorant masses as he rolled out various mosquito-releasing, gene-rewriting, digital-i.d.-imposing, and software-updating experiments over the past couple decades? Do you plan to trust him or his ilk with the fate and freedom of humanity ever again? If so, why?
But enough about Gates specifically. You look ridiculous trying to spin something as sprawling as the Epstein scandal in any one partisan direction. Being confused about it, that’s fair. Finding it difficult to gauge how much it matters in the grand scheme of things, given other, more-visible crimes and more serious policy questions, that’s also fair.
But if you find yourself saying confident, partisan things like, “This confirms everything we suspected about the Democratic establishment—Trump needs to go after those guys!” or “Epstein and MAGA were joined at the hip! We need Kamala back!” or even “Watch the bigots try to say Epstein had Israeli intelligence ties!” the odds are that you’re paid to say things like that, or at least that saying such things is your non-rational favorite hobby, no matter what evidence emerges about no matter what scandal. There’s more to life than your faction, though, and if you forget that you’re probably in for some more rude surprises.
I’m pretty moderate-to-friendly on Israel, for instance, but not so deranged by this inclination that I’d keep insisting Epstein can’t have intelligence ties even as it emerges he regularly met with Ehud Barak; had as his right-hand woman the daughter of a known and even celebrated Israeli asset, Robert Maxwell; and toured Israeli military bases even as the legal net was tightening around him the second time. Yet Ted Cruz posts that if Epstein was serving any foreign power, it definitely wasn’t Israel. And the British press leapt strenuously to the conclusion (a perennial favorite in intelligence circles) that Russia was behind it all—as if Epstein weren’t just as tightly tied to the Saudis, the U.S., and numerous other forces, private, academic, and governmental.
To be sure, widely varied reactions to the slow drip of the repeatedly-arrested billionaire’s personal emails are possible from reasonable, well-meaning people. Pundit Michael Tracey boldly argues that there isn’t even solid evidence Epstein was technically a pedophile, since he seemed mainly interested in females who were around legal age in at least some parts of the U.S. or Caribbean.
One right-winger I know thinks Epstein was a hero whose main function was not to blackmail innocents but to compromise figures who had already been compromised by hostile foreign powers in order to nudge them back into serving U.S. and U.S.-allied interests. If Epstein also found time to play videogames, make money, and take a very active interest in weird science, hey, good for him, some might say.
On the other side of the Epstein-reaction spectrum are people who think, also with some plausibility, that his one-man yet industrial-scale, global girls-manipulating operation is just the tip of a terrifying iceberg, one that if fully revealed would alter our most basic assumptions about how the world works.
The scientist-pundits Eric Weinstein and Sabine Hossenfelder are both keen to learn why Epstein found their work on quantum gravity so interesting, and it appears he was also curious about UFOs.
Journalist Whitney Webb wrote two thick volumes depicting Epstein as just the latest example of all-pervading blackmail networks dating back to at least World War II and used by the Mafia and the intelligence services of several countries to control political and business figures.
A woman who appears to have been Epstein’s final girlfriend and heir to $100 million worth of his estate, young immigrant Manhattan dentist Karyna Shuliak, goes all the way (so to speak) and posts that Epstein was part of a global Satanic cult of child-killing cannibals, one that preyed upon developing-world and warzone children in particular while perhaps taking a eugenic interest in promoting the offspring of people like Epstein on the side. (Actually, she says “Luciferian” rather than Satanic, which is interesting, since from what I’ve observed real fans of the Dark Lord do prefer to talk about him as the Light-Bringer rather than the Enemy.)
You’d think if she suspected this while dating the guy, she should’ve broken up with him, but she insists he was trapped and being manipulated by the cabal, making him sound like a criminal-but-good-hearted hunk in a movie who promises his girl he’ll participate in just one more heist (or cannibal murder-orgy) before going straight.
Well, Epstein certainly must have been a smooth talker with young ladies and world leaders alike, so maybe we’ll never know the unvarnished story. In the meantime, I’m rooting for more leaks and disruptions and will be highly suspicious of anyone, whether president or pundit, who insists too loudly that it should all just blow over.
Are you part of the pro-silence crowd? And do people’s horrified suspicions about the meaning of all those John Podesta emails 10 years ago still seem crazy to you? Ah, but this just in: the FBI now officially concludes Epstein wasn’t involved in trafficking anyway, so I guess all is well. Nothing to see here. The system works.
—Todd Seavey is the author of Libertarianism for Beginners and is on X at @ToddSeavey