If you were an ascending male writer in the 1990s and early 2000s, inevitably drawn into “advanced” social circles, sooner or later another male, more elevated and far more powerful than you, would offer to pass on to you a woman he had been sexually involved with. Or you would be invited to a dinner party, the purpose of which was to arrange these transactions on a more organised basis.
I remember one figure, recently deceased, who used to hold such parties regularly at his penthouse apartment on the Upper East Side. Seated at a large roundtable, guests would dine on sushi that was followed, with deliberate eccentricity, by chocolate cake. Wealthy businesspeople and financiers were there, as well as journalists, best-selling novelists and Hollywood producers. I recall seeing one grind himself against the wife of a famous actor (who was not present) as he greeted her, fixing his eyes on hers for a moment with a proprietary smile. The women at these parties were far from underage. They were often young-ish socialites or accomplished professionals. But there was no doubt that, for the men present, an electric current ran through the evening: the current of women as commodities transferred from male to male.
In the midst of the Epstein scandal, surely the strangest and most unsettling scandal in American history – the extent and nature of the abuse, the status of the abusers, their positions throughout the heights of American society – I have been thinking about these dinner parties. The host was a peculiar fellow, solitary, seemingly sexless, supported by family wealth. In the course of one party, I asked him if the handsome young Latino – always the same young man – who served the guests ever stayed the night. “Never!” he cried.
Like Epstein, he was a voyeur. He hovered about the parties, observing the deepening entanglements of men and women as the atmosphere grew more intimate and relaxed. Afterward, he would follow up with an email asking if you were interested in a woman he had seen you talking with. He followed up again, asking if you had gone out with her. He was a writer of sorts, who published, from time to time, in one special niche. He would send streams of emails asking for approval and advice about whatever he was working on. I grew tired of the intrusive questions and the requests for advice. I waited longer and longer to reply to his emails. I never had sushi followed by chocolate cake again.
In their own way, these routines were part of Jeffrey Epstein’s America – specifically the world of the New York elite. Epstein’s well-appointed torture chambers existed on an entirely different level, but the desire of powerful men to share their power through channels of female bodies was the same. Of course it is the children that make this primitive rite with a cosmopolitan face and a creepy undercurrent abhorrent. Epsteinland revealed the cruel nature of power left to its own devices. It exposed the rapacious apathy of power and wealth when they turn their attention to the matter of pleasure.
Liberals love to roll their eyes at the Maga obsession with paedophilia. But when their obsession is a fear or an outrage, and not a hysteria, it is hardly unhealthy. The perversion of adults having sex with children is a deformation of the future even more dreadful than war, social disorder or economic hardship. Their innocence represents the possibility of a hopeful future, one with a new beginning; where the belief that children are not innocent is a threat not just to children, but to a humane unfolding of life. The fact of adults having sex with children is especially deranging to a modern capitalist society in an increasingly louche – on both sides of the party system – democracy. American life is already reeling from uncontrollable transactionalism, predatory commercialism and the commodification of things – secrets, outrages, lies, reckless advice, interior life in general – that were previously thought impossible to commodify. The revelations of Epstein’s kingdom delivered a hammer blow of self-recognition to the American elite.
This is why the furore over Epstein is not only legitimate, but perhaps the healthiest impulse now in American life. It is happening, after all, when the nation’s very leader is proceeding to commodify and transactionalise the entire world. That Trump was in Epstein’s world was almost predetermined. It is no wonder that Maga is breaking down over the Epstein files. The Trump whom they valued for his assertion of good, old-fashioned heterosexual macho aggression, thumbing his nose and flipping his finger at decadent liberal “empathy” and “trauma” – this very Trump not only enjoyed and seemed to benefit from his close relationship to a child predator, but has been keeping information about this predator and his associates from the public.
The Maga brain is exploding. Trump is now at the heart of the very conspiracies that helped launch him into the White House. Remember: the right could not, in the name of a phony populism, discredit experts and replace them with frauds until it constructed the fantasy of a liberal “deep state” whose “elites” came from every elevated realm in society. Liberal elites do indeed exist, but they are too ambitious, too atomised, too in thrall to self-interest to move in conspiratorial sync. Trump and his carloads of criminals, nutcases and clowns came tumbling in to free the country from bondage to its secret cabals. Yet here is Epstein’s demented secret kingdom, where wealthy and powerful men from just about every realm of American life converged, plotted, schemed, abused and raped. Proust wrote thousands of pages demonstrating the varieties of psychological projection. Now a single news article captures the way right-wing elites have become ensnared, and exposed, in their own constructions of left-wing evil.
After 9/11, the potential for a terrorist attack seemed to be omnipresent. The dread released by the attacks blended into and became part of the dread lurking in the corners of everyday life. The synergistic nature of power on display in Epstein’s world is now colonising all of reality: the royal family, prominent academics, Hollywood personalities, titans of finance, even Mossad – the last a staple of the anti-Semitism that seems to flourish in every conspiracy theory. Which doesn’t mean that Mossad did not have the same interest in Epstein that Harvard, Prince Andrew and JP Morgan did. It is as if the abstract “deep state” was proof of concept for the true, concrete revelation of power embodied in Epstein’s world. Like every other tribe, the powerful only feel truly comfortable amongst themselves, even as they profoundly mistrust each other. Subjugating, assaulting, humiliating, polluting young girls in a sharing, non-competitive environment allowed the elite, prey to paranoia and to pathological suspicion, to feel, for a moment, safe. The rich are not like you and me.
This abyss of confounding perplexities perpetuates itself, melts all sanity in its howling forge of madness. Having denounced Trump at every turn for his pathological lies, for his defiant deceptions, for his utter moral depravity, liberal America now waits, upright and proper, for the “cornered” president to release the files, having signed legislation allowing it to happen. As if Trump did not run the Justice Department and the FBI, both of which have custody of the Epstein files. As if redacting, erasing, hiding, disappearing some of the files would pose more of a practical problem for Trump than the twisting and perverting of the American justice system that he has already achieved. As if this sick animal, who has defeated the social order at every turn, actually reversed his former resistance to releasing the files without first making certain that there would be nothing in the files to compromise or incriminate himself.
And then there is the saddest part of the story: the women who were Epstein’s victims as children. It is painful to say: afraid to offend the powerful, they refuse to tell America the names of the consequential men who raped and abused them. Yes, they would be sued. Yes, they and their loved ones would be in danger. But the social order that Trump has outraged would be behind them. The entire world – if there is anyone influential left who did not know Epstein – would be behind them. They would not have to worry about paying for a legal defence; they would not have to worry about themselves and their loved ones being protected. They seem as afraid to offend the powerful now by saying yes to pleas for them to reveal what they know as they were afraid to offend the powerful then by saying no to demands that they do what they were told. It is tragic and heartbreaking. But because their disclosures could well shape the course of American history, their fear, understandable as it might be, crippled and crippling as it might be, is maddening.
Still: Hallelujah! We have the depraved, corrupt president’s signature on a bill passed by a craven, morally dead, corrupt majority in Congress! We are getting the files! In Jeffrey Epstein’s America, everyone, it seems, is being made to live other people’s delusions.
[Further reading: What we demand of Epstein’s victims]
Content from our partners
Related
