The Real Truth Behind The Epstein Files

The thing we all need to hear.

Photo by Zunnoon Ahmed on Unsplash

Everyone's talking about the Epstein files.

After several promises to release a secret list, Trump's justice department has turned on a dime and started claiming there's no list, and they're done talking about it. The internet has exploded with hot takes. One article even says it's a "good thing" they're not releasing the files. I was wondering if it were even possible to provide a fresh perspective on this. Then it occurred to me, the one thing nobody has said is the thing we all need to hear. We already know enough.

Although a lot of people are talking about Epstein, a lot of us aren't talking about Epstein, not anymore, because we already knew the Trump administration was never going to release the full files or the list.

Michael Wolff has spent decades covering Trump and his friends. If anybody would know what’s in the Epstein files, it’s him.

Here’s what he says:

Wolff claims he has seen damning evidence from those years that Trump would not want made public, including alleged lewd images of Trump and the sex offender, who died by suicide in a New York jail cell in 2019 ahead of his trial on sex trafficking charges.

“I have seen these pictures. I know that these pictures exist and I can describe them,” Wolff alleged. “There are about a dozen of them. The ones I specifically remember is the two of them with topless girls of an uncertain age sitting on Trump’s lap. And then Trump standing there with a stain on the front of his pants and three or four girls kind of bent over in laughter—they’re topless, too—pointing at Trump’s pants.”

Trump and Epstein hung out all the time. They were best friends. According to Wolff, “these guys kind of made each other.”

There’s more than enough evidence, and more than enough reasonable suspicion, to open a criminal investigation into Trump. But it won’t happen, just like there was more than enough evidence to convict Trump of trying to overthrow the government. That unfolded right in front of everyone, but nobody with the means to hold him accountable wanted to do it, and we know why. Once you start holding rich and powerful people accountable, where does it stop?

You throw one trust fund kid in jail, it terrifies them all. Because all of them have done something they’re scared to face consequences for.

For some of us, there’s a meaning behind and beyond the Epstein crimes that casts a much larger shadow over politics. While MAGA weaponized the case to go after their adversaries, liberals responded by sharing memes of Trump and Epstein together, and there's quite a few of those. They're all so close to understanding what it all really means, so let's spell it out.

The Epstein files demonstrate that the super rich can do whatever they want. Justice never comes for these predators.

There's one important exception:

Ritual sacrifice.

Every now and then, the super rich throw one of their own to the legal system. It's usually someone with a lot of fame and influence. An author. An actor. A producer. A musician. An enabler. It keeps the masses calm.

The occasional sacrifice maintains the illusion of accountability. It confines the larger crimes to the realm of gossip.

People love speculating about the Epstein files. It doesn't just sound like the ultimate conspiracy theory. It sounds like something straight out of a daytime soap opera. It's almost too evil to believe. The richest, most powerful men in the world were involved in a human trafficking ring on a private island? They abused teens, while their wives and girlfriends looked the other way?

And yet, so many other unbelievable crimes turned out to be true. And yet, nobody wants to believe those either. It's easier to deny.

Cognitive dissonance strikes again.

We don't need to see every page or video of the Epstein files to believe what we can see with our own eyes. Watch the documentaries. Read what's already out there. Look at all those photos. Listen to all the confirmed anecdotes. At the very best, the most powerful politicians and CEOs in the world were hanging out with a known sex offender and human trafficker.

They said he was so much fun to be around.

Does anyone really think Epstein hid all his teenage sex slaves when rich politicians came to visit him, or did they see some stuff and decide to keep quiet? Did some of them do a lot of illegal things there, even if it didn’t involve actual penetration of a minor? How many of them were offenders?

How many were accomplices?

We already know major banks and investors paid tens of millions in settlements to free themselves of all the legal repercussions associated with Epstein and his human trafficking. We know how that goes. For them, the fines and settlements they pay amount to a tiny fraction of the actual consequences they’d face if all the evidence came out during full investigations.

Why does MAGA keep pushing for the files? It's not because they care about the victims. It's not because they want to know the truth.

It's because they don't want to know.

They want to live in a state of suspension. They want to know the government is running a coverup, but they don't want to know the whole story. It doesn't matter what the Trump administration releases.

They already believe what they want.

It’s called suspension of belief.

Some people call it suspended belief, or suspension of disbelief. They refer to slightly different things, but you get the idea. When you’re reading a novel or watching a movie, you suspend disbelief long enough to enjoy it. But when someone suspends their belief systems and critical thinking in real life, it can go on for months, or years. It’s a form of denial, and you see it all the time.

Psychologists know all about belief suspension. Someone can know something but maintain just enough doubt to justify inaction. They can put all their critical thinking aside and look at something in a passive state. They don’t have to make a decision about the evidence. They can listen to a trusted journalist tell them about photos of their political and cultural idol with topless girls, who were probably minors, but they don’t have to do anything about it.

They secretly want to keep it all shrouded in mystery. Not only is that more fun for them, in a sick twisted way, it also enables them to keep pretending their hero, and all his friends, aren't right there in the middle of it. As long as the Epstein case remains a mystery, they don't have to grapple with real facts. They can keep living in their conspiracy theories.

We already have more than enough evidence that the richest men in the world and many of their wives and girlfriends are horrible people. We see how they treat their workers. We see the policies they support. We see what they've done to the planet. People want to fixate on the Epstein case because it frees them from responsibility. They can act like there's something even worse, some secret black box of evidence that confirms all their worst suspicions.

But since that box is never going to be released, people can defer their responsibility to hold them all accountable.

They can live in suspended belief.

It's easier that way.

The richest man in the world claims to know what's in the Epstein files. Don't you think the richest man in the world could get those files and spill every last detail on the internet? He doesn't want to, because he wants to weaponize the mystery surrounding it. Put all that out in the open, and it kills his leverage. It either puts his own friends and allies behind bars, or it removes any last trace that we live in a world where justice might exist.

There’s an even darker truth.

The kind of abuse Epstein committed happens every day around the world, and it’s not just happening on secret islands. It’s happening in churches. It’s happening in schools. It’s happening in youth camps.

It’s happening in homes.

But America remains fixated on the one case they’ll never know every last detail of, and never hold anyone accountable for. Everyone talks about Epstein because it alleviates them from reckoning with the sexual predators in their own political parties, and in their own communities.

How do you like them apples?

There’s another term in psychology that explains all this nonsense, and it’s called displacement. Many Americans, especially of the MAGA variety, are displacing their anger, their anxiety, their trauma, onto this case.

It distracts them from the injustice and abuse happening all around them, something they could do something about.

That's what MAGA doesn't want to know. A few of our liberal friends don't want to know it either. And yet, that's the world we actually live in. That's the truth many of us already know. We have little Epsteins running around all over the place, and they’re all getting away with it.

The Epstein files share something in common with the climate crisis, the Covid crisis, and every other crisis we've ever faced. It's right there in front of anyone who says they want to take action.

They say they want to know the truth.

Because they don't.