Epstein Mania, Cont'd

I’m just gonna spitball on this, a topic everyone else seems to care about more than me. It testifies to my isolation from the mind of the public. Or I would prefer to say, it testifies to the primitive mental life of the masses. Mankind’s survival is not a foregone conclusion, even setting aside the killer asteroid or a new, deadlier, pandemic.

My new theory. The general public cares about Epstein insofar as they have rolled up all their considerable troubles and disappointments into caring about the worst thing they can think of — a conspiracy of pedophiles — and finding an enemy to accuse of it. This animates no small number of Trump supporters. The supreme irony is that Trump is as tangled up in a real conspiracy, in the sense of a mutually-protecting network of miscreants, as anyone.

Do I think Epstein killed himself? No, but I’ve confessed to a weakness for conspiracy theories. I’m not interested in wallowing in any of the details. The latest boomlet in this vein is news that the infamous video with the tiny gap was not even of Epstein’s cell. Well!

So Trump’s political problems start with betraying a segment of his own supporters and would end with him being exposed as Epstein-level guilty. We seem to be trending in this direction, with the easing up of the punishment of Epstein confidant Ghislaine Maxwell. The only question is whether she transitions to house arrest or slips on a fatal banana peel.

The saddest part of all this is the posture of the Democratic establishment, which is trashing the most dynamic components of its potential voters, led by such figures as Zohran Mamdani, while running on “I’m not Trump.”