One would have thought the spectacle of a former state attorney general squirming under the hot lights of a congressional inquiry might offer a refreshing dose of accountability. Instead, Pam Bondi’s performance defending the handling of the Epstein files was a masterclass in the very bureaucratic obfuscation that has come to define our age of managed truths. It was, in many ways, a page ripped from the late Roman Empire’s playbook: when the barbarians are at the gate, send out a prefect to deliver a speech so convoluted that even the messengers lose their way.
Let us dispense with the pretence. The Epstein affair is not merely a legal scandal; it is a cultural Rorschach test. For the populist right, it is a symbol of elite corruption; for the progressive left, a symptom of systemic sexism. But for the intellectual historian, it is something far more troubling: a case study in the decadence of institutional authority. Bondi, a former prosecutor and Trump loyalist, stood before the committee not to answer questions, but to perform a ritual of deflection. She invoked “confidentiality agreements,” “ongoing investigations,” and “prosecutorial discretion” with the fluidity of a courtier reciting dynastic genealogies. The result was a zero-sum gain: the committee got no answers, the public got more confusion, and Bondi reinforced her credentials as a guardian of the status quo.
We have seen this before. In the Victorian era, the British establishment deployed similar tactics to smother the scandal of child prostitution in London’s East End. Then, as now, the cry was for “proper procedure” and “respect for the judicial process.” The Pall Mall Gazette’s “Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon” series in 1885 forced a parliamentary inquiry, which resulted in the Criminal Law Amendment Act. But the real corruption, the aristocratic rings and the police complicity, remained largely untouched. Sound familiar? Epstein’s network was not a rogue operation; it was a systemic feature of a society that protects its predators through a web of legal mutual assured destruction.
Bondi’s defence rests on a flimsy pillar: the claim that she was not in office when the most egregious documents were sealed. Yet this is like a Helot in Sparta arguing that he was not present when the helots were massacred. The system works because its participants, from prosecutors to judges to politicians, understand the unwritten rules. One does not rock the boat. One does not release the full truth. One does not endanger the delicate balance of power. This is not conspiracy; it is institutional inertia. And it is precisely this inertia that breeds the populist rage now threatening to tear apart the Western order.
Of course, the congressmen interrogating Bondi were not innocent lambs. They, too, play the game. The theatrical indignation, the pointed questions about redacted names: all are part of the performance. For in the end, both sides know that the full Epstein files would not merely incriminate a few decadent billionaires; they would expose the very machinery of influence that keeps Washington, London, and the other centres of globalism running. And neither party is willing to burn that machinery to the ground. So we get a show trial, a few headlines, and a quiet return to business as usual.
Perhaps the real lesson of the Bondi hearing is this: the decline of intellectual honesty within our institutions has reached a terminal stage. We no longer expect truth from our public servants; we expect management. We expect them to package the unspeakable into palatable segments, like Victorian housemaids sweeping the dust under the rug. The Epstein affair is not about one man’s depravity; it is about a civilisation that has lost the moral courage to confront its own decay. Pam Bondi is merely the latest custodian of that decay, defending the files with the same doggedness that a Roman senator would defend the annona. But the barbarians are no longer at the gate. They are in the room, and they are bored.
