The circus is back in town. This week, the former US attorney general shuffled before Congress to defend his handling of the Epstein files, a spectacle that has all the dignity of a Roman gladiatorial contest but none of the intellectual rigour. The usual suspects are howling for blood, demanding transparency, and invoking the names of the dead as if they were sacred relics. But let us pause, for a moment, to ask what this probe actually illuminates about the American soul.
Firstly, the Epstein affair is not a story about justice. It is a story about the decadence of the late empire. Epstein himself was a creature of the financial elite, a man who moved between the worlds of hedge funds, royalty, and intelligence services with the ease of a court eunuch. His suicide in jail was either a convenient escape or a message from the gods. Either way, it confirmed that the system protects its own. And now, Congress pokes and prods at the ashes, hoping to find something that will embarrass a political rival or fuel a cable news cycle.
The former attorney general’s defence was predictably procedural. He cited legal restrictions, national security concerns, and the sanctity of ongoing investigations. To the mob, this sounds like evasion. To the historian, it sounds like the eternal tension between order and transparency. The Victorians understood this: a certain opacity was necessary for the smooth functioning of the state. We moderns, in our hubris, demand everything be laid bare like a dissected frog. But what we gain in information we lose in mystery, and mystery is the glue that holds civilisations together.
Moreover, the obsession with Epstein’s client list reeks of a puritanical voyeurism. We pretend to be shocked that powerful men consort with underage girls. Was anyone truly unaware that the corridors of power are lined with vice? From the Roman orgies to the Victorian brothels, every age has its dark underbelly. The difference is that we have invented a moral crusade to go with our prurience. We want to punish the sinners, but only the ones we dislike. The rest will be quietly forgotten after the next news cycle.
The intellectual decadence is staggering. Instead of debating real issues: the decline of educational standards, the hollowing out of the middle class, the collapse of family structures we fixate on a dead paedophile and his famous friends. It is a distraction, a bread and circuses for the digital age. The Epstein files will not bring down the elite. They will be selectively leaked to embarrass a few, then buried in the archives of forgotten scandals.
So let us not pretend this is a moment of national reckoning. It is a moment of national farce. The former attorney general, whether he mishandled the case or not, is a symptom of a system that cannot police itself. The real question is not what he knew or when he knew it, but why we continue to believe that exposing the sins of the powerful will somehow cleanse us. It will not. It will only confirm what we already know: the empire is rotting from within.
And what of the victims? They are real, and their suffering is genuine. But turning their trauma into a political football is a desecration. If Congress truly cared, it would pass laws that actually protect children, rather than chasing headlines. But that would require work, and work is not as satisfying as a good witch hunt.
In the end, the Epstein files probe is a mirror reflecting our own moral confusion. We are a society that loves to condemn but refuses to look inward. We demand accountability from everyone except ourselves. Until that changes, every hearing, every leak, every retweeted outrage will be just another step towards the fall. The barbarians are not at the gates. They are in the committee rooms, and they are us.
