Is it too much to dream that just once we got the whole story behind one of these Jeffrey Epstein-like episodes. … and that we got it within weeks, not years-to-decades after the event?
Of course you, me and every pig flying overhead thought “conspiracy” when we heard Epstein killed himself. As every pundit has been saying, the guy with possibly criminal-quality stories to tell about Presidents, royalty, other politicians, Nobel-level academics and god knows who else, was the highest profile prisoner in US custody when — we’re to believe — the overworked, screwed-up jailers in Manhattan just kinda forgot about him long enough for Epstein to hang himself (with what? from what?) in the cell that against standing policy he had to himself.
All that would be highly suspicious enough were it not for the fact that the man who will now “oversee” the investigation into what happened is … Bill Barr, the raw embodiment of precisely the kind of institutionalist corruption that routinely drops a dense official shroud on uncomfortable truths.
Lord knows there are hundreds of truly insane conspiracy theories choking the sluice gates of our infotainment culture. Think Hillary Clinton and that child sex ring run out of a DC pizza parlor as an example of what a certain quality of thinker is prepared to believe. But … but … unlike the self-proclaimed “cooler heads” of media and government, people who protect their professional credibility by reflexively assuring us that, “You know, I’m not a big conspiracy theory guy”, the plain fact is that throughout human history individuals have plotted together to steal, cheat and murder to protect their nefarious interests. Why, it’s almost as basic as breathing and self-defense. Despite what we here in ‘Murica prefer to think, conspiracies are not the sole provenance of medieval royal courts and Russian apparatchiks.
Proof is everything, of course. And that’s where the likes of characters like Bill Barr are so frequently present and prepared to slow the hunt for truth, cloud up transparency and bury come-what-may resolution under a cloud of convoluted legalism, often in the name of “healing” and “moving on .”
Like you, I have no idea what went down with Epstein over the weekend or what, if anything, Barr already knows. But, based on what we do know, almost entirely from the reporting of Julie K. Brown and The Miami Herald, everything about Epstein’s sweetheart “prosecution” in Florida a dozen years ago stinks like an open sewer. And … and … we still have no real idea how Epstein assembled a financial empire that clearly required the liquid cash wherewithall of an actual billionaire, not a false facade like some cheesy con-man making a show with a leased Maserati.
The larger point being that this — again — is one of those episodes where intelligent, fully-functioning adults have little to reason to believe — much like as in Russia — they will ever get the whole story from their government officials. Maybe from Ms. Brown or another news organization … work that will be derided as “fake news” by those of whom we are most suspicious, but not from the most senior people in charge of the “investigation”/creation of “alternative facts.”
Let me then apologize for this eruption of skepticism, cynicism and faithlessness. Maybe it’s just me. But I really don’t think so.