Best Friends Forever, a 2025 statue created by activists to protest Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein's relationship / Photo by Joe Flood / CC BY 4.0
I’ve always known that corruption exists among the powerful. History is full of examples of the horror human beings are capable of inflicting on each other. We are taught some of the worst examples with the idea that we can learn from the past in order to create a better future. But that perspective, that evil happened long ago and far away, conditions us to believe it can’t happen here and that it isn’t happening now.
We delude ourselves into believing we are safe from the worst atrocities, separated by time or distance. And to be honest, most of us don’t even think about it. In our complacency of comfort, we assume that our systems of justice and accountability will protect us and our way of life.
I mean, this is America, right? Where the good guys always win and the bad guys always get caught? Where the law protects us and no one is above the law?
I’m a cynic about conspiracy theories. I’ve always thought that the types of large-scale coverups necessary to pull off some of the more far-fetched conspiracy stories would be nearly impossible. There’s always a whistleblower, a witness, someone willing to speak up. Secrets are hard to keep.
So, when I read about the heinous allegations contained in the Epstein files released at the end of January, I had a visceral reaction of disgust and disbelief. I have been struggling to understand how so many people knew, so many participated, and so many have gotten away with this level of corruption and criminality for so long.
I didn’t want to believe it was as bad, depraved, inhumane, cruel, and evil as it most certainly is. No fictional evil can come close to the horrors that are still buried in those files. And those files are only a tiny fraction of the scope of man’s inhumanity to man that has existed since our ancestors first learned to inflict violence and torture on each other.
I have always believed in an inherent goodness in all human beings. I thought that narcissism and psychopathy was a rarity that our system of laws and justice could mitigate. Instead, our political and legal systems have been twisted and co-opted to facilitate the worst nightmares imaginable.
And those systems have concentrated corruption at the highest levels.
John Dalberg-Acton wrote, “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” He was writing to Anglican Bishop Creighton in 1887 to warn that the pope and British royalty must be held to the same moral standards as everyone else, otherwise any standards of morality become meaningless.
In spite of what we are told by politicians and the media, what is happening today isn’t about left vs. right or Democrats vs. Republicans. This is about one set of rules for most of us, and another set of rules for the powerful elite. Or, to put it more accurately, it’s a set of rules that doesn’t apply to the powerful elite.
In the last several decades, wealth inequality in the United States has surpassed the inequality that existed before the Great Depression. And like the industrialists of the Gilded Age, the wealthiest are using that wealth to skew government policy in their favor and further enrich themselves.
The most powerful politicians and corporations aren’t showing us their loyalty to the Constitution and the people of the United States; they are demonstrating their loyalty to the few at the expense of the many.
I’ve been wondering for over a decade how Russia went from being viewed as the enemy of the free world, like they were when I was serving in the military, to being treated like a benign business partner. We now overlook the damage Russian disinformation campaigns have inflicted on our democracy, ignore the security threat to Europe and our allies, and weaken the alliances we’ve been building for eighty years. This realignment of world power doesn’t make sense until you think about what the Epstein files have revealed.
It’s not just the sex trafficking, the crimes against children, the violence, and the abuse by those in Epstein’s network. It’s that the network is bigger and broader than one person and his coconspirators. What the Epstein files have revealed is an international network of corruption that doesn’t care about loyalty, democracy, the law, or governments. Those in the network only care about what they can extract from the rest of the world.
Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor (formerly Prince Andrew) was arrested not for his potential crimes against children, but for sharing state secrets. Many other prominent individuals, both in the U.S. and elsewhere, have been fired or are resigning from their positions because of their relationship with Epstein. They may not all have participated in Epstein’s depravity, but they are all complicit.
There are so many names of prominent and powerful people in those files that it begs the question of how this level of corruption and criminality could go on for so long.
Power has a way of protecting itself. And proximity to power co-opts others into the corruption.
Power can silence those who speak out against it through suppression and distraction. With continuing media consolidation by the wealthiest, the loss of independent journalism, and social media algorithm manipulation, that power to silence and manipulate has only increased.
The powerless have not been silent, they just haven’t been heard. Like countless victims before them, Epstein’s victims have been speaking out for years; but they have been minimized, ignored, and disbelieved. We must not be complicit with our own silence.
It is tempting to give up hope and think that nothing can change. That there will always be the haves and the have-nots. But we have power, too.
In the animated movie A Bug’s Life, a corrupt gang of grasshoppers is challenged by an ant trying to organize against the extortion of his colony. The leader of the protection racket, Hopper, says, “You let one ant stand up to us, then they all might stand up! Those puny little ants outnumber us a hundred to one, and if they ever figure that out, there goes our way of life!”
We commoners outnumber the elite a million to one. If we work together and stand up, we can overcome the corruption of the powerful.
Corruption can be toppled.
Ted Miller grew up around the world but now lives in Richland with his wife. He’s a runner, actor, singer, nuclear engineer, and graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy.
Ted believes that if more people worked toward love and understanding instead of giving in to fear and divisiveness, the world would be a better place.
