This article was originally published by John W. Whitehead at The Rutherford Institute.
Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.
“As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom.”—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World
Power corrupts.
Anyone who believes differently hasn’t been paying attention.
Politics, religion, sports, government, entertainment, business, armed forces: it doesn’t matter what arena you’re talking about, they are all riddled with the kind of seedy, sleazy, decadent, dodgy, depraved, immoral, corrupt behavior that somehow gets a free pass when it involves the wealthy and powerful elite in America.
In this age of partisan politics and a deeply polarized populace, corruption—especially when it involves sexual debauchery, depravity, and predatory behavior—has become the great equalizer.
Take Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile recently arrested on charges of molesting, raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls.
It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates. According to The Washington Post, “several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein’s parties.” At various times, Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”
This is part of America’s seedy underbelly.
As I documented in the in-depth piece I wrote earlier this year, child sex trafficking—the buying and selling of women, young girls and boys for sex, some as young as 9 years old—has become big business in America. It is the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second-most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.
Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.
It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.
According to a 2016 investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”
Who buys a child for sex?
Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.
Ordinary men, yes.
But then there are the extra-ordinary men, such as Jeffrey Epstein, who belong to a powerful, wealthy, elite segment of society that operates according to their own rules or, rather, who are allowed to sidestep the rules that are used as a bludgeon on the rest of us.
These men skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful, the wealthy and the elite.
Over a decade ago, when Epstein was first charged with raping and molesting young girls, he was gifted a secret plea deal with then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s current Labor Secretary, that allowed him to evade federal charges and be given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist: allowed to “work” at home six days a week before returning to jail to sleep. That secret plea deal has since been ruled illegal by a federal judge.
Yet here’s the thing: Epstein did not act alone.
I refer not only to Epstein’s accomplices, who recruited and groomed the young girls he is accused of raping and molesting, many of them homeless or vulnerable but his circle of influential friends and colleagues that at one time included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Both Clinton and Trump, renowned womanizers who have also been accused of sexual impropriety by a significant number of women, were at one time passengers on the Lolita Express.
As the Associated Press points out, “The arrest of the billionaire financier on child sex trafficking charges is raising questions about how much his high-powered associates knew about the hedge fund manager’s interactions with underage girls, and whether they turned a blind eye to potentially illegal conduct.”
In fact, a recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowing a 2,000-page document linked to the Epstein case to be unsealed references allegations of sexual abuse involving “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.”
This is not a minor incident involving minor players.
This is the heart of darkness.
Sex slaves. Sex trafficking. Secret societies. Powerful elites. Government corruption. Judicial cover-ups.
Once again, fact and fiction mirror each other.
Twenty years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut provided viewing audiences with a sordid glimpse into a secret sex society that indulged the basest urges of its affluent members while preying on vulnerable young women. It is not so different from the real world, where powerful men, insulated from accountability, indulge their base urges.
These secret societies flourish, implied Kubrick, because the rest of us are content to navigate life with our eyes wide shut, in denial about the ugly, obvious truths in our midst.
In so doing, we become accomplices to abusive behavior in our midst.
This is how corruption by the power elite flourishes.
For every Epstein who is—finally—called to account for his illegal sexual exploits after years of being given a free pass by those in power, there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) more in the halls of power and wealth whose predation of those most vulnerable among us continues unabated.
While Epstein’s alleged crimes are heinous enough on their own, he is part of a larger narrative of how a culture of entitlement becomes a cesspool and a breeding ground for despots and predators.
Remember the “DC Madam” who was charged with operating a phone-order sex business? Her clients included thousands of White House officials, lobbyists, and Pentagon, FBI, and IRS employees, as well as prominent lawyers, none of whom were ever exposed or held accountable.
Power corrupts.
Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.
We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.
A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and gets away with it.
Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sex crimes, government corruption, or the rule of law.
It’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.
It’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.
For every Jeffrey Epstein (or Bill Clinton or Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes or Bill Cosby or Donald Trump) who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds—thousands—of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder—in many cases, literally—simply because they can.
The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it.
The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex.
The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers and its total control of the populace.
Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.
Police officers will continue to shoot and kill unarmed citizens. Government agents—including local police—will continue to dress and act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies will continue to fleece taxpayers while eroding our liberties. Government technicians will continue to spy on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors will continue to make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.
And powerful men (and women) will continue to abuse the powers of their office by treating those around them as underlings and second-class citizens who are unworthy of dignity and respect and undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.
As Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the at the University of California, Berkeley, observed in the Harvard Business Review, “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing; when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. The powerful are more likely than other people to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.”
After conducting a series of experiments into the phenomenon of how power corrupts, Keltner concluded: “Just the random assignment of power and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical. They think unethical behavior is okay if they engage in it. People are more likely to stereotype. They’re more likely to stop attending to other people carefully.”
Power corrupts.
And absolute power corrupts absolutely.
However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.
As researchers Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky found, those in power not only tend to abuse that power but they also feel entitled to abuse it: “People with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want.”
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for too long now, Americans have tolerated an oligarchy in which a powerful, elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots. They have paid homage to patriotism while allowing the military-industrial complex to spread death and destruction abroad. And they have turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient.
We need to restore the rule of law for all people, no exceptions.
Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright-line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.
This culture of compliance must stop.
The empowerment of petty tyrants and political gods must end.
The state of denial must cease.
Let’s not allow this Epstein sex scandal to become just another blip in the news cycle that goes away all too soon, only to be forgotten when another titillating news headline takes its place.
Sex trafficking, like so many of the evils in our midst, is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness. It speaks to a far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.
If we want to put an end to these wrongs, we must keep our eyes wide open.
Police forces across the United States have been transformed into extensions of the military. Our towns and cities have become battlefields, and we the American people are now the enemy combatants to be spied on, tracked, frisked, and searched. For those who resist, the consequences can be a one-way trip to jail, or even death. –Battlefield America: The War on the American People, book description
Power corrupts. And absolute power corrupts absolutely. However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.
Been going on since the dawn of time. Shame you just can’t push them in a ditch and riddle them good with lead and then get your hand shook when its done.
Reper sleeper, agreed that’s the only solution for pedophiles. It works for other types of scum also.
Equal protection of the law implies equal enforcement of the law. The above hasn’t even address corporate felony. The corporation is charged with braking the law while no one within is held responsible. A prime example is Wachovia laundering $378 billion with a “B” and pays a fine of $160 million.
https://www.businessinsider.com/how-wachovia-laundered-billions-in-mexican-drug-money-2011-4
Interestingly a felony is by definition a crime severe enough to incarcerate the guilty for one or more years in prison. Obviously you can’t lock up a business. It’s also fascinating that such crimes can occur without human involvement.
Corruption isn’t in the system; corruption is the system.
“This culture of compliance must stop.”
Amen bra!
And all of their law enforcement protection, trained to observe are in effect Sargent Shultz, “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing”.
I’m sorry on any level, I just can’t think that pedophiles have any rights, or any power over children.
Will Jeffrey Epstein, Isreali Inteligence and pedophile win.
I have always thought that the country needs one more secret society, a group which simply makes evil doers disappear without a trace.
Grew up a half mile from a huge sexual predator. He was a diasabled WW2 hero……
Until he, his brother, nephew knocked up the daughter, neice sister. They all went to jail. Their house collapsed from rot.
I never had direct contact, I just saw the evil, from afar.
A neighbor girl was raped by boys groomed by this pedophile, no one was arrested. There was an air of unspoken evil. Can a child of ten or eleven even have the vocabulary to speak of this evil? Many children were groomed. They became pedophiles too.
It really is a disease. Until I was many years older, I didn’t have a clue/ understanding to what I heard mostly second and third hand.
A guy like Epstein was a master at the art of assaulting children.
Growing up I had a freind, who was assaulted by a different sexual predator. A business owner and pillar of the community on the far side of town. They are freaking everywhere.
He went down, never heard from my freind again.
Pedophiles leave a trail of destruction.
Every neighborhood had the house no one visited, or the houses you never trick or treated. It was always unspoken.
Well the Gov’t has proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that they cannot and or will not protect you and yours. SO my fellow citizens are we all going to continue to sit back on our lazy asses eating twinkies while all of this vile, horrible trash continues to plague our communities, our counties, our states, hell our entire stinking country or what is left of it that is. I unfortunately have very, very little faith in these United States and definitely have ZERO faith in all of the crooked, worthless Gov’t we have at every damn turn in our lives.
PTPO, if what I’ve been hearing about Epstein is true, then the day of reckoning for at least some of the elitist scum is much closer than anyone thought.
Deek Jackson, as Conspiracy Clown, asks whether you’re a pedo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwBo9vLX3uA
I think, the work he was looking for was hebephile.
According to this narrative, Epstein asks the reproductively-mature, young, young women, whether they want to. They are able to comprehend this line of discussion, and they get paid. Where is the abuse of power.
Deek Jackson, as Conspiracy Clown, asks whether you’re a pedo:
h ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kwBo9vLX3uA
I think, the word he was looking for was hebephile.
According to this narrative, Epstein asks the reproductively-mature, young, young women, whether they want to. They are able to comprehend this line of discussion, and they get paid. Where is the abuse of power.
Arrest all those under secret indictments,Clinton included!
More testimony to a fallen people. For starters we need to walk away from Sodom. Let God deal with Washington.
Then we need to restore liberty and our God-given rights as individuals to protect children and deliver justice to pedophiles.
What is pedophilia? Old man, young girl? How old? How young?
I recall about twenty years ago, I was looking at a legal book for something and I recall how some states allow girls to marry at fifteen. I just went and got the same book off my bookshelf. It’s latest copyright is 1984. Here’s what I found.
Age of marriage w/parental consent:
Kansa, Mass., Rhode Island: 12
Alabama, NY, Texas, Utah: 14
Idaho, Missouri, N. Dakota: 15
23 other states: 16
18 other states: 18
Kansas, Mass., Rhode Island: 12
Are these laws still the same? I don’t know. But my point is, not too many years ago, it seems pedophilia had a different definition than today.
Another interesting statistic in this book was that it is/was legal to marry your first cousin in 18 states.
Somehow, I counted wrong and typed the same line twice, but my point remains the same.
My grandmother started a large family. Those people took part in nightlife. What is the actual sin.
Most of the people, complaining, are just caught up in the mob, or they are parroting an arbitrary market control, about when is the moral time to start working.
Old enough to cook, clean, and babysit is old enough. Old enough to labor is old enough.
Epstein’s type never suffers seller’s remorse, never — until they are too old to have a legitimate family or to be viewed as sex objects.
in the 70,s if a girl was pregnant she could get married in Georgia at the age of 13 without parential consent.
I agree. We need to have a rational discussion on the age of consent. Because of the hypocrisy of the “moral majority” and so-called “feminists”, we have people moving the age of consent higher and higher and claiming 18 year olds and older are “children”. I have read people absolving women up to the age of 30 of adult responsibilities. That is nuts.
Throughout human history there has never been an age of consent. The concept is a recent legal invention. And it varies widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, culture to culture.
From a scientific basis, it should be at menarch, which occurs between 12 and 14 in most young women. Before that they are biologically children. This means Islam is the least scientific faith because they allow relationships with children as young as 9 (Yemen).
When you can support a a child feel free for both to create one. I believe the universal age in the USA when you become an adult is 18. Non consensual sex is rape.
Anyone involved in this vile, wicked, garbage should be taken out back and shot in the ear with a Glock 20, running Underwood 10mm!!
And knowing this, this evil, Americans cant even come together and hang those that deserve to be hung. Yet you key board commandos beat your chests and loudly proclaim ” form my cold dead hands!” Yeah, bullshit…. They laugh and continue their killing, stealing, and destroying, in you face, everyday!!!
CPB
Your inflammatory diatribe is attempting to initiate a response of threat of violence which would be recorded for future use against the responder.
See right through ya.
Yep,it’s the same advanced age keyboard commandos every day.
Retirees with nothing better to do than spend all day online.
CPB
You’re attempting to entice a poster to call for violence as a solution. That is exactly what TPTB want because the outcome would be an authoritarian, totalitarian, dystopian government as the masses cry for tough action to quell the violence.
As much as I hate to admit Clown World has a valid point. The only crime committed is having sex with women below the legal age of consent and solticiting a whore. those young women began working in the worlds profession at a very young age. they where well paid and knew exactly what they where doing whick is being a whore. heck you see sexually mature young women giving it away to losers and having multiple children with multiple fathers. and not receiving a penny in compensation. Ole slick willie certainly fucked a great number. But did you hear of him knocking them up? those women where paid $300 for a hand job. and a $1000 for a pussy fuck.
Castration therapy, and anal rape by other prison inmates, has helped many with such dark inclinations. Funny how men who like to rape others,dislike being on the receiving end.
Yes the age of consent needs to be examined. There are young women at 14 who look twenty. Those young women engaged in the worlds oldest profession. they simply started early. they where whore prostitutes.
Simple fact is they were having sex and they were ready for sex. And in some states, they are legal for marriage.
They could be having sex with their peers, or, making money doing tricks with older guys. With the state of the economy, doing tricks could be the better option for young women in poor households.
And history shows this was the norm up to the 1920s.
As much as we don’t like folks like epstien the klintons and other left wing socialist. It almost seems to be a victim less crime. Many schools in this country have day care for the Teen mothers. Teens who gave it away and got knocked up too boot.
Agree: if it is consensual and paid for then whose business is it anyway?
You can’t control people’s sexuality: that is a losing game. And don’t go on about it being immoral: the church ran an industrial scale child abuse syndicate for centuries, and Islam right now condones sex and marriage with children, but that is okay because it is their faith???!
No, the only crime here is blackmail and theft of public funds. HJ and BJ of politicians I really do not care about,
The thing is many times folks pass laws trying to legislate moral behavior. It never worked ever. prohibition never stopped the booze . making anything illegal doesn’t curtail it one little bit. all it does is make it go underground & black market.
Agree. And Trump should be careful: there are many incidents that involve him with young women and he used to be a buddy of Epstein,
Think about it: Trump ran casinos. What goes on at casinos and resorts? Prostitution. Of all kinds.
way back in the Day. musician Jerry Lee Lewis. Married his 14 year old cousin. And no problem here in the usa. But Great Balls of Fire. When he went to England the media villified him for something that was customary and legal in his home state. Myself I was 22 and my wife 15 when we got married. and we have been together almost 5 decades. And she was more mature at 15 than I was at 22. and she looked twenty with 38 DD hooters
Great story!
What we have here is the toxic mix of pseudo feminist agendas and old fashioned religious hypocrisy. That is where the whole agenda comes from to re-brand any woman between 14 and 30 as a “child”. Yet these same people are totally cool with Muslims marrying actual children and for Muslim madras to have widespread man-boy relationships.
But the truth is this: these old hags want to see beautiful, reproductive young women off the market because a) they want more LGBT folks and fewer babies and families, b) as the female population in some Western countries like the US have become obese and unattractive, more men have just looked elsewhere. These women harbour bitterness and jealousy.
The simple fact is women mature faster than men. And many young women are ready to have children and a family. And this is an optimal age for the babies health.
This is also an optimal time for them to enjoy sex; while they are at peek physical perfection. Older women lose their drive and these days, most lose their physical attractiveness and health, a turn off for attraction.
Those are the brutal truths of human life.
I say screw the old hags. Their agenda is a sad one. If they want to suck the life and vitality out of life why don’t they just move to Saudi Arabia.
Whitehead is a liar and a lefty. There is NO documentation that Trump has been on his plane, Bill 26, hillary 6, but no DJT. The author whould be applying at Black Lives Matter.
As this country has lost it’s religion, it plunges further and further from God’s Light of truth and love and shambles off into stygian darkness. No greater stink can enter betwixt nostril than this sin.
Darkness is a rejection of God’s standards.
In Darkness:
Love is replaced by Lust.
Mercy is replaced by Violence.
Forgiveness by implacability.
Truth is replaced by Lies.
The Little Ones suffer.
Jesus said that for those “who stumble one of these little ones, it’s as if a millstone would be wrapped around their neck and tossed into the sea”. ‘The Guardian angel of Little Ones are alway present in front of the Father’. If a Little one has no benefactor who will speak for them on earth, there is an angel to speak for them on high.
What other outcome would there be for a nation that aborts millions of babies every year. This is the logical conclusion of such evil. And it will touch everyone eventually, Euthanasia is next.
Secession is the only solution, we must have a Christian-Morals dominated nation, else we perish and drown in such evil. We must seperate from these Democrat Devils.