Dezy Delaceur

“The piercing eye of Justice [Dike] bright, I sing, placed by the throne of heaven’s almighty King,
To thee, revenge and punishment belong, chastising every deed, unjust and wrong;
Whose power alone, dissimilars can join, and from the equality of truth combine:
For all the ill, persuasion can inspire, when urging bad designs, with counsel dire,
For thou art ever to the good inclined, and hostile to the men of evil mind.
Come, all-propitious, and thy suppliant hear, when Fate’s predestined, final hour draws near.”
– Orphic Hymn LXI. To Justice [Dike]

While lying around with a cold for the past week, I’ve had a lot of time to glance through, ruminate on, and feel frustrated about the Epstein files that have just been released by the US Department of Justice. A few days ago, I wrote a Tumblr post on my thoughts on the matter which has sat in my drafts up until now and has been rewritten in various ways three times now. I am still not certain, for the record, that it is worded in just the perfect way I’d want it to be, but I cannot stomach sitting on it for much longer.

There are a lot of funny things I’ve noticed happening around the files: Importantly – and what I will be discussing today – a great degree of water-muddying, a seemingly disproportionate degree of civic duty, and a seemingly complete lack of justice. These all have greater implications for the future our society on a national or even global scale. I say this as someone who has been heavily invested in the Epstein situation since the investigation became public knowledge several years ago and spends enough of my time thinking and studying about the whys of humanity at large to comfortably consider myself a type of philosopher.

You may choose to skip over this essay if you must, whatever your reasoning for doing so may be. It is a heavy topic – maybe the heaviest – in the sea of heavy topics we currently find ourselves in courtesy of other present national and global circumstances. Really, I would encourage anyone who is feeling disheartened by the current news cycle to take a step away from it, from social media, from people who push you to maintain focus on it. If you can stomach it, however, please hear me out.

My Relationship with Political Talk

I would first like to recognize that this essay is not typically aligned with my usual posts, articles, and content. Up until now, I have kept my sociopolitical thoughts, theories, and opinions largely to myself or among a few close friends and family members. This is, in large part, because I am exceeding aware that careful reading, critical thinking, and a sense of nuance are astoundingly absent from the modern dialogue. Any public statement or lack thereof tends to result in the immediate formation of assumptions and plastering of labels coupled with the knee-jerk spewing of venom and/or dismissal from any sort of meaningful continued conversation. Today’s public forum is little more than a violent bacchanal.

Additionally, while I do try to be authentic while also maintaining anonymity, I am a utopian at heart, and my focus is largely on inspiring others to make the most of their own lives, to share my ideas on how to best navigate the world at large, and to offer my philosophies on how we can try to make the world a better place knowing that utopia is truthfully unattainable. I can be flowery and romantic. I can be geeky and childlike. I can be honest and sardonic. I can and have been all these things, and none of the things I’ve felt like sharing while being those things have required me to align myself 100% with a faction without nuance or to publicly disclose all my politics thoughts and beliefs. You may find portions of various thoughts and beliefs in my work, naturally, but for the moment, the internet does not (and likely never will) know them all. Not in the world’s current state.

Even having said all this, I am sure people will still assume things about me. They will comb my words and interactions and string it all into ideas that likely are not there. They will take my lack of public speaking on various matters as a lack of care about them. All this and more, because the label of ‘human’ matters less and less than the bouquet of manmade labels which grows bigger in size with each passing day. I’ve experienced this kind of response for much less regarding topics unrelated to politics. So be it.

Literacy and the Verbal Tabloid

For several uncomfortable years now, I’ve watched people grasp onto headlines, pluck up keywords, and draw conclusions to fit their beliefs and preferences. This has resulted in the rapid spread of fallacious information and information otherwise out of context. People will run and share what they claimed to have learned to their friends, family, and social media following. Those who trust them will believe them. Those who believe them will carry it further. People do this regardless of political self-descriptor, and it has been going on since before LLM technology was introduced. (Though, as a note, this is not to say that bought-and-paid-for corporate dividenformation isn’t a reality. A topic for another time.)

This is happening now with the Epstein files. People are leaving information out, adding information where there is none, and taking many of these documents out of context. And the thing is: We don’t have to make things up to justify our feelings about them. The content within these files, from the portions looked into, are very bad. Distributing false information only serves to discredit and distract from the things that actually happened. It’s the whole basis for why the term “conspiracy theory” is associated with gullibility, a lack of intelligence, and/or psychological instability. Nowadays, we have to tip-toe around pointing out the red flags surrounding people in positions of power for fear of the assumption mobs which will inevitably follow.

There is also the issue of cherry-picking when it comes to deciding which villain of the litter is one’s favorite to focus on. Again, people do this regardless of political self-descriptor. They’ll point to the evidence which gives them, in their minds, the right to say, “I told you so.” They will then conveniently gloss over the evidence which implicates the people they’ve supported. This is simply inconsistent. You either care about justice or you don’t. Admitting to having been wrong doesn’t make you a bad person.

And being consistent – that’s the key here, perhaps even to repairing at least some facets of societal relations. If you claim to be on the side of truth, you should always seek to verify information and hone your discernment. If you claim to be aware that power is capable of being corrupted, you should always be open to the possibility that people in positions of power could be corrupted. If you claim to have particular strong moral values, you should be willing to denounce people you may have previously propped up when learning that they have gone against those values (and you should avoid going against those values yourself, especially). Humans are imperfect creatures. For us, being consistent does not mean being forever righteous and unchanged; it means accepting growth as it comes and adapting our moral codes to fit the new wisdom that comes with it.

As far as the files themselves go, you can absolutely continue to hear out your current sources of information on the matter, but you should also follow through with confirming that information before you begin sharing it as fact. The website Jmail makes the files a lot easier to parse through. Keep in mind, however, that we can only take the information as it is given to us. Emails which come from mailing lists do not mean that a person has had direct contact with Epstein and his ilk. Direct contact with Epstein does not necessarily mean involvement with or knowledge of the horrible things he’d done. Further, there is a great deal of information which has been redacted or withheld. The information in these files is likely only the tip of the iceberg.

As one final note on this matter: It is also perfectly fine to admit when you just don’t know something.

The Implication of Inaction

So many of us have the same question: What are we doing about this? Is this just another bit of passing fodder in the 24-hour news cycle to be washed away by the Next Big Topic™? And even if there has been, is currently, or will be a thorough investigation, how can we guarantee honesty and transparency? I have seen a few stories about consequences cropping up in world news. I have seen talks of a few protests happening here and there within the US. I have seen people voicing their frustrations in abundance; I’m doing that right now. When I consider the history of outrage and action in the US, however, it seems kind of disproportionate to me. I’ve seen people on both sides hold massive loud protests over circumstances they felt passionate about. Can this not be another? And with a great degree of common ground between a population greatly divided, no less? Have we gotten too desensitized? Are we feeling too tired? Are our priorities broken?

I have to wonder, as well, if this is all by design, because the reality of this situation is very equalizing in a lot of ways. Those in high positions of power – the ones we prop up as heroes, the ones we trust to make national and global decisions, the ones we let lay the groundwork for the whole of our society – are free to view themselves as being above us. And why wouldn’t they? The average person doesn’t have the same say or the same access to resources or the same connections or the same influence or the same loopholes or the same immunity from law that the people in those positions do. I’m not saying that other matters of concern become unimportant in the fact of the Epstein situation. I’m saying that multiple things can be true at once. There’s a lot in the US that needs fixing, but I am certain that none of it can really be fixed if people in positions of power continue going unchecked.

If nothing is done about this and it fades into obscurity the same way it has the past few times it’s come to public attention, it will be viewed by these awful people as a passive thumbs-up to keep doing whatever they want whenever they want and without consequence. We know this happens. We’ve seen this happen. According to AP News, the investigation started in 2005, and Epstein’s arrest was in 2019. This means, for the past 7-ish years, the people who are supposed to protect us have had access to information on at least some percentage of the people who were involved in some way – be it direct involvement or lying by omission – and nothing has been done to hold those people accountable in that window of time.

I am not saying all of this because I feel like I’m immune to misinformation and propaganda; I’m not. I am not saying all of this because I feel like a blog post on an obscure corner of the internet is an effective form of action; it’s not. I am not saying all of this because I feel like I have the definitive answers to this problem; I don’t. I am saying all of this because I am deathly afraid of what letting this go means for the future of our world. Things are bad now, and they have the potential to get infinitely worse. The only ideas I’ve got are to keep the topic circulating and to protest for accountability on a national or even global scale specifically in areas where government entities and large corporations will have their comfort and their finances impacted until every single person with a connection to Epstein has been held accountable. Everything needs to be publicly investigated.

And that may be dangerous. I don’t even know how to go about starting a movement or organizing a protest like that. The most I can hope for with this essay is that it inspired people to come together, to brainstorm, and to act. I myself am trying to muster the courage to look into these things for myself if no one else does, but I am also happy to hear out and support the efforts of more experienced activists working toward the same goal. I’m also working on collecting annotated and directly-sourced notes of my own regarding the files that I will eventually share, though I imagine it will take a very long time to completely get through.

For now, though, I need a breather. In the meantime, I just hope that this message finds the people who needed to see it. I hope that we can come together to solve this. I’d even be happy to learn for certain that we are all wrong about everything and that it really was a crime that really was just confined to a select few people, but I doubt this, and in other regards, I am admittedly not as optimistic as I’d like to be. No one we once trusted is coming to save us, so we can only rely on each other.

Humanity’s future depends on what we do next.