The More Things Change

One could save time and whip out old newspaper headlines and just repost them again today.

With great thanks to God, I have passed through 60 years. And I don’t feel a day over 57. If I were to write down everything for which I am grateful, even the patient editors at Townhall would say that an 80-page opinion piece is too long. I spent the occasion with family, and for that I am truly grateful.

We tend to get very sentimental about how things were in the past. And while we definitely have far better technology today than we did in my youth, there are still things from the 1970s and 1980s for which I am very grateful. I am glad that we grew up without internet and cellphones. We used to play outside, go to the park, ride our bikes down to Lake Michigan, or spend every weekend trying to figure out if we should go bowling again, see a new movie Like Star Wars or Indiana Jones, or just sit around and shoot the breeze. And while nobody goes to a hospital and asks for the 1982 version of the treatment he needs, it was good to go to Harvard when it was only a bastion of liberalism and not yet a lefty/jihadi dump. It was good to sit around and talk to roommates for hours and not go through Facebook postings or answer instant messages. Again, we have incredible technology in our lives; I am grateful that we did not have so much of it when my cohort and I were youngins.

The best way to understand something oftentimes is to consider its opposite. Many, including Donald Trump supporters, are flummoxed that the Department of Justice (DoJ) and FBI have pulled a 180 and said that there was no Epstein client list, he did not blackmail anybody, and that he killed himself and there was nobody else to prosecute. Not long ago, we were told of a client list sitting on Pam Bondi’s desk. We were regaled with a truck full of files coming from the recalcitrant New York FBI office to Washington. We were told that there were 10,000 videos that needed to be carefully screened prior to their public dissemination. So what happened? One often learns in life that government is a 90 percent proposition. Around 90 percent of the time, a government behaves according to the rules and expectations of the people who put it in power. In the U.S., the Congress does not seem to do much, but as we saw with the Big Beautiful Bill, it can actually convene, debate and vote. There is around 10 percent of the time when all of the rules and laws on the books appear to go dark. We are now experiencing one of those periods.

In Israel, there is a deceased special forces soldier whose picture is absolutely forbidden to be shown. He was killed in battle years ago, but to this day, one can say his name but it is illegal to show his image. Apparently, there are processes in Lebanon in which he was involved which could be adversely affected if certain people there knew that they had been dealing with an Israeli agent and not the person that they had been told. Israel used its censor power over Iranian missile hits so as not to help the mullahs aim and also to keep the details of damage secret. What Pam Bondi and Kash Patel are doing is circling the wagons to protect the government and its agencies. Let’s do a thought experiment. Mike Benz has noted that when Epstein was prosecuted in Florida, prosecutors there were told that he was an intelligence asset. And he was apparently involved in certain secret activities related to Iran-contra. Whatever were Epstein’s personal preferences, he apparently was a government asset for period unknown and purposes not fully known.

Now, let’s say that Bondi lets her hair down and puts out all of the information on Epstein. Let’s think about the implications. Intelligence activities not known by the public would become known and if still relevant, possibly compromised. We know the names of some very heavy hitters who used to hang out with the disgraced financier. When you publish a video of them in very compromising conditions, what happens next? Do you arrest Bill Gates, who has a lot of friends in the globalist/internationalist world? Do you bar Ehud Barak from entering the country? Do you put the cuffs on sitting members of Congress? Do you demand the extradition of Prince Andrew and risk relations with England? Do you want to expose DOJ and FBI inaction because the CIA and its partners put an invisibility cloak over their guy? If the DOJ and FBI release names, videos and details of Epstein and his many friends and clients, the U.S. government and governments far and wide might not be stable entities the following morning. It was certainly quite ham-handed to say that a list is on Bondi’s desk and then claim that there is no list. Or that many men were involved in the depraved activities of Epstein’s island and then not turn over detailed travel logs. We are told that there are horrible graphic videos, but apparently nobody was involved in them. We know about his plane and the many powerful people who apparently flew to his private island. Now we are made to believe that all they did was drink tea and play bridge. I say that everything should be made public, but I don’t have to deal with the fallout if things go really wrong afterwards.

When Winston Churchill was prime minister during the war, he banned strikes and many other peacetime activities. During war, people are more willing to accept reduced rights and rationing for the good of the nation. But with the Epstein saga, we are witnessing the mass protection of the wealthiest and most powerful people in the world—and possibly the intelligence agencies—for the benefit of….? One would have expected the sleight of hand of one day there is a list and the next day there isn’t under Joe Biden. But Donald Trump has kept his campaign promises and it was stated repeatedly that the Epstein material would be made public. Apparently it is so hot, so damning, that even this administration has to take a knee and not give the people what was promised to them.

When we were growing up, not only did we think that every Soviet soldier was 6’3” and blond, but also that only the commies lied to their people. But as we got older, we learned that our own government often hid its actions from the American people, too. Sometimes it was out of embarrassment; other times it was out of operational necessity. But in the end, governments led by Democrats and Republicans have at times concluded that they do not want to be straight with We The People.

There was that old Trump story that if you owe a million to a bank, you have a problem. If you owe the bank a billion, the bank has a problem. Apparently Jeffrey Epstein and his activities are so radioactive that even generally open people like Bondi and Patel cannot release the details of his sordid life and horrific activities. That is a terrifying state of affairs that justice for his victims is not important enough to justify release of the material that may or may not have been on Bondi’s desk. If you heard a collective sigh of relief, it came from the rich and powerful who don’t need to retain lawyers, at least not yet.