The Epstein Consensus

Post-Comprehension

Post-Comprehension

— 5 min read
The Epstein Consensus
(Photo of Trump and Epstein with added colors)

Recently, Trump’s DOJ has reported that the Epstein client list doesn’t exist despite the Trump administration's earlier promise to release it. Well, kind of. Trump was actually apprehensive about releasing files on Epstein in an interview a while back. But the news is, Trump is a hypocrite! A quick and easy moral story with a quick and easy moral villain, the infamous pedophile and child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. This essay isn’t about Epstein the person, who (it probably goes without saying) was a tremendously vile human being that Being isn’t sad to see die. Rather, let’s talk about Epstein as an idea, a source of universal hate that all can come together to rally against. It’s not a secret that American liberal democracy is dying, and liberals themselves have done a poor job at curbing its slow cries of suffering. So this story of Trump's hypocrisy is being used by many liberal outlets to try to achieve a moral majority against the MAGA movement by reinforcing seeds of doubt in them about Trump’s authenticity to make America great again. 

The old adage is “divide and conquer,” but in liberal societies, that isn’t true. The actual motto is “unite and conquer,” as constitutional liberalism requires a steady sense of overlapping consensus in order to function governmentally day-to-day. This means using all opportunities to try and take existing divisions in society and find the “middle ground,” as it were. Not the literal middle, as some mistake it for, but taking two sides and reconciling any violence that might pour between by getting both sides to agree to a set of standards. For example, the “middle ground” between a Klansman and a BLM protester isn’t “half racism, half social justice,” but rather the idea that “despite our differences, it's important to remember that everyone should fight for their cause through the proper channels of expertise and elections.” Hence, the Klan and BLM are allowed to exist until either attempts to fight beyond such parameters. Always remember, it's ok to disagree so long as you agree to disagree when voting day comes around. You might say, “But wait, liberal society is dividing and conquering by creating an enemy out of MAGA.” Well, the point of division here isn’t to mobilize the people, except during election seasons, but rather to restore them as semi-passive citizens and leave it to the state to carve out those deemed irreconcilable to overlapping consensus. Hence, facilitating the modus vivendi, pluralism of a “free society,” as multiple curated coverings create a sense of freedom. 

After all, everyone can get behind hating a pedophile—Democrats and Republicans, upper and lower class, pro-choice and pro-life—and why shouldn’t they? But the reason MSNBC, Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, etc., are running so much coverage on this isn’t to find justice or resolve the larger systemic issues that lead to the Jeffrey Epsteins of society existing, but rather to focus everyone’s attention on rediscovering the overlapping consensus and conforming back to liberal democratic standards. By restoring the faith of the general populace in liberal democracy, the hope is to un-elect Trump and the rest of those who support him. One might think that Epstein’s existence is endemic to how power corrupts and shows how the elites of society can get away with a lot of damage to ordinary people, but the lesson that constitutional liberalism wants you to learn about all this is that “actually, Epstein is an outlier and that only better elites can defeat people like him.” The image of Trump with Epstein for them is the perfect visual for trying to get people to think that Epstein only got away with his crimes because the people elected the wrong elites, but let's keep in mind that Epstein did most of his crimes before Trump’s presidency. The “justice” of overlapping consensus is to imprison Epstein for not exhibiting the right behavior for an elite to have. This same sense of justice would also imprison the impoverished for committing violence to get bread, too. Since they have committed the crime of violating their proper behavior as a laborer/consumer.

While the justice of constitutional liberalism is demoralizing, which is partially the point, as it demands you put trust into faceless institutions. Let us not think that the justice of authoritarian societies is somehow better. As the populace is organized in one of two ways: friend-enemy mobilization or passive traditionalism. In the first, the people are mobilized against the enemies of society towards defending their friends, as used by populists, fascists, etc., creating the clarity of the friend-enemy distinction. While this is obscured in constitutional liberalism, which creates a sense of purposelessness in some, for many, it makes life feel stable, as they believe that any enemies of society will be taken care of by its elites and not them directly. The “justice” of the friend-enemy distinction is to kill Epstein for defying the “morally good people” and exhibiting the “degenerate values of the morally wrong.” Reinforcing a suffocating sense of silence, which, while able to remove someone as vile as Epstein, will also remove many innocent people as well for merely having the wrong cultural or biological values.

The second has the people filled with a more pacifying sense of completeness as elites take a more active role over them, and they are depoliticized into serving traditional structures or consumerist habits, as seen in authoritarian conservative and authoritarian liberal societies. The latter of which typically attempts to dissolve towards a liberal democracy. Authoritarianism in general replaces the overlapping consensus with an enveloping oneness. While the “free society” of liberal democracy uses means of plural unity to oppress its people by seeking bipartisan support for prisons and executions. The “justice” of passive traditionalism is to kill Epstein for defying traditional top-down powers, which again, would also brutally punish many of the kids Epstein would’ve victimized for daring to think creatively outside of rigidly strict state-enforced doctrines.

The anarchist response to the overlapping consensus and enveloping oneness is to break both with an infinite consciousness of free association. Justice here is found in an unbound agency where the gross accumulations of wealth to the few are not felt, where the dogmas and hegemonic values of authoritarianism are lost in a complexity of human variety. In such a place, an Epstein would not exist, as children would have an arsenal of immense defensive capabilities at their disposal to rebel against the actions of such an abuser. Anarchy loves her children, and so in anarchy, all pedophiles find no means or escape.

A few examples of the liberal coverage:

Further Readings on liberalism, populism, and anarchism by Being:

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