After Epstein, How Can ‘Authorities’ Maintain Legitimacy?
Governments habitually lie. They lie so often that it is peculiar for governments to claim “authority” on anything other than falsehood. Before the Gutenberg press and general literacy, “authorities” announced self-serving lies in the public square. With the arrival of newsprint, “authorities” disseminated State propaganda as daily news. Radio and television revolutionized the mass manipulation of minds. The adoption of the personal computer, the rise of the Internet, the commercialization of pocket computers posing as handheld phones, and the sticky web of an ever-growing social media complex have made it possible for government “authorities” to reach inside every human brain and squish it into compliance. AI-powered machines now manufacture and disseminate lies faster than human-powered governments ever could.
Most people are only now realizing that — even in so-called “free” countries — government-sanctioned propaganda, censorship, and misdirection are pervasive and routine. To the surprise of citizens taught to “trust the authorities,” the unvarnished truth is a bitter pill to swallow: Governments regularly employ psychologically manipulative, and even exploitative, forms of information warfare against their own citizens. Politicians and generals tell lies to mobilize the American public for war. Economists and central bankers tell lies to justify money-printing that robs from the middle class and rewards wealthy elites. Government regulatory bodies tell lies about the safety of food and medicine before taking lucrative jobs inside the global food and pharmaceutical industries. The Chamber of Commerce calls the offshoring of blue-collar jobs and the importation of slave-produced crap “free trade.”
How can the word “authority” maintain any positive meaning when “authorities” are always wrong? At least since the First World War, scientific “authorities” have promised that human industry and mass commercialization would kill the planet in the “next few years.” After Trump thumped Hillary like a drum, Intelligence Community “authorities” concocted an elaborate scheme to frame the MAGA outsider as a Russian agent who threatened national security unless removed from office. When Bill Gates, Anthony Fauci, and the World Economic Forum sank the globe into mass COVID hysteria, health “authorities” promised that children would die unless they sat behind plexiglass-enclosed desks, their parents got experimental injections every few months, and every stranger wore at least three masks!
Since the Second World War, trust in “authority” has evaporated. Why? Perhaps because “authorities” routinely lie, keep secrets, and cover up crimes. Roughly three-quarters of Americans think the CIA killed President Kennedy. A top FBI official transformed a rather mundane Watergate scandal into a successful operation for taking down President Nixon after his landslide re-election victory. President Bush I pushed the “new world order.” President Clinton “did not have sexual relations with that woman.” President Bush II gave us endless war with few long-term successes. President Obama told us we could “keep” our doctors before doubling the cost of healthcare instead. Secretary of State Clinton was never prosecuted for keeping classified documents on an unsecured private server in her home, but President Biden made sure to send an FBI SWAT team to bust down President Trump’s doors.
Politicians, prosecutors, judges, and news media mouthpieces told us that 2020’s mass riots, arson, robbery, and murder were justified civil rights “protests” against racism. Those same “authorities” told us that J6 protesters seeking free and fair elections were “insurrectionists” and “terrorists.” Now those “authorities” tell us that anti-ICE insurrectionists terrorizing citizens and attacking federal agents are “protesting” for civil rights once again. When “authorities” describe riots as “protests” and protests as “insurrections,” words mean nothing.
Meanwhile, the average member of Congress enters office as a salaried “public servant” and exits office a millionaire! Inside every institution of “authority,” corruption is king!
A writer named Lucas Leiroz argues that revelations within the Epstein documents prove that “nothing legitimate remains in the Western world.” Predicting the “moral collapse of the elites,” he thinks the “systematic, organized, and ritualized” nature of their perversions and crimes constitutes nothing less than a civilizational “rupture.” Why? “When evidence emerges of extreme violence against children, of practices that go beyond any conventional criminal category, the discussion ceases to be legal and becomes civilizational.” The reason why people are fascinated with this scandal is that it undermines the legitimacy of so many powerful people in positions of “authority.” The very elites who have been exposed as monsters “continue to decide elections, wars, economic policies, and the fate of entire societies.”
Leiroz sees the Epstein scandal as the final straw for broad swaths of the public. “How can one continue to accept the authority of institutions that shielded this level of horror?” he asks. “How can respect be maintained for laws applied selectively by people who live above them?” Those are good questions. As “authorities” have been exposed as liars, the public has lost trust in them. Now that “authorities” have been exposed as “pedophiles, satanists, and cannibals,” the public is disgusted with them. When members of society “still retain some sense of limits” and members of the “ruling class” behave as if they were “outside the common human species,” the structures of power forfeit moral legitimacy.
Leiroz says, “After Epstein, nothing can continue as before.” In the months ahead, we will see whether he is correct. This much is certainly true: For three-quarters of a century, trust in “authorities” has steadily declined. Over the last couple decades, those “authorities” have proven to be frauds, grifters, and liars. Now many of these same “authorities” have been exposed as sick and depraved perverts whose actions are, as Leiroz describes, “vile and essentially evil.” How are ordinary citizens supposed to ignore “absolute evil,” while so many devils maintain positions of “authority”?
The devil is the father of lies. We should not be surprised when the same “authorities” who regularly tell us lies end up behaving just as wickedly as the devil, too.