- A monster built his empire on the insecurities of men who already had everything – except what matters most
It’s been quite the experience, reading about the staggering number of people from across the globe who had contact (and more) with Jeffrey Epstein, from Noam Chomsky to Prince Andrew, to Sarah Ferguson, to Zohran Mamdani’s mother, to prestigious lawyers, bankers, and so on.
It’s gotten to the point where one wonders who won’t pop up in the release of emails by the United States Department of Justice. The best pushback I’ve read on this came from a spokesperson for Bard College, who said that Woody Allen’s daughter got into the school on her merit, not because of Epstein, who, this person claimed, was such an accomplished liar that he’d take credit for the sun rising in the morning. Fair point, since it’s hard to imagine how one person can mutate into an influencer among so many people in so many places on so many issues. All while managing his core creepy enterprise of sexually trafficking young girls.
Which brings me to a personal concern about this whole sordid unraveling of lives and reputations in the aftermath of Epstein’s death (which I believe was a suicide the same way I believe Santa is a fat man in a red suit who comes down in a sled from the North Pole every Christmas). I can practically hear the howling of spouses, the speed-dialing divorce lawyers, the rush to protect/hide/dispose of assets in the run-up to the material stripping of those accused of perhaps another kind.
How is it, I cannot help but wonder, that so many prominent, well-positioned, well-off individuals not only had connections with – but seemed to seek out – contact and more with this one human being? Charm and a good line of bullshit cannot be the entire explanation. There has to be more. I’m no psychoanalyst, but I have a theory or two. Goes something like this:
No matter how high the mighty climb, no matter the perch from which they look down on the rest of us, the very fact of being a high climber looking down on mere mortals makes these folks feel a kind of kinetic insecurity, the kind that has them vibrating with worry, with fear, with self-recrimination, with endless wondering.
Am I good enough? Smart enough? Rich enough? Powerful enough? Who’s to my right, my left? Who’s climbing up behind me? What if the apex gets too crowded? Will I fall off? Be pushed? Then what? Who am I without being the mighty climber sitting atop my empire of royal doings, financial doings, academic doings, artistic doings, political doings?
It’s honestly got to be brutal to spend so much time figuring out how to be in, and how far in, with the people one deems it essential to be in with. How many favors get traded, and for what? Am I in for straight line transactions, or are there detours involving other people, creating interlocking webs of expectation and obligation? Who’s allowed to know? Who must never know? It’s just too much. Am I the favorite? I must be, mustn’t I? After all, I’m the richest/smartest/cleverest. He’d pick me, wouldn’t he? Why waste time with the others in my field? They can’t compare. Or can they?
I cannot imagine how paralyzing it must be to be so blindingly successful in your chosen field, and still not believe. In yourself, in your abilities, in your intelligence, in your worth as a human being, in the value of the relationships you have with intimate partners, children, parents, friends. To know at your core that none of that is enough for you and likely never will be. To turn to someone who, at some point along the way, made crystal clear that he ran the gamut from creep to monster. And to still need — and want — that person’s presence in your life, to seek out his counsel, his approval. There is something deeply sad about all of it.
The tragedy here is the abuse visited upon god knows how many young girls through the years. But the lesson might be that those who seem to have much — perhaps even everything — are missing something essential. There is a hole where a heart should be. There is knowledge, perhaps, but no wisdom. There is a kind of bottomless neediness that needed love that never came, that needed intimate connections that never materialized or nurtured, that never modeled right from wrong, that never championed what was worth championing, or forgave with grace, and taught humility.
To be the daughter of a man who never achieved a fraction of what Epstein’s friends did, but who towered over each and every one of them in every single way that matters, is a gift. To be the wife of a man who has done the same? Wow, just wow.
