It’s darkly funny to me that the “Epstein Files” stunt from this spring was such a nothing-burger, but the actual Epstein emails released last week are, in fact, jam-packed with scandal and the dirty laundry of power. I’ve looked on with horror as we’ve learned of subplots like the unbearable creepiness of Larry Summers and figuring out who is Bubba? (It’s pretty clear…) But I think there’s both so much here, and our newspapers are so depleted, that it’s hard to find good explanations of the bigger picture. So I appreciated this episode of the Time of Monsters podcast, “Jeffrey Epstein and the American Empire.” Here’s guest Van Jackson laying out how he sees Epstein fitting into the broader American political scene:
Epstein is the embodiment of power politics in neoliberal globalization. And that happens to be very corrupt at its core. So this thing that we called “the International Global Order”—in Washington there’s a romantic gloss on what that was—but what that really was was agents like Epstein profiteering from world affairs and helping consolidate state control of societies. So American hegemony imposed a kind of imperialist peace on the world, especially in Asia. And that imperialist peace was basically peace for rulers but imperialism for the ruled. American hegemony secured ruling class solidarity, basically, but against working class interests.
Chaser: “How the Elite Behave When No One Is Watching: Inside the Epstein Emails.”
