Politic | Epsteins of the World and the Ugly Underbelly of Power |
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Photographs of individuals, released or concealed, is not the point. That there was somebody like Jeffrey Epstein should agitate societies across the world. This is not an exceptional phenomenon; every country has little or big Epsteins. This is not an episodic jolt; this is the culture of exploitation that sculpts power structures. That the ugly underbelly exists everywhere is not open to dispute.
And the rich and powerful aren’t wholly responsible for this evil. America knew what it was doing when it elected Donald Trump. His reckless dalliances and perverse attitude towards women, manifested through what was dismissed as locker-room talk, were known to the people. That he was a close friend of Epstein for decades was also not a secret. The truth of Epstein, who built an illicit empire using over 1,000 girls, mostly minor, for satisfying the lust of powerful politicians, businessmen and celebrities, was also in public domain much before Trump contested the presidential election for the first time.
America was probably not bothered; it had seen its Presidents mired in scandals; one of them – Bill Clinton – had become a horrid global spectacle for indecent exploitation of an intern, Monica Lewinsky. Little wonder, Clinton too emerged as the showpiece of Epstein files.
While insiders know there are people in India who have risen in politics and business by supplying girls to leaders and bureaucrats, what’s in the public domain is no less disgraceful. We have rapists, murderers, smugglers, blackmailers and criminals as public representatives at all levels, from top to bottom, getting elected again and again, despite public knowledge of wrongdoing.
Also read: As US DOJ Begins to Release Epstein Files, Remember the Victims
We have seen a petty politician gutting his girlfriend in a tandoor. We have seen an MLA wiping out the entire family of a girl who accused him of rape. We have seen a naked governor being massaged in a Rajbhawan. We have seen legislators watching porn inside the assembly. We have heard audios of actresses talking about a former Union........