The Source Code is the Same

Friends, you cannot talk about Epstein without talking about depravity. If you are a survivor of abuse, please decide whether this is an episode that makes sense for you. This was a rough week for those of us who have been assaulted, and I want you to be gentle with yourself. This conversation is about the system underneath a culture that produces a predatory worldview. People who treat the vulnerable in our society as less-than, who believe the planet is theirs to plunder, who find pleasure in domination and cruelty.

This week’s episode is about the water we’ve been swimming in. When you grow up in a culture that teaches you from the time you’re eight that men can expose themselves to you, and as you hit puberty they can grab you and do whatever they like - and there isn’t any recourse, you aren’t going to be protected, if you gather the courage to come forward you very likely will not be believed - the takeaway is that you are not safe in the world.

When you grow up understanding you aren’t safe, it affects the way you carry yourself, the way you walk into a room, the way you scan the environment, the way you think about your own value, the things you say out loud, and the things you keep to yourself. When the water is poisoned you build up immunity, you don’t taste the bitterness or feel the way it’s making you sick.

That doesn’t happen until later, when you’re old enough to realize when you’re spoken to in a way that’s dismissive, when you’re treated with disrespect, when you’re valued as an object and told to calm down and maybe try another diet - the thing that has been building up inside of you is rage, and the cure for what ails you is to open your mouth and breathe fire.

The system protects men like Jeffrey Epstein. Men who prey on young girls without remorse, and set up entire systems so other wealthy, powerful men can prey on them as well. There are even women who will help, women like Ghislaine Maxwell who kept her eye out for the most vulnerable girls, gained their trust, groomed them, trafficked them, and assaulted them along with Epstein. When there is an entire island where this is happening, a townhouse in New York City, a mansion in Florida, and 5,000 names in the Epstein files, it’s because the system is working to protect the wealthy and treat the children as expendable.

To be best friends with a man like Jeffrey Epstein for fifteen years, to have two dozen women come forward to accuse you of assault, to say yourself you “grab women by the pussy”, to say vile things about your own daughter, to laugh about how you walked in on young, naked women because you owned a beauty pageant so you could get away with it - and somehow become president, twice - is an irrefutable testament to the way people have been trained to think about girls and women.

When a woman comes forward to accuse a man of assault, she is attacked again, this time by the court of public opinion. What was she wearing? How much was she drinking? Does she come from “the wrong side of the tracks”? Is she attractive enough to have been assaulted? What does her social media look like?

Women attack as much as men. It is devastating, and it teaches women who have already survived one horror to think twice about going public. Especially if we’re talking about going up against a powerful man. People believe what they want to believe, and far too many people do not want to believe women. Ask yourself why that is.

This is a painful conversation about the water, friends. It is not an episode to listen to if there are children within earshot. All children should be safe. No child should have to hear about these kind of people, let alone deal with them. But this issue is pervasive, this is not just about Epstein, it’s not just about the fact that the president has made a deal with Maxwell and she is now in a minimum-security prison camp in Texas and will very likely be released back into society. It’s about corruption and power and systemic abuse. It’s about patriarchy and capitalism and white supremacy.

It’s about realizing there’s poison in the water, and speaking out loudly before it kills us all.

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