Epstein and elite vice

How the degeneracy of our elite reflects broader vices in our society

Jailbait you look so good to me
Jailbait won't you set me free
Jailbait you look fine, fine, fine
And I know I've got to have you in a matter of time

Well, I don't care if you're just thirteen
You look too good to be true
I just know that you're probably clean
There's one little think I got do to you

—Ted Nugent, “Jailbait”

For nearly a decade, we’ve been subject to the ever-expanding Epstein scandal, with vast swaths of our economic, cultural, political, and academic elite being implicated to varying extents. Trump, the Windsors, Alan Dershowitz, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Steve Bannon, Ehud Barak, even Noam Chomsky. Though many like Chomsky are not implicated in any sexual abuse, it appears that many powerful figures were happy to ignore Epstein’s vices. The public is rightly disgusted by the extent of the rot at the top of our society, and the extent of their vicious decadence. Some of their victims have become objects of public sympathy, although they often don’t get the attention they deserve. Yet I haven’t seen any kind of reckoning with the way Epstein’s crimes are simply a more extreme, systematized, and privileged form of vice which was, until recently, far too normalized. Our collective outrage, as justified as it is, is also a form of self-delusion which ignores just how normal sexual abuse is.

In 1981, Ted Nugent released the song “Jailbait”, a lusty song which celebrates the all-too-common practice of major rockstars having sex with underage groupies. On Howard Stern’s show many decades later, Courtney Love alleged that she performed fellatio on Nugent when she was 14, and that many other young fans were lined up with her. No doubt, such stuff was generally still taboo, but just normal enough for Nugent to feel safe to stick in a song. It was a sort of open secret that many rockers engaged in this type of abuse of their adoring teenage fans. Criminal, maybe, but a part of the “free love” and “rock and roll” lifestyle for many.

Today, Ted Nugent is a MAGA Republican who claims to celebrate traditional conservative sexual morality and denies ever engaging in the kind of lewd, immoral stuff described in his song and alleged by Courtney Love. Yet conservative sexual morality has its own abuse scandals too. From the Southern Baptist Convention and the Catholic Church sweeping abuse by pastors and priests under the rug to Evangelical churches pushing teenagers to marry their statutory rapists, this kind of sexual vice was treated as inevitable and normal if unfortunate. For the Catholic and Southern Baptist Churches, it was simpler to forgive after a confession and send the priest elsewhere. For the churches marrying teenage girls to their rapists, it was better for a victim to marry the abuser who took their virginity to cleanse their rapist’s sins.

For the conservatives, the sexual abuse of children was a sin, but not one any more damnable than homosexuality. In fact, the wrongness of it was treated in a very similar way. Both were taboo and discouraged, but in a way which mostly involved awkward silence. Anyone subject to that vice ought not be exposed and judged, but privately counseled to confess their sins and do better. If they re-offend, rinse and repeat. Eventually, they might “get better” and master their vices. “Pray the gay away” had its analog, “Pray the pedophilia away”. However, where this approach to homosexuals mostly victimized those engaging in consensual sex, when it came to pedophiles it simply enabled them to continue abusing.

This isn’t just a concern in conservative religious institutions. In Germany, the boarding school Odenwaldschule, a beacon of progressive education, subjected generations of young children to systemic sexual abuse. Abuse was reinterpreted as sexual liberation in the school’s libertine ethos. Likewise, various institutions in the US from gymnastics teams to football teams have been exposed as hubs of sexual abuse. In schools across the country, formerly “beloved” teachers and coaches have been exposed as predators.

Yet what’s particularly damning is that in so many cases, this abuse lasted for years or decades, and was often an open secret. Though his victims were adults, there is a similar dynamic to Harvey Weinstein where everyone in Hollywood knew what he was doing but didn’t want to raise a stink. Rather, it was best to just keep one’s head down and tolerate the systemic abuse.

Often, the act of exposing the abuse is more taboo than the abuse itself. When Joe Paterno and Jerry Sandusky were exposed at the University of Pennsylvania, many reacted not with anger at the guilty but instead indignation that their favorite coach was getting his name dragged through the mud. This dynamic is all too common, where victims are resented for forcing people to acknowledge something they’d rather not. It’s simpler and easier for the public to keep their heroes in their hearts than it is to know who they really are. They don’t want to ask these uncomfortable questions.

Or consider the way the Christian reality TV star Duggar family dealt with sexual abuse in their household. When it came out that their eldest son, who had been groomed to become a pastor and Christian icon, had been abusing his sisters, their response was damage control. Their concern was less that their daughters had been victimized by sexual abuse, but that their son was being victimized by having his vice exposed before a national audience. The whole story was reframed as the media wronging them by making their domestic shame public.

All this is to say, pedophilia and child abuse was seen as wrong but is all too often treated as a private affair. It was seen as a big, awkward, shameful mess embarrassing not only for the perpetrator but for the victims. It was better for the victims to stay silent and for accountability to remain domestic. It didn’t help that it was hard to prove abuse after it happened, nor did it help that children were often blamed for enticing or tempting their abusers. It also didn’t help that some scenes even celebrated it, like we saw with Ted Nugent’s song.

In fact, it’s often systemically ignored. It is an open secret that underage runaways often engage in sex work to survive on the streets. Yet redressing this would require society to ask hard questions about how we just ignore the homeless and let them fend for themselves, except when we’re calling in the police to clear away their encampments. It’s easier for society to just leave homeless youth to their own devices and pretend it’s not going on. It’s also a well known fact that most abuse occurs within families or tight knit circles. Yet redressing this would require society to critically examine the form of the family itself, and how much the domestic barriers we celebrate also enable abuse.

It is in this context that the American ruling class has become embroiled in the biggest sex scandal in world history. What differentiates the Epstein case is its scope, and its scope is a product of Epstein’s wealth and relative political untouchability. A sense of impunity on the part of Epstein and the business elites which surrounded him allowed his decadence to run amok, and embroil New York real estate tycoons like Trump as well as Democratic party bigwigs like Bill Clinton. It reached a point where we have a pathetic Elon Musk begging to visit Epstein’s mansion on Little St. James to party with “girls” (Girls FTW!, as Musk wrote) and even Epstein cringing in response. They weren’t trying to hide it behind code like “cheese pizza” as the pizzagate conspiracy theorists alleged (though some emails do suspiciously reference cheese pizza), mostly they were just openly talking about it.

This scope meant not only that far more elites were implicated, but also far more teenage girls were victimized. We have so many stories, yet for decades those stories went ignored and many chose to simply stay quiet. Perhaps this was out of prudence, as some of the emails seem to suggest that a handful of victims had been murdered. Yet the FBI and the press simply didn’t dig until it was far too late.

Yet we have to ask ourselves how our past response to this kind of vice cultivated a broader culture of sweeping this abuse under the rug. How is it that most of this abuse goes unaddressed, and most victims never see any kind of justice? How is it that conservative icons like Matt Walsh can say stuff about how teenage girls are most fertile ergo they ought to marry at that age, then go on to present himself as a thought leader on the right? How is it that Ted Nugent can write “Jailbait” then go on to become a bastion of conservative sexual politics? How is it that to many, the “real victim” of the U Penn scandal was Joe Paterno?

It’s not that nobody was ever prosecuted or held accountable by the public for this kind of thing. Even some powerful people were. For example, Roman Polanski had to flee the US to Paris after his plea deal for raping a teenager was thrown out. Michael Jackson, though never convicted, died with the knowledge most Americans suspected he was guilty of sexual abuse. Yet these were the exceptions.

Of course our elite should be tossed to the curb, for many reasons aside from the Epstein stuff. The rot runs deep, and the extent of their sexual vices are in many ways a symptom of their power and privilege. This also requires us to ask hard questions about our broader culture, however. This sort of vice is not isolated to our elite, and never has been. Rather, their privilege simply enabled our society’s existing vices to metastasize into industrialized abuse.