Jeffrey Epstein and the Collapse of Belief

The Epstein files have finally reached Washington, and the effect has been anything but illuminating.

With the House adjourning early, a thousand FBI agents pulled off cases and reassigned to comb through boxes of sealed court documents going back as far as March, and the President now barking angrily at his own base, the nation's capital looks less like a center of government than ever. More like a fever dream caught in a strobe light.

You could say it started in 2005, when Palm Beach police began investigating Epstein for soliciting minors. Or 2008, with the non-prosecution agreement. Or 2019, when he died in jail under circumstances that remain murky. But in another sense, it began long before that - with the longstanding American conspiracy (almost article of faith) that behind the scrim of politics and media is a hidden world of secret operators, perverse incentives, and moral rot.