What Epstein really exposed, and the silver lining

It really is about who you know, and there are chameleons among us, poisonous predators.

Feb 20, 2026

I don’t have the stomach to browse the indexed searchable Epstein files maintained by the Justice Department, but I know what’s in there. Jeffrey Epstein was a particular kind of Gatsby: a thrower of lavish parties, a lurer of powerful men and young women, a strange veneer of business mixed with debauchery. He sought to be the Olympian god who tamed the sirens to his own great purpose, while dealing in death and temptation himself. Of course, all such human tragedies end badly, but they exist in real life because they expose an unchangeable aspect of humanity. We are fallen.

When a working-class guy abandons his marriage by cleaving to another woman (or these days, a man), it’s not really news. When some larger number of men and women decide that reality for them is not acceptable, and men become woman and women become men, or either become “furries” then get violently upset when those in their lives fail to accept their reality, it does become news. There’s even an organization for so-called “rationalists,” the murderous transgender cult known as Zizians.

I have seen the argument that “Radical gender ideology is pushing unstable individuals toward violence and targeting innocent people.” It is buttressed by a growing list of transgender-committed mass-killings and suicides, the latest being a horrifying shooting at a Pawtucket, Rhode Island skating rink, where a transgender man killed his ex-wife and his 22-year-old son who was engaged to be married, while his younger son played in a high school hockey game. The father, Roberta Dorgano, one day before the shooting, had replied to an X post denigrating transgenders by MAGA-man Kevin Sorbo with a warning: “keep bashing us, but do not wonder why we Go BERSERK.”

To me, the argument is close to the wet sidewalk causes rain fallacy. Individuals who are already on the verge of going berserk, because they have fallen for the same sirens the gilded class hears, find a convenient and welcoming community as transgenders. I mean, as a group, they are probably among the least judgmental people regarding mental health status required for membership. The only real requirement is accepting that reality of gender is a mental construct, not a fact of biology. It’s far easier to explain that some transgenders, like Caitlyn Jenner, are more-or-less stable people who for whatever personal reason decided to live as a different sex, than to claim that transgenderism inevitably leads to mass violence.

It’s the same argument that claims all Catholic priests, who are required to maintain complete celibacy, inevitably become pedophiles, grooming young boys. An easier explanation is that the priesthood is a convenient and accepting place for people who for their own reasons, are already pedophiles looking to groom young boys. Blending in to a faith community based on rites and religious doctrine is easier when all the people around are celibate males.

Back to Epstein. Not all powerful men are misogynists and abusers of women. Not all Hollywood executives or A-list producers, directors and actors are practitioners of the casting couch, or serial encroachers like Kevin Spacey. Not all corporate moguls are willing to lend themselves to Epstein or participate in his debauchery, but for Epstein, it was easy to blend in to the clubby, gilded society that spreads influence by money, favors, and entertainment.

In nature, there’s plenty of examples of poisonous organisms mimicking less dangerous species to trick predators or prey. Poison hemlock looks like carrots or parsnips, but will kill you. False coral snakes look like non-venomous milk snakes. Toxic mushrooms resemble non-toxic fungi. The Jatopha fruit, which can kill you or make you very sick, looks like an apricot. It’s a feature of natural selection that some species adopt the appearance or other attributes of others, either to appear like a poisonous version or a predator to protect itself, or a poisonous or predator appearing harmless to attract prey.

Epstein was a fairly intelligent, adaptable person, who was willing, from the beginning, to lie and take whatever measures to blend in with a crowd he knew he wasn’t really part of. He was a toxic, poisonous predator who became a chameleon to access ever-higher levels of social status, all the way up to the British royal family. He did this by strategically lying and then being completely truthful. When cornered, Epstein would admit his lie and say if he had not told it, then he would not have been accepted. He only did this when he knew there was some other connection that would offer him leverage, for example, his Jewish ethnicity.

Then, once he had wormed his way into the lives and business of well-known people, he could use that inside information to trade on favors, and maintain his own position through veiled (and not so veiled) threats. This is how Bill Gates got caught up in the web. Playboys like Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor were easy prey. Bon vivants like Bill Clinton helped Epstein gain entry to many other people’s lives. Epstein started with nothing and built himself an empire founded on lies, temptation, and connections. It was a pure play on the truism that who you know is more important than what you know.

Why do young people decide to go to Harvard, or Stanford, versus other schools that might be able to impart the same knowledge (if they can get in)? It’s because the elite nature and difficulty of these schools breeds a clubby atmosphere, opening doors to alumni, parents of other students, and powerful people with money and influence who can make a career for those who are fortunate enough to attend. In America, we don’t have a caste system, but we do have doors that only open to people who manage to obtain the keys.

Those doors are fiercely guarded, but at times, a false version of the real thing, a pretender, or a fraud, or a chameleon, gets in. Once inside, it’s much easier for the predator to blend in. And those who fall for the temptation of—power, sex, money, fame, hubris—all the venal sins we know so well, it’s what the Bible says is “common to man” (1 Corinthians 10:13).

It’s ironic that the one person, the one permanent outsider, that Epstein once befriended and then was rejected by; the object of Epstein’s obsession, Donald Trump, was never fooled. Trump knew Epstein for what he was, and for a time accepted him knowing what he was. When Epstein got too toxic, Trump walked away as an act of self-preservation.

The silver lining in the Epstein tragedy is that it’s a human tragedy. Those who embroiled themselves in it will have their sin exposed, and in that, perhaps the elite club that plied the private jets and private islands and debauched acts committed in the darkness of secrets, will be more vigilant in who they trust, and more thoughtful at the cost of yielding to temptation.

Or as Proverbs 16:18 says, Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall. Those in power should take this to heart, because power corrupts. Just like mentally unstable people may be attracted to certain lifestyles where they can blend, and certain predators may be attracted to professions or to be camp counselors at Christian camps, liars and pretenders with access to the doors of elite power can forge the keys to let them corrupt lives.

There were numerous chances in Epstein’s career for those who found out his fraud to kick him out and bar his progress. But they didn’t. Now all of them are suffering for their poor judgment. They were more loyal to their own hubris than to doing the right thing and rebuking a liar and fraud. Many things don’t change, and the one that never changes is that we are fallen. This is what Epstein really exposed.

If you know me, you know I shouldn’t have to tell you what people must do when they are exposed as fallen. But I will tell you anyway: repent. There is forgiveness for those who repent, maybe not among humanity, but there is forgiveness where it counts. Unfortunately, many of those who have fallen to Epstein’s temptation would rather suffer than repent. Let them be a lesson for the rest of us.

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