WORDS AMERICA CAN DO WITHOUT: ‘EPSTEIN CLASS’ & ‘KLEPTOCRACY’

Words for the day: “Epstein class” and “kleptocracy.” We all know wealth and power protects. Documents from the Epstein estate show chummy friendships between Epstein and political, academic, and economic leaders eager to retain access to his money, information, and connections. Even after he pleaded guilty to procuring a minor for prostitution. This disregard for the moral clarity the rest of us live by feeds the growing sense that an elite group of wealthy people is running the world without accountability to the law. And that the Trump administration is protecting and even advancing the people in that group. The realization that Trump is bolstering and protecting an entitled elite, rather than defending everyday Americans victimized by them, tracks with the undermining of the economy, firing of civil servants, attacks on public health, and destruction of the nation’s social safety net to create growing angry references to “the Epstein class.” Instead of holding this class of folks to account as he promised he instead protects. Perhaps even pardons. Trump’s ally, consigliere, strategist, propagandist, and former senior counselor at the WH, Steve Bannon, was on such friendly terms with Epstein that it was to him Epstein turned to scrub his public image after his initial guilty plea. All this blends with concurrent attempts to replace American democracy with a kleptocracy. A system of corruption in which a network of ruling elites use the institutions of government to steal public assets for their own private gain. It permits virtually unlimited theft while the head of state provides cover for his cronies through pardons and uneven application of the law. It is the system Putin exploits in Russia, and a US president is working to establish it in the USA. The most recent example is the administration’s plan for peace in Ukraine. A Russian-led blueprint for joint US-Russia economic cooperation that would funnel contracts for rebuilding Ukraine, extracting valuable minerals in the Arctic, and even space exploration to a few favored US and Russian businessmen. Many of those business leaders have close ties to the White House. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), House Armed Services Committee: “Putin’s the invader, he’s the dictator, he’s murdered all his opponents. But I just don’t see that moral clarity coming from the White House. We saw that Wall Street Journal article yesterday that many people around the president are hoping to make billions of dollars—these are all billionaires in their own right—from…Russia, if they get a favorable agreement with Ukraine. That alarms me tremendously. I want to see America being the leader of the free world, standing up for what’s right, not for who can make a buck…. I don’t want to see a foreign policy based on greed. I want to see it based on doing the right thing.” Remember when that was a real thing?