{"id":313463,"date":"2026-02-23T12:00:22","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T12:00:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=313463"},"modified":"2026-02-20T16:51:37","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T16:51:37","slug":"the-carefully-contrived-spontaneity-of-the-shocking-epstein-files-release","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2026\/02\/the-carefully-contrived-spontaneity-of-the-shocking-epstein-files-release\/","title":{"rendered":"The Carefully Contrived Spontaneity of the \u201cShocking\u201d Epstein Files Release"},"content":{"rendered":"

18 Feb 2026\u00a0<\/em> –\u00a0Whenever a \u201cscandal\u201d like the Epstein files dominates the news, we can be certain that it is meant as a distraction from something more sinister on the horizon.<\/p>\n

The Epstein files have been in the hands of the F.B.I. for eight years or more. Then why have redacted files been released just recently? Cui bono<\/em>?<\/p>\n

And who is behind the release that did not occur over the course of the first Trump and the Biden administrations? Cui bono<\/em>?<\/p>\n

Does the genocide in Gaza and the U.S. proxy war against Russia, both supported by Biden and Trump, fit into the timing and redactions since we can assume that the Mossad, CIA, NSA, and MI6 have also long had access to the files?\u00a0 A U.S..\/Israel attack on Iran?\u00a0 For, like movies, all propaganda and coverups have carefully chosen release dates.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Last question: Why would anyone be shocked by the contents of the Epstein files, although many people seem to be? Yes, more names have been added to the list of degenerate elites who were happily part of Epstein\u2019s criminal enterprise, but the revelation of more names only confirms how extensive it was.<\/p>\n

We have long known of the criminal activities of the degenerate Epstein, the financiers, celebrities, politicians, and public figures who joined him. Sexual blackmail, cooperation between intelligence agencies and the underworld, secret financial deals, war planning in the name of peace, etc. are how capitalism has long operated. While those who research such things have long known this (see, e.g., Whitney Webb\u2019s One Nation Under Blackmail<\/em>, two volumes), the ordinary person may be finally grasping it; but shocking it is not. And the \u201cmay\u201d should be emphasized. All of us have long been living in a culture of increasing \u201cshock\u201d rot where the most grotesque news and entertainment are staples of the mass media from Washington D.C. to Hollywood and all around the internet the monkey chased the weasel. The monkeys thought it was all in fun, and then Pop! goes the weasel.<\/p>\n

Being shocked seems to be very popular; it spices up lives, induces that frisson that only sex, death, and the weather can bring to daily conversations. \u201cCan you believe it?\u201d and \u201cUnbelievable!\u201d echo across the land and spring from lips, screens, and websites everywhere as they invite you to come hither to be flabbergasted and have your head spun vertiginously. Ordinary people have become Regan MacNeil, the young girl possessed by a demon in The Exorcist.<\/em><\/p>\n

If the corporate media ever went very deep, they would have to expose themselves as agents of the same forces behind Epstein\u2019s rise to power.<\/strong> How often do these media connect Epstein to Israel, the Mossad, the CIA, etc.? It is not only evil individuals who rule but a structure of evil, a system, if you like, a social system deeply ingrained, publicly run currently by the evil moron Trump who, in a recent interview with The<\/em> New York Times<\/em>, when asked if he felt there were any limits on his global power, said, \u201cYeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It\u2019s the only thing that can stop me.\u201d This statement let the cat out of the bag. It is the nihilist\u2019s credo, basic to today\u2019s ethos. No honor, no traditional ethical standards, no God, no love for humanity, just fake and deceptive news meant to shock and a \u201cdo your own thing,\u201d U.S. president talking punk kid talk. Yeah. Unbelievable!. \u201cI know words. I have the best words. I have the \u2013 but there\u2019s no better word than stupid.\u201d (Cue the soundtrack.)<\/p>\n

The French New Wave filmmaker Jean-Luc Godard famously said, \u201cTo make a film all you need is a girl and a gun.\u201d Well, we have the Epstein movie, and in it he and his venal and sordid friends had the girls, but who holds the guns and not the penises behind \u00a0their criminal enterprises, is left unaddressed.<\/p>\n

When caught in flagrante,<\/em> the media loves to expose certain individuals who take their pants down for sexual abuse purposes, but they find it impossible to take down those depraved villains who commit atrocities on ordinary people day in and day out throughout the world. Let\u2019s call them the producers. They shape and pay for the news.<\/p>\n

The Reality-TV President Donald Trump \u2013 the face of explicit imperialism and dictatorial domestic rule, a gross brutish thug whose core maxim is \u201cmight makes right\u201d and whose name appears manifold times in the Epstein files \u2013 knows well how the game is played. After his televised fight with Zelensky last year (or was it before the fight?), he said \u201cThis is going to make great television.\u201d So too the Epstein movie. Maybe a series.<\/p>\n

And as in the past, none engaged in this wretched and criminal activity \u2013 except for Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell \u2013 will probably ever serve prison time. No shock there either.<\/p>\n

As for shocks, it is better to watch the Winter Olympics and be \u201cshocked\u201d by favored athletes falling on ice and snow. Those falls are at least real.<\/p>\n

There is a painting in a villa still visible at the entrance to the House of the Vettii in ruined Pompeii that tells us much about the Epstein files and power and wealth. It perfectly symbolizes one aspect of the gap between the international ruling classes \u2013 i.e. the dirty details in the Epstein documents minus the answer to who has been running the blackmail operation and why \u2013 and the rest of us.\u00a0 It pictures the God Priapus weighing his penis on a scale of gold coins, as if to say, gold, God, wealth, and power \u2013 we rule. Fuck you! It\u2019s an old story told by nihilistic men desperate to prove their potency by dominating vulnerable girls and women and the entire world.<\/p>\n

Many have been asking how is it possible for Epstein and all those named and unnamed to have done such evil and criminal things? Evil seems to greatly perplex modern intellectuals. Do they think El Diablo <\/em>is a salsa brand?<\/p>\n

Hannah Arendt\u2019s explanation of Adolf Eichmann\u2019s behavior \u2013 the banality of evil \u2013 is one such explanation being coughed up now for Epstein\u2019s behavior. Others say that he had no conscience or couldn\u2019t reason like an adult; that he wasn\u2019t very smart but was an excellent con man. That he was a narcissist. These are superficial explanations. None get to the heart of the matter. As usual, and completely erroneously, some blame it on Nietzsche and the obermensch <\/em>idea (the overman or superman). Nietzsche (like Russia) is often blamed for every modern evil by those who have internalized false notions about his work. In fact, Nietzsche warned that since men had killed God \u201csomething extraordinarily nasty and evil is about to make its debut.\u201d He was not happy about it.<\/p>\n

The brilliant, underrated late writer Edward Dahlberg, in an essay about Nietzsche \u2013 \u201cThe True Nietzsche<\/a>\u201d \u2013 has this to say about him: \u201cHe denounced race politics, another word for Jew-baiting, calling himself a \u201cgood European,\u201d an \u201canti-anti-Semite . . . . Nothing helped; the anti-Jewish Parteigenossen<\/em> presented him to the public as a Teuton Politiker<\/em>.\u201d And so he is presented to the present day, distorted for ideological purposes. One wonders who actually reads anymore.<\/p>\n

Apropos of language usage and the degradation of understanding, Dahlberg adds, \u201cWe have made language so common that we have ceased to be symbolic readers. Unless we examine the total intellect of the poet as his text we shall misinterpret Blake or Shakespeare just as foolishly as Nietzsche has been distorted.\u201d<\/p>\n

To grasp words symbolically is to understand how good writers use them in their many meanings, not just literally, like spalls fallen from a scree littering a road to nowhere; but how they make them vibrate and sparkle and dip deep and fly high like luminescent birds so others may contemplate deeply and think once, twice, and maybe more.<\/p>\n

Think of Trump\u2019s crude use of language; think of Epstein\u2019s; think of the culture at large. We have descended into a time of gross ignorance and our cultural decadence is reflected in the decadence of our language. Trump and Epstein reflect the larger culture in this respect. Clearly one reason for this is the internet and digital media, particularly the cell phone with its camera and text messaging. It is also an important reason for the vast and constant communication between Epstein and his \u201cfriends,\u201d as well as the ease with which blackmail could be effected. This is no accident.<\/p>\n

Some of us have been\u00a0 lucky to have experienced at a young age the rot at the heart of the system. I think of the recently deceased great journalist Michael Parenti<\/a> who because of his anti-war views was blackballed out of a career in academia, but who used that experience to become a free teacher to the world.<\/p>\n

In my early na\u00efve twenties, I was working nights in the 42nd<\/sup> Police Precinct in the Bronx, interviewing arrestees in holding cells. There I learned that many were framed by the undercover cops who planted drugs on them; that the precinct had a hoard of illegal drugs for that purpose. Thinking I was his ally, one cop told me this, and that \u201cwe have to get these dirty fucking bastards off the streets (by which he meant black and Puerto Rican men). This was 4-5 years before the honest, courageous NYPD undercover cop Frank Serpico (who in later life became a friend) was set up by other cops to be shot in the face. A few years later, the movie Serpico<\/a>, starring Al Pacino, was made about him.<\/p>\n

There is always a movie.<\/p>\n

At a school where I was teaching, a man who held a high position and whom I respected, knowing I was involved in anti-war activities, tried \u2013 to my great shock \u2013 to recruit me into Army Intelligence. These, and numerous other examples, set me on the early path of skepticism about the faces of authority. \u00a0I am grateful for these early lessons.<\/p>\n

Like all stories, the Epstein movie takes place within a larger cultural symbol system that is mythic in its dimensions. How else to explain the near ineradicable hatred for anything Russian among Americans? In the U.S. the big myth is called the American Dream, which the late George Carlin has said you have to be asleep to believe in, but which nevertheless exists, although it may be crumbling. Every society has such a symbol system. Through its stories and symbols, meanings and values are conveyed. And people live by stories, stories within stories. Myth means story.<\/p>\n

For many decades, we have been undergoing a massive symbolic transformation in which the controlling symbolic<\/em> (from Greek: to throw together) order is being replaced by its opposite, a diabolic<\/em> (from Greek: to throw apart, the devil, el diablo<\/em>) order with new stories to scramble people\u2019s brains, dissociate their personalities, set them against each other, and create a general sense of uncertainty. God vs. the devil.<\/p>\n

All power is fundamentally power to deny mortality.\u00a0 This is true whether it is the power of the state or church, or secret groups like Epstein\u2019s.\u00a0 And it is always sacred power. Holy or perverted.\u00a0 Many often ask why do the super-rich and \u00a0powerful always want more.\u00a0 It\u2019s simple. They wish to transcend their human mortality and become gods \u2013 immortals. They stupidly believe that if they can lord it over others, kill, dominate, rape, achieve status, become billionaires, presidents, magnates, celebrities, etc., they will somehow live in some weird forever. Thus Epstein and his circle.<\/p>\n

In a process that has spanned at least a hundred and fifty years or so, our traditional cultural\/religious symbol systems have been radically undermined, most momentously by the Faustian creation of Lord Nuke. All forms of symbolic immortality (theological, biological, creative, natural, and experiential) that formerly provided a sense of continuity have been severely threatened. This is the haunting specter lurking in the background of life today.<\/p>\n

What is death?\u00a0 How to defeat or transcend it?\u00a0What\u2019s God\u2019s cell phone number? Quick. Improvise.<\/p>\n

Little men like Epstein, and those voluntarily captured in his web, all those desperadoes with their hands in their pants, lying through their teeth as they went with Pinocchio and the Coachman to Pleasure Island . . . .<\/p>\n

Cut!<\/p>\n

Forget the script.<\/p>\n

We ain\u2019t seen nothing yet.<\/p>\n

___________________________________________<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a> Edward Curtin: Sociologist, researcher, poet, essayist, journalist, novelist….writer – beyond a cage of categories. His new book is <\/em>AT THE LOST AND FOUND: Personal & Political Dispatches of Resistance and Hope<\/a> (Clarity Press)<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 edwardcurtin.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

18 Feb 2026\u00a0 –\u00a0The Epstein files have been in the hands of the F.B.I. for eight years or more. Then why have redacted files been released just recently? Cui bono? And who is behind the release that did not occur over the course of the first Trump and the Biden administrations? Cui bono? We ain\u2019t seen nothing yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":274660,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[40],"tags":[555,1652,98,1213,249,70],"class_list":["post-313463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-transcend-members","tag-elites","tag-jeffrey-epstein","tag-pedophilia","tag-super-rich","tag-trump","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=313463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313464,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313463\/revisions\/313464"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/274660"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=313463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=313463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=313463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}