Accountability can't be just reputational bruising

I finished the book Situation Normal by Leonard Richardson. The title comes from the military phrase SNAFU or Situation Normal... This is a science fiction story about two groups, the Outreach and the Fist of Joy. Each group includes about a dozen species spread over many worlds. Humans are a part of the Outreach. There is a war going on between the two groups, though for most of the book the characters are trying to ignore it, hide from it, or profit from it. The cast of characters is large and includes: A boy old enough to fear being drafted into the war. A woman good at psyops. A spaceship crew who transports materials and doesn’t care if the load is legal. A woman who is in the military but hasn’t done well. A species whose members can come together into one being or be split apart and can take over another person or animal. The Outreach is big on brands and doing things to enhance a brand. One character wants to introduce the concept of brands to the Fist. Later we learn there are brands that are artificial intelligences. One can circumvent their original purpose by running a role-playing game with it. One character is a guy who created a drug called Evidence that only affects humans and gives them strong visions with the purpose of sidelining them from the war. Much of the story is about finding him, finding where he makes the stuff, and destroying the ability to make more. That’s about as close to the actual war as we get. I enjoyed the book, though it doesn’t get a recommendation. It seems too long – it is 477 pages. There were too many characters to keep track of. There were times when I though, who was that again? Or what was it he did? However, I did appreciate the humor and fun he makes of brands. So, not bad, but not great. There was a science aspect of the story I didn’t buy. A bomb that can be carried by a spaceship, no matter how big, cannot crack apart a planet. Meteor Blades, Daily Kos staff emeritus, discussed the latest dump of Epstein documents. Here’s some of what he wrote. There are a lot of people mentioned in the documents. It will prompt some of them to step away from public life. But consequences are likely to be no more severe than that.

And while there now are unsavory new morsels coming to light daily, the release of the latest tranche of Epstein–related documents hasn’t brought catharsis. Instead, it has widened an already gaping moral sinkhole, reinforcing the conclusion many Americans have been circling for years: this was never a story about one predator, or about him and a ring of accomplices, but about an elite culture so insulated, so transactional, and so devoid of consequence that exposure itself no longer mandates accountability.

If the three million documents that have been released are this bad, how bad are the millions of documents we haven’t seen? This has shifted from a crime story to an ongoing civic trauma. It exhausts rather than empowers. It erodes trust. There are so many people who knew we wonder if there were people in power who did not know. Those in the documents aren’t the rogue’s gallery, they are establishment. This places the nasty guy in a crowd so large that “individual culpability dissolves into ambient rot.” He can say everybody is dirty, he’s just less hypocritical about it. Since he railed against cover-ups he can’t defend one without corroding his credibility. Some (like the nasty guy) will say being mentioned is not a crime. But Epstein was still a power broker after becoming a registered sex offender back in 2008. And people still sought his favors. His reach was so vast he didn’t advertise it. His supplicants did it for him.

There has always been quiet agreement among the powers-that-be in just about every society that some people are untouchable, some victims are expendable, and transparency is a management tool rather than a mandated duty. What these disclosures finally confirm is not merely elite hypocrisy — something we’ve had with us probably since the days of the Akkadian Empire — but institutional decay. The Epstein files expose rot not as an aberration but as an ecosystem in which power circulates horizontally, accountability flows downward, and shame has been priced out of the market. If accountability is to mean anything, it cannot stop with reputational bruising. There should be consequences for the game played in how these files were released. Officials who violated promises to protect victims’ identities should face professional sanctions, up to and including disbarment and removal from public office. Congressional oversight committees should subpoena decision-makers involved in the selective release and require sworn testimony explaining why political calculation repeatedly trumped victim protection. Transparency that retraumatizes the powerless while shielding the powerful is not transparency at all. I know, I know. I am a dreamer. Obviously, no accountability will happen as long as the current regime remains in control. And even when and if it’s ousted, no guarantees.

The Epstein reckoning shouldn’t just be the criminals. It should include accounting by the universities, charities, and cultural groups that took his money after his conviction. This scandal shows “a system that rewards moral vacancy.” Exposure isn’t enough because that will be seen as the cost of doing business. So far they’ve shown that the powerful can survive anything. Emily Singer of Kos reported on Bill and Hillary Clinton being subpoenaed to appear before the House Oversight Committee to testify about their role in the Epstein mess. Never mind mentions of them in the documents is tiny compared to the thousands of mentions of the nasty guy. Republicans, led by chair James Comer of Kentucky, want answers and a way to embarrass the Clintons. The Clintons at first refused to show up, but when faced with jail time, they agreed. I’ve heard elsewhere that Republicans wanted a closed session with cameras. But the Clintons know how easily that could be manipulated and said no. Singer thinks Comer’s demand that the Clintons testify is stupid for a big reason – it sets a precedent. And Democrats would love the precedent to subpoena the nasty guy before the oversight committee and grill him under oath. There are a lot of aspects to his cruelty and corruption to grill him about. So the short term advantage of embarrassing the Clintons may turn into considerable long term pain for the nasty guy and Republicans, though great for us. Kos of Kos noted that border czar Tom Homan, now in charge of the ICE operations in Minnesota has declared the Operation Metro Surge to be a success. Kos took a closer look. Over two months 3,000 agents arrested 3,000 undocumented immigrants. Kos says that’s only 50 arrests a day (and I note one arrest per agent over two months) and Kos describes it as “shockingly low.” A “significant number” of the arrests were released by judges. Since 7% of ICE and Border Patrol agents are in Minneapolis that means a pace of 18,000 deportations annually, far from the goal of a million a year. Add to that the growing backlash to ICE cruelty.

Pulling out a few hundred agents doesn’t change the reality that more than 2,000 remain and have little to show for it. And Minnesota doesn’t even have a particularly large immigrant population, which makes the point unmistakable. This was never about immigration; it was a stunt. And now, faced with the numbers and the backlash, Trump is trying to save face after an operation that failed miserably.

A cartoon by Sean Nelms might be a little indelicate for some, but it sounds humorously accurate. It shows two ICE agents talking. Here are the last two frames:

First: I thought the $50k signing bonus would make my tiny penis larger. Second: Right?!? We ALL did! First: Is your dick too small to grab? Second: Bro! I need tweezers!