Jeffrey Epstein: The 21st-Century Rasputin

The Jeffrey Epstein saga never ends.

The mysteries around this dead pedo -- gone but not forgotten (nor mourned) -- seems to become bigger and bigger as time goes on. We appear to know so much more yet so much less at the same time.  

It's been hopelessly politicized, and I won't get into that miserable drama here. But what fascinates me about this whole saga is who Epstein was -- and why the media and public hunger for him can never be sated. 

Then it hit me: he's Rasputin!

Epstein is a 21st-century American version of the shadowy, sexually devious early-20th century Russian figure who seemed to come out of nowhere and became a friend and corruptor of the rich, powerful, and famous.

And like Rasputin, Epstein died under bizarre and shocking circumstances. 

The parallels are not exact: Rasputin was a staretz, a spiritual guide. Epstein was financier, a finance guy. Rasputin came from poverty in Siberia. Epstein came from a lower middle-class background in Brooklyn. He also became super-rich and was deeply vain, while Rasputin, for all his notoriety, did not seek riches, dressed like a slob, and smelled. And while Rasputin actually attained more direct power -- becoming so close to the last Russian Imperial family that he was eventually running the government -- Epstein's proximity to power was much more transactional and opaque.

Yet there is one big, overarching similarity of Rasputin and Epstein -- namely,  they beg the question WHO THE HELL WAS THIS GUY?

Rapsutin was a charlatan, he wasn't even a real priest. He said he spoke to God and could cure diseases when all he really did was utter platitudes, prayed with people, and "laid hands" on them. And yet it led him into the heart of late-Russian nobility and monarchy -- and, with that, he got power and influence and a place in history.

Epstein now has a place in history too, and its all the more remarkable considering that he wasn't really anybody important. He was rich, yes, and that got him access to the famous and powerful (although when you splash around cash its not hard to get doors opened to those kinds of people). But Epstein had no real institutional power nor public-facing career. He wasn't the CEO of a publicly traded or financial company, he didn't run a media or entertainment or real estate empire or any kind of big business, he wasn't a politician nor served in government, and he didn't run or manage or own anything big or well-known. All he did (supposedly) was manage money for rich people. 

And yet Rasputin and Epstein managed to work their ways into the heighest echelons of society and power in two of the most powerful empires on earth.

To a certain extent there's a degree of snobbishness in how people regard them: who are (or were) these people to think they could come from places like Siberia or Coney Island and rub shoulders with the mighty? They were climbers, upstarts, wannabes, who crashed the gates and should have been kicked out by their betters.

That's one way of looking at them.

But another way to view them is as examples of rot -- and how great countries wither and die from the inside. 

In the history of the Russian Revolution, Rasputin and his power and influence have become examples of how delusional, corrupt, and stupid late Imperial Russia had become. And Epstein -- with his private plane, Carribean island, big houses and weird artifacts and pedophilia -- is an example of late-stage capitalism, and how morally bankrupt, debauched, and nihilistic American society is today, fueled by greed, and abandoning the common good.

And in early-20th century Russian and early-21th century America, the public and the powerful allowed themselves to be controlled by gross con artists -- and we have (and will) rue the day.

Rasputin and Epstein are now no longer simply creepy wannabes who died -- they are myths, dark haunting figures that say something damning about our lives and times, about our societies, and what we have all, one way or another,  sadly become.

They are the stench left behind of dead and dying empires.