Epstein in the Twilight Zone
The FUBAR Frontier. Part Eight.
Who remembers that popular Twentieth Century TV program, The Twilight Zone? Not quite horror, or science fiction, or fantasy, its very category and genre float in a twilight zone among all three.
Well, the twilight zone (the zone, not the TV series) still exists, it now appears, and floating inside it is something called The Epstein Clients List.
Let’s start with horror. Young girls, minors, being trafficked for the sexual pleasure of powerful men. What powerful men? That’s where the science fiction and fantasy start to float before one’s eyes? President Donald Trump?
There is a video of a younger Donald Trump yukking it up at a 1992 party with Jeffrey E. No, nothing sexual in that video, or illegal, but perhaps enough to give Elon Musk an excuse to troll the President about a possible “cover-up,” later walking back his trolling with a sort-of apology:
a rare apology on X: “I regret some of my posts about President Donald Trump last week. They went too far.”
And who else? Why, none other than legal mogul Alan Dershowitz, who was sued by an Epstein accuser, Virginia Giuffre, who later dropped the suit, claiming it might have been a mistake.
Dershowitz went on to claim that he knows what’s on the list, but can’t reveal it due to legal commitments and presumably statutes.
So, what do we have here? Do we have science? Political science, that is? Fiction? Political science fiction? Or pure fantasy? Or just horror?
For Pam Bondi, the 87th United States Attorney General I think the label of horror might apply, given that she hyped a “release” of declassified files that did not name names, at least not the names that were hoped to be named.
So where are we now? Political science? Fiction? Horror?
We are, in fact, in the Twilight Zone.
Now, setting aside Rod Serling’s long-lasting television triumph, let’s look at two other interesting characters that might tell us more about the twilight zone in which the Epstein Files are now floating: Philip K. Dick, and Jean Baudrillard.
Back to science fiction? That’s where Dick has taken us:
Philip Kindred Dick (December 16, 1928 – March 2, 1982) was an American science fiction writer and novelist. He wrote 44 novels and about 121 short stories… (Wikipedia)
Perhaps his most successful novel was Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, described by the android (bot? AI?) Grok in this way:
Key themes include the nature of consciousness, the ethics of artificial intelligence, and the loss of connection in a fractured world. The novel’s cultural impact grew with its loose adaptation into the 1982 film Blade Runner.
The loss of connection in a fractured world? Are we getting warm here? How about it, Mr. President? Mr. Musk? Mr. Dershowitz? General Bondi? Mr. Serling? (Oh, sorry. Mr. Serling died in 1975. )
And speaking of death, Mr. Epstein, the one alleged to have a clients list, was found dead in his jail cell on August 10, 2019. By suicide, right? Or not right? (Play the Twilight Zone theme music here.)
But let’s move on to Mr. Baudrillard, a French philosophical celebrity, who wrote a book, Simulacra and Simulation, about whether things are real or not real, and under what circumstances. He suggested that there are three phases of an “image,” that is, a something claimed to be a representation of reality:
it is the reflection of a profound reality;
it masks and denatures a profound reality;
it masks the absence of a profound reality; it has no relation to any reality whatsoever: it is its own pure simulacrum.
So, what about that client list? Is it the reflection of a profound reality? Powerful men given access to underage girls by the late Mr. Epstein, men whose names are covered up, and will remain so in perpetuity, because they are too big to fail?
Or is there a profound reality that is being “masked and denatured?” Clients, yes, but for what? Not underage? Not girls? Not sex?
Or, as we are now being led to believe by some of the media, the “client list” has no relation to any reality whatsoever. There is no list, and in fact, there were no clients. According to this interpretation, the Epstein Client List is its own pure simulacrum.
I hereby express gratitude to Monsieur Baudrillard for his clarifications of the issue, and will end with a declaration of my own conclusion:
I believe that I can state with assurance that, until and unless more information is forthcoming, the Epstein Client List is floating somewhere in the Twilight Zone.