One of the reasons, I think, that the Epstein affair has sort of haunted the American 21st century is that it is emblematic of the rise of impunity for the rich and the powerful. The rich and the powerful always possess a certain large impunity – this is one of the great incentives to wealth. Popular wisdom has long known this, but it is undiscussed in our schools and colleges and magazines in general. It would stick out, a bit. I got rich so I could do criminal shit -why, say it aint so, great entrepreneur!
Our legal system, for instance, is built on two conflicting principles, one of which is egality before the law, the other of which is a very strong hierarchy of lawyers, organized by marketplace principles, which makes egality before the law a joke. One man kills his neighbor and cuts off his head and is put in jail and even executed; another man, possessor of a fortune running into the hundreds of millions, kills his neighbor, cuts off his head, is arrested and escapes and flees and is recaptured, and he simply purchases lawpower and gets off scot-free – I’m of course referring to the case of Robert Durst.
The tug between the punishability of all citizens and the impunity of the top few is a theme in all republics. I would venture that there is something like an impunity point beyond which the republic loses its form of stability – its traditional organizations and support structures. That beyond-punishment space opens up real possibilities. We have always, in the American republic, lived with a certain impunity space, but when it broadens, things get very tricky. For the last twenty-five years, I think, elites have enjoyed a very strong moment of impunity, of which we have all seen the evidences. The whole bearing of the court system as well as the executive and legislative branches have been to grant this space to an array of activities (which is given the anodyne name of “de-regulation” in political economics), highlighted by the array of increasingly severe punishment for an array of activities among those who cannot afford great or even moderately good lawyers. I’d say that there is a reason that the macro-effect of this is greatest on the African-American population, which is uniquely rare among the elites – in contrast to women, or gays, etc. In the latter cases, it is all about breaking the glass ceiling – moving up in the elite cohort from a position in that cohort. In the case of those who are in the area outside the elite cohort, it is all a matter of the Great Jailing.
The impunity point was reached well before the Biden presidency, but in many ways it is an exemplar of gateway behavior. The deregulation of the economy achieved, during the Biden presidency, an absurd structure – the wealth of the wealthiest, measured mainly by financial instruments, went well past the level of ancien regime aristocracy. At the same time, the impunity of the political class, in the exemplary instance of Donald Trump, was paraded before us as, absurdly, a sort of pragmatism. The country club penitentiary combined with the Mar a Lago bathroom to show everyone that nothing, in the Republic, was serious anymore. No law was really non-negotiable for the elites, and no law was too onerous for the non-elite citizen – especially in the subset Republic created by private credit agencies and private equity firms.
This all sounds doomscrollingish, but I feel anything but. That the system is bursting in all directions could mean that we are transforming into an authoritarian gumball. But it could mean what it means – that the time is up on this state of impunity. That we’ve come to the point of the ultimate game, in which people will actually sacrifice largely in order to punish those they feel who have acted unfairly. Liberalism was, also, born out of revolt. Nemesis precedes Justicia. Amen.
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