I was a little mystified at how benignly he responded to my questions about his business activities. Now, when I look at my meticulous notes, I notice that his tempo quickened—and he was much more focused—when he himself asked: “What do you have on the girls?” He would ask the question over and over again.

Vicky Ward, Contributing Editor, Vanity Fair

Decency is now a left thing. If you want to end the systemic practice of excluding whole populations of humanity, beginning with methodically eliminating the ideological bent that fosters an unjust reality, then you are exhibiting leftist thinking. Confronting global heating, favoring health care for all, free education, affordable housing, poverty is to expose leftist thought.

So here’s Jeffrey Epstein, a white man who has been a predator of children all these years, and despite a 53-page FBI indictment issued over a decade ago, in which his cruelty and abuse of children was documented, he was treated as a great man, because, after all, he was a great man, with so many admirers.

And I’m not referring only to those in high places. Clinton and Trump (great men themselves) can’t elevate another all by themselves.

All Americans reside within Epstein’s narrative.

It’s Jeffrey Epstein, the rich and famous, central to the narrative, exported globally, of an America wealthy and all powerful. All of America encircles Epstein both when he’s worshiped as a great man, exposing American virtues and when he’s vilified as the evil-doer among us. Who knew!

Well, everyone. Including the children!

His isn’t a narrative solely about him but rather it’s about the continuation of indifference to cruelty and abuse of those without wealth and power. It’s a continuation of we the people’s commitment to an economic system that permits the wealthy and powerful to flaunt a cruel and abusive ideology and practice within and without its borders.

Just as the all-powerful and wealthy United States has admirers, most Americans loved the Epstein. Loved his narrative, too! And he’s still the great man in the middle of a narrative that vilifies him, and him alone, as if Americans haven’t been indoctrinated to believe with all their collective hearts and souls in the power of money.

With money comes beautiful women that both Epstein and Trump can abuse while federal prosecutors, lawyers, tabloid publishers, and politicians (admirers of the great men) whisk away any pesky women or girls who object to being treated as another purchase in the lifestyle of the rich and famous.

Jeffrey Epstein had a staff to manage his “massages” with underage girls. He owns at least three or four homes, including the ones in Palm Springs, Florida and the 56-million dollar townhouse in New York; imagine then the servants—butlers, landscapers, housekeepers, nannies, pilots, chauffeurs, secretaries, personal assistants, caddies—all the workers surrounding the enterprise called Jeffrey Epstein.

All the workers lucky to be working for the great man. After all, he amassed his wealth by working as a financier for only the wealthy and powerful.

Isn’t that America?

Who should value the poor and troubled girls, after all? Why should Acosta do anything to recognize their humanity over and above that status all Americans recognize in a wealthy and powerful man like Jeffrey Epstein?

Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg—all the important and valued people are so and treated with such deference because we the people worship an injustice and undemocratic economic system that makes it impossible for us to do otherwise.

The system is rigged—to promote we the people’s acceptance of laws and policies that promote conquest, subjugation, and segregation of human beings not valued by the economic system that is capitalism.

We wage war against ourselves—with our children as a target. If they are poor, from troubled families, if they are children of color, girls, in particular, who should value them? Who should bother to recognize how they are treated indifferently within a narrative flaunting America’s wealthy and powerful?

Just look at the brown children at the border, mostly forcibly separated from parents, caged in filthy inhumane conditions. Look at black children gunned down by law enforcement, girls sexually abused by the former physician for the Olympics, Larry Nassar, children sexually assaulted by priests and bishops and asks yourself—how many fellow Americans knew but deferred to the men great by virtue of their wealthy or status that purports to them a certain power to wield over the most vulnerable?

What we the people seem to want is inequality—the maintaining of the status quo, patriarchy and racism, injustice. A capitalist system that will do life in.

Americans rising with the sun, work for the wealthy and powerful, grateful, in turn, for a little trickle down, some bread crumbs, enough to provide the basics to sustain their lives and maybe have a bit of a surplus too, enough to lord over other family members, co-workers, acquaintances, neighbors. Then, at night, they sleep under the moon, dreaming of winning the lottery, buying a private jet… maybe it’ll be named the Lolita Express!

If we are to see ourselves as a humane and democratic nation, we the people should learn how to re-think what we value.

Flaunting humanity’s worst characteristics is not a matter of left or right politics: it’s an endorsement of humanity’s ultimate extinction.