The name Jeffrey Epstein has become a shorthand for the moral rot at the heart of the global elite. Now, British authorities are reportedly examining links revealed in a deposition by Bill Gates. One might ask: why is it always the British who must clean up the mess left by American billionaires? Perhaps because we still have a faint memory of what a gentleman ought to be, whereas they have only shareholders and lawyers.
Let us consider the deposition. Gates, the technocrat who promised to save the world with vaccines and algorithms, now finds himself entangled in the sticky web of Epstein’s trafficking network. The details, as they emerge, are predictable: flights on the ‘Lolita Express’, meetings in opulent townhouses, and the polite exchange of favours. The British authorities are ‘examining links’. Examining what? Whether Gates merely shook hands with a predator, or whether he, too, enjoyed the fruits of the vile trade?
One cannot help but draw a parallel to the later years of the Roman Empire. When the aristocracy lost all sense of honour, when the old gods were replaced by cults of wealth and pleasure, then the barbarians were already at the gates. Gates is no barbarian: he is the epitome of the civilised man, the philanthropist, the visionary. And yet here he sits, deposed, surrounded by lawyers, trying to explain why he kept company with a paedophile.
The British establishment, of course, is not innocent. We have our own scandals: the Savile affair, the Westminster paedophile ring, the aristocrats who fled abroad to avoid justice. But there is a difference. In Britain, we still pretend to be shocked. In America, they merely calculate the public relations fallout. We have the remnants of a moral code, however frayed. The Yanks have only the bottom line.
What will the British authorities find? Probably nothing that will stick. Gates has the best lawyers money can buy. Epstein is dead, conveniently silent. The trail is cold, the witnesses are paid off or terrified. But the deposition itself is the thing. It is a document of our times: a record of how the powerful move through the world as if the rules do not apply to them. They are a separate species, a new aristocracy that answers only to itself.
We are told that this is a ‘breaking’ story. But it is an old story, as old as civilisation itself. The rich have always preyed upon the vulnerable. The only novelty is the level of hypocrisy. Gates lectures us on climate change, on global health, on education. Yet he could not see the evil in Epstein’s eyes. Or perhaps he saw it and did not care. Neither option is comforting.
The British authorities should go further. They should subpoena everyone who ever shook Epstein’s hand. They should demand to see emails, diaries, bank statements. They should treat this not as a single scandal but as a symptom of a systemic rot. But they will not. Because too many of their own are implicated. The British elite is as compromised as the American. They will slap a few wrists, issue some condemnations, and then return to business as usual.
And so we are left with the deposition: a few hundred pages of bland euphemisms and careful evasions. A monument to the decadence of our age. Gates will go back to his foundation. Epstein will stay dead. And the children? They are forgotten, as always. This is the empire of money: it consumes everything, even the souls of the men who run it. The British authorities can examine the links, but they will not break them. We are all trapped in the same web.
