Playing In Your Face
He clicks justice.gov/epstein. The Department of Justice seal loads.
He clicks justice.gov/epstein. The Department of Justice seal loads. A prompt appears: “Are you a robot?” He clicks the box. Another prompt: “Are you 18 years of age or older?” He clicks yes. The library opens. Over 3.5 million pages of documents. More than 2,000 videos. Over 180,000 images. Content so explicit readers say they felt physically ill. The names of 43 victims, unredacted. The DOJ's statement: "This marks the end."
Six million pages identified. 3.5 million released. Congress passed a law requiring full disclosure. The DOJ released half and called it compliance.
The survivors released a statement: “The men who abused us remain hidden and protected while we are exposed to the world.”
They remembered to redact Trump's face. They forgot to redact the nude photos of girls.
Trump’s response: “I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me, it’s the opposite of what people were hoping.”
Within days, files disappeared from the DOJ website. Then more. URLs returning 404 errors. The department said it was fixing redaction mistakes. Victims’ lawyers said they’d provided lists of names to protect weeks earlier. The names appeared anyway. One victim who had never come forward publicly was outed to the world. She learned about it when reporters started calling.
There’s a phrase for this.
When someone does dirt while looking you dead in the eye. When they don’t bother hiding because hiding would suggest they need to. When the exposure is the point.
Playing in your face.
The company that announces 16,000 layoffs and $21 billion in quarterly profit the same week. The algorithm that reviews your elderly mother’s claim for 1.2 seconds, denies it, and sends you to an appeals process almost nobody uses. About one percent of people appeal. The congressman who votes to cut food stamps, then flies home to a fundraiser dinner that costs more than a year of benefits. The relationship where someone cheats, confesses, and blames you for making them feel like they had to.
The link that loads to nothing. The black bar where a name should be. The scale changes. The move doesn’t.
Marina Lacerda was fourteen when the abuse began. In the 2019 indictment: “Minor Victim 1.” Virginia Giuffre was seventeen when Maxwell recruited her. She filed lawsuits. Testified in depositions. Gave interviews. Founded an organization for survivors. Wrote a memoir. Did everything the system told her a victim was supposed to do. She did it for twenty-three years. She died nine months before the files dropped. Forty-one years old. Three children.
The Founding Move
This is the founding move.
“All men are created equal.” Written by a man who enslaved 607 people. He knew what the words meant. He knew who would read them. He signed it anyway. Playing in your face.
The Homestead Act, 1862. A sign at the land office: Free land for settlers. 160 acres for anyone willing to work it. 270 million acres distributed, the largest wealth transfer in American history. The requirement, unstated but enforced at every counter: white. The Lakota watched from reservations while their territory was divided into parcels. The Cheyenne watched. The Pawnee watched. Black families who’d worked American soil for two centuries watched immigrants fresh off the boat file claims to ground they could never touch. The sign stayed up. Playing in your face.
The Nineteenth Amendment, 1920. Women can vote. But they couldn’t serve on juries in all fifty states until 1975. Couldn’t get credit without a husband’s signature until 1974. Couldn’t refuse their husbands in the marital bed, legally, in all fifty states, until July 1993. The amendment was on the books for seventy-three years. The bodies kept being used. Playing in your face.
Japanese internment, 1942. 120,000 American citizens. Two-thirds born on American soil. Their neighbors watched them board the buses. Playing in your face.
Operation Wetback, 1954. The government called it that. A decade earlier, the Bracero Program had invited Mexican workers in to fill wartime labor shortages. Now a million were deported in a single summer, by the government’s own count. Border Patrol agents raided neighborhoods, demanding papers from anyone who looked Mexican. Thousands of American citizens were swept up and dumped across the border. Playing in your face.
The pattern isn’t a failure of government. The pattern is the plan.
Virginia Giuffre spent twenty-three years asking for justice. She died before it arrived.
The Ledger
That was history. Here’s the ledger running now.
Epstein is dead. Maxwell is convicted. U.S. prosecutors have never charged anyone else in connection with his abuse. The files name names. The evidence exists. Over 1,200 victims identified. No one else will be prosecuted.
The DOJ released the files with “significant redactions to protect victims.” Forty-three victims’ names appeared unredacted. The men in the photographs, at the dinners, on the flights: some named, some redacted. The protection is selective. The pattern holds.
This is how it looks when power doesn’t need to hide.
Democrats campaign on human rights. They fund the bombs Israel drops on children, refuse to condemn it, and call it self-defense.
Republicans campaign on family values. Their president walked into the Miss Teen USA dressing room while girls as young as fifteen were changing, then bragged about it on the radio. One contestant later testified that Epstein had trafficked her. Their base calls him God’s chosen instrument.
They post about stolen Native land on Instagram. From a $16 million mansion on stolen Native land. The caption says “Land Back.”
They fly private to the climate summit.
They worship a poor refugee on Sunday. They vote to cage poor refugees on Monday.
They campaign on law and order. They pardon the men who beat cops with flagpoles on camera.
The cruelty and the piety in the same breath. They’re not hiding the contradiction. They’re performing it.
The Training
Power that hides is weak. Power that performs is absolute.
Virginia Giuffre named names. She filed lawsuits and testified in depositions and gave interviews and founded an organization for survivors and wrote a memoir and did everything, everything, that the system told her a victim was supposed to do to get justice, and she did it for twenty-three years, and then she died at forty-one, nine months before the files dropped, and the men she named are still walking around.
That’s the message. Not that they got away with it. That they got away with it while you watched. That your watching changed nothing.
You clicked yes. You verified your age. You’re already inside the system that decides who sees what. Every display is a filter. Your continued participation is your consent.
The technique: create a category. Put the truth inside it. Remove the category. Call it a program. Call it an ongoing investigation. Release half the files. Say you’ve complied. Pull the files that went too far. Say you’re fixing redaction errors.
You adjust your threshold upward, and upward again, until what would have been unthinkable becomes Tuesday. Until you’re defending things you swore you’d never accept.
That’s the training. Not your ignorance. They don’t need you ignorant. They need your exhaustion. Your accommodation. Your decision that this is just how things are.
The Verdict
What do you call a country where proof is plentiful and consequences are rare?
Where a woman fights for twenty-three years and dies before justice arrives. Where a fourteen-year-old is listed as “Minor Victim 1” and her abusers are listed as redacted. Where six million pages exist and half are withheld. Where the law says release everything and the government says we’re done.
They’ve been playing in your face since the founding.
The sign at the land office that said “free land” while the Lakota watched.
The amendment that gave women the vote while husbands could rape them for another seventy-three years.
The files that name the harmed and protect the harmful.
The Epstein files aren’t a break from American tradition. They’re the tradition working exactly as designed.
You clicked yes. You verified your age. You’re allowed to see the files—half of them, anyway.
Giant black rectangles where the names should be.
Notes & Sources
Epstein Files Release
DOJ Epstein Files Portal (requires age verification): https://www.justice.gov/epstein
CNN, “DOJ releases Epstein files containing thousands of pages of documents,” January 2026: https://www.cnn.com/politics/live-news/epstein-files-release-doj-01-30-26
Victims’ Names Exposed / Redaction Failures/Nude Photos
The Guardian, “Epstein files: victims’ names exposed while accused men remain redacted,” January 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/nude-photos-epstein-files.html
Associated Press, “Files disappear from DOJ website days after Epstein release,” January 2026: https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-epstein-files-trump-036f169b672bcbe0a9b5516e109b6af0
New York Times, "Nude photos of young women included unredacted in Epstein files," February 1, 2026: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/01/us/nude-photos-epstein-files.html
Trump Quote
The Hill, “Trump on Epstein files: ‘I was told by some very important people that not only does it absolve me’”: https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5717492-trump-epstein-documents-release/
Survivors’ Statement
NBC News, The Guardian (joint statement from survivors, January 2026): https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-victims-call-to-congress-rcna244231
Virginia Giuffre
NBC News, “Virginia Giuffre, who accused Jeffrey Epstein of sexual abuse, has died at 41,” August 2024: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/virginia-giuffre-accused-jeffrey-epstein-sexual-abuse-died-41-rcna
“Minor Victim 1” / Marina Lacerda
Southern District of New York Indictment, United States v. Jeffrey Epstein, July 2019: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/press-release/file/1180481/download
No Other Prosecutions
WPBF News: https://www.wpbf.com/article/doj-epstein-files-no-new-charges/70219398
AP News, “Ghislaine Maxwell convicted of helping Epstein abuse teens,” December 2021: https://apnews.com/article/ghislaine-maxwell-jeffrey-epstein-sentencing-aeac127f9cc3811d975ce8e10d171260
Miss Teen USA Dressing Room
BuzzFeed News, “Former Miss Teen USA Contestants Say Trump Walked In On Them Changing,” October 2016: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/kendalltaggart/teen-beauty-queens-say-trump-walked-in-on-them-changing
Howard Stern Show, Trump confirming dressing room visits, 2005: https://factba.se/trump/
Jane / Epstein Trafficking Testimony
NBC News, “Accuser ‘Jane’ testifies Epstein trafficked her to other men,” December 2021: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/jeffrey-epstein-introduced-trump-14-ghislaine-maxwell-accuser-says-rcna7253
Algorithm Appeals Rate
KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation), “About 1% of consumers appeal denied claims”: https://www.kff.org/private-insurance/issue-brief/claims-denials-and-appeals/
Historical Citations
Jefferson (607 enslaved) — Monticello.org, Thomas Jefferson Encyclopedia: https://www.monticello.org/slavery/slavery-faqs/
Homestead Act (270 million acres) — National Archives, “The Homestead Act of 1862”: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/homestead-act
Women’s jury service (1975) — Taylor v. Louisiana, 419 U.S. 522: https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/419/522/
Credit discrimination (1974) — Equal Credit Opportunity Act: https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/statutes/equal-credit-opportunity-act
Marital rape (1993) — National Domestic Violence Hotline: https://www.thehotline.org/resources/marital-rape-and-domestic-violence/
Japanese internment (120,000) — National Archives: https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation
Operation Wetback (1954) / Bracero Program — U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services History: https://www.uscis.gov/about-us/our-history
This is so powerful and clear. It speaks to a long time of studying these patterns. Thank you for putting it in such a stark and brilliant litany. And being inclusive of such a broad range of deceptions. This history is why "woke" is so terrifying for those of us who have gone along in whatever way: once we know, our choices become conscious and intentional, at least logically, and therefore require accountability. As Jung said about facing the Shadow, it's difficult and unpleasant work, and that's why so few people do it. But it's ultimately freeing, and the only way to live an authentic life.
So that's what it's called. Ugh. It's a form of abuse of power that is particularly toxic. Thanks for documenting it so clearly.