
A scandal is not a new revelation. It is a long-overdue and grudging declaration of our inability to keep ignoring what was already there all along. The question, then, is not why the scandal surfaced, but how it remained hidden at all. And why something so obvious and axiomatic required loud exposure before it could be acknowledged.
The Epstein files revealed nothing about the principle that should have required revelation in the first place. They merely confirmed an old pattern: that power, wherever it accumulates, tends to be used for consumption, gratification, and dominance. The names were new; the principle was ancient. Yet the public response treated it as a rupture, as though something unprecedented had occurred.