Monday, August 12, 2019

Simple Suicide: A Political Loser


At least one journalist/newspaper columnist understands

But frankly, conspiracy theories about Epstein’s death needed no push from the Oval Office. Conspiracy theories are the voice of the ungoverned. The road that started in 1963 in Dealey Plaza -- in an ancient time when people had unbridled faith in their leaders and their institutions as a force for good -- finally came to its inevitable terminus, at the end of a rope in a cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center. Americans are bitter, confused, and most of all angry. And they have absolutely no faith in the people who are in charge. I know I don’t.

Will Bunch clearly understands that Americans are bitter, confused, angry, and cynical about people in power. So, too, ironically, does right-wing President Trump, who retweeted
Bunch recognizes the absurdity of believing the Clintons, out of power and out of favor, engineered a murder while Donald Trump's Roy Cohn- Attorney General William Barr- stood helplessly by. Nevertheless, it is unlikely that Jeffrey Epstein committed suicide without the act aided, abetted, or condoned by anyone in authority.

Some people have more faith than Bunch, President Trump, or very likely the vast majority of the American people. Spurred by elite anguish about a need for criminal justice reform, there seems in the media to be a developing story line that jails and prisons are unable or unwilling to prevent the grossest abuses and tragedies, including suicides. Mother Jones' Madison Pauly writes

Epstein may have been be vastly more famous than (Sandra) Bland,  (Jiancarlo Alfonso) Jimenez, and (Damien) Coestly, but the circumstances of his death, as reported by the Times and Reuters, seem to fit the same pattern: a known suicide risk, carelessness by guards, and a lapse in detention practices.





It was very likely more than "carelessness" or a "lapse," though we may never know for sure, just as the truth about the most famous death in custody, that of Lee Harvey Oswald, has never been fully or definitively determined.

Donald Trump knows this, and that is why he was able to leap onto the longstanding Clinton Is A Murderer conspiracy, albeit indirectly by retweet because in doing so more directly he might have been held accountable for spreading a damnable lie. Courage has never been his forte.

Having a finger on the pulse of the American people is his specialty, however, and he realizes the American people are susceptible to believing the Clintons were behind it all because coincidence seems increasingly absent in American life and politics. The alternative narrative will be that the death of Jeffrey Epstein was an innocent suicide, which will be accepted by the few voters who still have the unbridled faith in the system that Will Bunch realizes has considerably dwindled..

The silence of the presidential hopefuls regarding Epstein’s death is both regrettable and reversible, and leaves a vacuum which Donald Trump has demagogically filled. However, Bunch has inadvertently pointed the way forward in which Epstein's death is linked to an effective, broader ideological message:



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