This is disturbing and infuriating but wow does it make an excellent larger point: These assholes expect no pushback. It’s part two of The Ink’s look into Epstein, so be prepared for your stomach to churn, but Anand Giridharadas methodically connects the dots between “rich and powerful” and “predator.”
It is a different experience of life never to have to wait for your turn on the ski lift. Never to have to contend for space in the overhead locker with another person. Never to have to be charming to get into a restaurant. After a time, one imagines, all the not-having-to-dos will change you. You will become less capable of exerting yourself in ways you once did without a care. And one can even dig deep and muster the empathy to appreciate that, the smoother and easier and more frictionless many parts of your life become, the more intolerable is whatever continues to resist you. It may be no accident that the time of gaining access to this more resistance-free ecosystem often correlates with the time of second and third wives. (When no one talks back to you but your wife, you upgrade — although these “upgrades” are never complimentary.)
And later, in an interview with former FTC chair Lina Khan:
…there does seem to be a class of people in this country that have for too long enjoyed a level of elite impunity. And no matter what the domain of their wrongdoing, they have enjoyed protection. They have protected one another.
[…] For a lot of these individuals, they have come to occupy positions of power that really do surround them with people who are constantly enabling every whim and desire, be it in their personal lives, be it in their businesses. And so to actually have to reckon with law enforcement or people holding them accountable—it’s a very foreign and offensive experience for them.
Seems like the rich have forgotten to be afraid of the poor…