Spelling out the issues re- Epstein a bit further:

It’s not just that the victims deserve justice;

AND that we need to make any powerful people who engaged in the abuse pay for their crimes, just as lesser mortals would;

AND that we need to ensure that the abusers can never hurt anyone in the same way again;

AND that we need to know who they were so we can consider which of their decisions they may have been blackmailed into – all of which were corrupt and some of which may have amounted to treason;

AND that the blackmailers, as well as the abusers, should also pay for their crimes;

AND even that all the criminals involved should be made to serve as object lessons to deter others, rather than as proof that you can get away with anything if you’re rich or powerful;

But also, arguably most importantly, consider the value of the dirt amassed by Epstein and the power it confers on whoever holds it, and understand that so long as it remains secret, it will most likely continue to be used to blackmail important people for corrupt, possibly treasonous purposes in the future.

A lot of bad things have been accomplished by the rich or powerful at the expense of the rest of us during the last fifty years that were too obscure or complicated for most Americans to unravel – Wall St. machinations; the consolidation in ownership first of traditional media and then of the internet; subtle and unsubtle changes in labor, consumer, and environmental protections and in campaign finance law; back-door defundings of agencies and programs; the creeping financialization of health care and education; the $trillions extracted from the real economy to bail out corrupt financial institutions or pay for wars that initially sounded noble but ultimately killed or maimed millions and helped only profiteers – with dire inflationary effects – our welfare has been undermined in a thousand ways, small and large, and we acquiesced because they were too complicated to follow, let alone reach a consensus on, or too dull to make a memorable sound bite.

But the Epstein case is not dull at all and not really all that complicated; and most voters on both the right and the left deplore child sexual abuse and political corruption.

We have an opportunity to prosecute some of the b*stards who deserve it and put a healthy fear into others, if we make enough of a ruckus.

Let's not waste it.