Power, Wealth, and the Quiet Normalisation of Harm

This is a difficult and sensitive topic. It is hard to find a way to speak on it and yet speak one must.

The exposure of Jeffrey Epstein did not uncover a singular aberration so much as a recurring pattern that has long accompanied extreme concentrations of wealth and influence. The mechanics are familiar: private networks insulated from scrutiny, legal and financial complexity used as camouflage, intimidation operating quietly through reputation, litigation, and proximity to power. The result is not universal participation but universal silence, a climate in which speaking carries asymmetric risk and not speaking is rewarded with continued access. What shocked the public was not the existence of abuse, exploitation, or trafficking, but the proximity of these acts to institutions, fortunes, and social prestige long treated as markers of success.

What this reveals is not metaphysical evil but structural evil, banal in its repetition and chilling in its stability. When wealth reaches a certain scale, it ceases to be merely economic and becomes gravitational, bending law, language, and moral attention around itself. Luxury then functions as a veil, converting harm into rumor, victims into liabilities, and outrage into something impolite to mention. This is not how power sometimes behaves; it is how power persists. That such arrangements feel unremarkable to those inside them is precisely the indictment, because it shows how easily cruelty can be normalised when distance, insulation, and fear are doing the work of conscience.