All the Villains

I’m sure Christians other than Doug Wilson are writing about the delayed release of the nastier bits of the Epstein files, but since I’m not familiar with any of them, let’s go with the online post-millennialist whose website I’m most likely to cruise by on any given day of the week. Douglas, you are on!

Until recently, delays in getting the files into the public domain had been persuasively attributed to a lack of cooperation from the FBI, as usual pursuing its own agenda notwithstanding instructions from Attorney General Pam Bondi to come across with everything they’ve got in their records, as her position entitles her.

Jeffrey Epstein Was a What?

Now, apparently, young nationalists online are speculating that the Trump administration is doing its own Biden-style cover up, the reason being that Epstein’s island was an Israeli blackmail scheme highly effective in keeping American politicians cooperating with the perceived interests of their much smaller ally. If true, that would be epically embarrassing.

I’m not saying it is so. I’m just saying people are saying. Until the files are public, nobody really knows for sure.

Anyway, Doug’s latest post on the subject is entitled “So Jeffrey Epstein Was a Jew …” If anything might make me endorse the principle of separating church from state, this post is a 24-carat candidate. So let’s jump right in.

Just Chillin’

Doug’s position, as usual, is “Guys, let’s just chill about the Jews.” His argument for not getting all worked up about what might well be a Mossad op targeting American politicians (probably) from both parties is loosely based on Romans 1-3, in which the apostle Paul points out that Jew and Gentile alike stand convicted before God, so that in passing judgment on others, we condemn ourselves. His evidence appears watertight:

“There is the small matter of the American government doing things overseas with our money, things that are every bit as appalling as any Epstein Island op. And the judgment with which you judge, you shall be judged, as somebody once observed. This makes nothing okay, but rather requires us to look at the need for repentance on a wider scale. We need to zoom out in such a way as to enable us to see all the villains.

So, have we been funding terrorist groups overseas? Why, yes, yes we have. We yell about it when Iran funds terrorist organizations, but it turns out that we fund terrorist organizations — some of the same ones even. Have we been funding abortions overseas? Killing the brown babies of other nations? Why, yes. Have we been promoting and enabling the transgender revolution in other nations? Well, yes again. Other forms of sexual perversion? Have we been cramming the alphabet people nonsense down the throats of other nations? Flying rainbow freak flags outside our embassies?

And we couple it with high hypocrisy. Do we not live in a society that is outraged at Epstein’s trafficking of the underage girls? We say those girls at his island could not possibly have escaped the levels of control and manipulation being applied to them. But then, at the same time, do we not insist that our government schools be allowed to offer contraceptives to underage girls? Precisely because they are wise enough to make all their own sexual decisions? But isn’t accepting Ghislaine Maxwell’s offer a sexual decision? I should also mention the fact that our schools groom underage girls on a path toward becoming underage boys. There’s that, and all without any parental involvement at all. Do we do anything like that? On an industrial scale? No moral agency for young girls if Epstein is the pimp, and complete moral agency if the school nurse is? Sin-wrought schizophrenia is an apt description of this demented tangle of shambolic contradictions.

So none of this is said to excuse anybody for anything.”

Fair dinkum, as the Aussies say.

The Moral Equivalence Argument

Okay, I get it. The moral equivalence argument certainly works. If I were the Israeli government (or the Israeli Deep State, past or present, since this was evidently a long-term op), I would certainly want greater security than an American President’s say-so — any American President since Reagan — to keep the billions in foreign aid, arms, military assistance and other forms of useful things “allies” do for one another flowing uninterrupted. I might not think to do it with a massive offshore honey trap, but I get where a bunch of Mossad operatives in a strategy session might come up with an idea like Epstein Island, even if it ain’t my personal cup of tea.

So has America done worse things? Of course it has. Let’s not kid ourselves. You can have that one, Doug. All manner of countries run dirty ops on foreign soil all over the world. That’s why America has a million alphabet organizations, and it’s why every significant nation in the world has its complement of shady institutions: Russia, China, even our “friend” the UK.

So am I personally bent out of shape about allegations of Jewish blackmail, even if they prove true? Not one bit. It’s par for the course, and any American sucker, Republican or Democrat, who fell for their scam ought to have his name out there in public and be expelled from politics forever, at bare minimum. The wages of sin are — or at least ought to be — political death.

But in our rush to name all the villains of the piece, conveniently distracting (Doug hopes) young nationalists from their annoying and theologically-inconvenient obsession with Semitic misbehavior, let’s not lose sight of a couple of things.

1/ Who Is This Mysterious “We”?

There’s an awful lot of “we” in this post (twelve of them in the four paragraphs I have quoted alone). Even if I were American rather than Canadian, and even if I had voted for the various governments that did the various nefarious things Doug has listed over the past few decades, I would not be using that particular pronoun here. From my perspective, a bunch of Gentiles did a bunch of bad things about which the American people were never consulted, and a bunch of Jews did a bunch of bad things to which the Israeli voting population was never read in. I do not own that, and I don’t need to repent of that. Your average Israeli, likewise, has nothing to repent of. The gospel has plenty it says to me about my own sins. It says nothing to me personally about my funding of terrorist organizations and abortions overseas through my misappropriated tax dollars, or the exporting of the trans revolution. Why? Because I had nothing to do with that, and neither did ninety-nine percent of Americans. Most of us have just found out about it, and ninety-nine percent of us want no part of it. We are appalled. May the villains — all the villains — get their just desserts. They are rogues in every sense of the word.

Now, I get that Doug is probably using “we” in the sense of “we Americans”, no more, no less. But there’s also a sense in which Doug’s post-millennial convictions compel him to the task of reforming not just the hearts of men, but entire institutions, foreign and domestic. Ultimately, for the post-millennial eschaton to be realized, Doug and his Reformed allies have to persuade the institutions through which all these evils were committed to repent of them, or they must be torn down and the earth salted atop them. As a premillennialist, I don’t have that problem. I’m waiting for Christ to do it, and a spectacular job he will do.

In the meantime, I agree with Doug: American manipulators bad, Israeli manipulators bad. No need for comparative adjectives around here!

2/ The Remedy

Further, while we are taking stock of the largely undisclosed sins of previous administrations here, there and everywhere, let’s take some thought for the remedy.

Internally, DOGE is doing a great job of exposing historic levels of fraud and waste in government. What’s truly mind-blowing is the list of horrific things the tax dollars of Americans have funded and the potential damage they may have done around the world. Christians of all denominational stripes and convictions should be elated at confirmation that “nothing is hidden that will not be made manifest, nor is anything secret that will not be known and come to light”. Here is yet another instance of the truth of God’s word made evident. Defunding and exposing this fiasco is the work of the current administration, and every believer ought to be praying for their success. Now that we know what’s really going on, if we don’t enthusiastically support its conclusive end, then “we” ARE part of the problem, right?

But assuming the allegations about Israel and Epstein are true (and conceding they may not be), what about Israel? Should not America’s “ally” be seriously censured for subverting American politicians and gaming the system in its own favor? Of course it should. But in an ideal world, the Trump administration’s reaction to the discovery of Israel’s alleged perfidy should be proportionate and precisely consistent with what it would do if it discovered any other world power to be the puppet master behind Jeffrey Epstein. No worse than how you would treat China. No worse than how you would treat Russia. But no better either — and certainly no cover-up, no matter who your son-in-law might be, Mr. President.

Fair’s fair. Christians of all denominational stripes ought to be fine with that.