The Epstein Files.
It is just so deliciously ironic that what most threatens Donald Trump’s standing with his base is a conspiracy theory that he would like to debunk.
Trump’s political rise and endurance is built on a foundation of getting a large number of people to buy into nonsense. He was an Obama birther, accused Sen. Ted Cruz’s father of conspiring to assassinate JFK, depicted hordes of illegal immigrants swarming the country, inflated crowd sizes, downplayed Covid, stoked anti-Fauci and anti-vax sentiment, claimed fraud in the 2020 election, and fraud in 2024 until he won. None of it tarnished him until these words were published by the Justice Dept. about Epstein: “We found no basis to revisit the disclosure of these materials.”
Unfortunately for Trump, the Jedi mind trick did not work this time. The Epstein Files are the droids his conspiracy-mongering followers have been looking for. Sensing blood in the water, Democratic sharks are suddenly all in on releasing the Epstein Files.
They desperately hope that there will be some salacious connection between Trump and Epstein that somehow isn’t already known that will finally bring down the president they hate so much.
If there is any truth in an era that does not value truth, it’s that there is no need to try to be sensible when nonsense will do. For reasons that are vexing, but unsurprising, the American public has fixated its gaze on this matter, while ignoring the bigger problem created by abetting everything else Donald Trump said before.
Policy has been crafted and implemented to satisfy the whims and impulsive outbursts of an incoherent president, but the voters ignored it all until Trump tried to tell them that one conspiracy did not exist.
As you no doubt expect, my consternation over the Epstein obsession led me to pick up a very interesting read titled “The United States Strategic Bombing Surveys (European War) (Pacific War).” Originally published in the fall of 1945, the report was an examination of the results of Allied bombing campaigns during WW II, including a detailed evaluation of the effects of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan. Although the report goes on for 120 pages and painstakingly reports how the atomic explosions were experienced on the ground, there is one word that never appears: “obliterate.”
“Obliterate” is a key word because following the aerial attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, the president assured us that the Iranian threat was gone, and we could move on with our lives.
Following the president, circumspect military leaders began to tailor their language toward Trump’s assessment, even though he made it, as usual, based on no evidence other than what he might have seen on a monitor. If you’re interested in conspiracies, the one to attend to is out in the open where sycophants pump up nonsense to build policy that suits one man’s rhetoric and endangers us all in the end.
The Strategic Bombing Survey is a useful learning tool because of the lessons it says should have been taught 80 years ago.
On the European front, the survey noted that German industry proved far more resilient than the Allies expected due to the fact that Germany had under-utilized industrial capacity at the start of the bombing campaign. As a result, German industrial production actually increased in 1942 after strategic bombing began.
After the war, the survey concluded, “The German experience showed that, whatever the target system, no indispensable industry was permanently put out of commission by a single attack. Persistent re-attack was necessary.”
Persistent re-attack was necessary. That bit of nearly century-old wisdom should ring in our ears if we are inclined to believe that a single bombing mission was sufficient to completely change the trajectory of Iranian nuclear ambition.
Moreover, there is an eerily similar analysis of the Iranian economy found in an article titled, “The Ins and Outs of Iranian Resilience Under Sanctions,” by Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, an adjunct professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. The author explains that in the 10 years from 2008 to 2017, the Iranian economy actually grew in seven of those years. The reasons were that non-oil exports and domestic consumption increased, enabling the country to withstand the impact of sanctions.
In other words, just as Germany grew under bombing because its economy could adapt, so too could Iran.
On the Japanese front, even though the atomic bombs delivered the equivalent of about 15,000 tons of TNT, the survey found that “nothing was vaporized or disintegrated” and it noted that trains to Hiroshima were up and running again within 48 hours of the blast.
In contrast, each of the bombs dropped on Iran are reported to have an explosive yield of three to four tons of TNT.
While such differences in explosive power do not necessarily equate to relative effectiveness, the fact that Hiroshima had certain services up and running again very quickly demonstrates that a committed Iranian government can rebuild, perhaps more easily and efficiently than the Japanese did.
We live in a dangerous era. Yes, the same could be said about most any other time in history, but the danger we face today is compounded by the ludicrousness of our leadership and the absurdity of where we focus our attention.
Is there an Epstein conspiracy? Doubtful, but also irrelevant.
Deep State nonsense is a distraction from the real conspiracy, which is not even a conspiracy because it is taking place out in the open. The abandonment of fact, truth and reason in service of the ego of our president could put our country and the world in graver jeopardy than we thought we were in before.
The most startling conclusion of the Strategic Bombing Survey was this: “Certainly prior to 31 December 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped . . . even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.”
Imagine what startling conclusions we might come to if we engaged in thorough, sober analysis instead of embracing nonsense.