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Playing the long game requires that the rest of us learn from this revolting era—learn why the wealthy and powerful must be constrained, and learn how to constrain them.
Ten months of this shit. Enough to make one scream, run stark naked in the streets, mount a revolution.
But we have to play the long game. In that long game, America learns from this catastrophe—and turns those lessons into laws, rules, and norms that prevent this from ever happening again.
Much has been revealed lately, both about President Donald Trump and the rot at the top of our system.
Trump’s attempted cover-up of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein has riveted the nation’s attention to the moral depravity of many rich and powerful men who raped children, with impunity.
None of this is entirely new to American politics, but it has never happened on this scale—or with this much shameless abandon.
Trump’s celebration of the Saudi crown prince who ordered the brutal killing of a Washington Post reporter has shown the moral vacuity of the CEOs who flocked to the White House dinner to honor the prince because they want his investments.
Trump’s blatant threats against corporate media whose journalists ask him hard questions and whose comedians ridicule him—and media executives’ chickenshit, obsequious responses to those threats—are exposing the dangers of giant media corporations controlling our access to the truth.
Trump’s wheeling and dealing with tech company oligarchs are revealing the cozy, incestuous ways wealth and power are concentrating in fewer and fewer hands.
Trump’s acceptance of gifts, bribes, payoffs, kickbacks, and perks from those seeking handouts shows how a demagogue cashes in on his power.
His awards of pardons, government contracts, regulatory exemptions, tax subsidies, and lower tariffs to those who bribe him reveal how an authoritarian builds power through favors.
His uses of criminal investigations, tax audits, regulatory enforcement, withholding of government funds, and vicious public smears exhibit how a neofascist punishes opponents.
None of this is entirely new to American politics, but it has never happened on this scale—or with this much shameless abandon.
Most average working Americans abide by laws and norms. Most are kind and decent.
But there is growing rot at the top of our system. And its stench can no longer be ignored.
It’s the essence of Trump and his regime. It’s also, sadly, the moral squalor of too many rich and powerful Americans.
Playing the long game requires that the rest of us learn from this revolting era—learn why the wealthy and powerful must be constrained, and learn how to constrain them.
Learn what integrity requires at the highest reaches of our government, in the c-suites of our corporations, in our universities, law firms, nonprofits, and media.
Learn that the most significant divide in America is not between the left and the right but between the bottom and the top—between the vast majority of Americans without wealth or power, and a tiny minority holding most all of it.
And resolve to prevent such moral rot from ever again taking over our nation.
The Epstein files aren't about one dead predator or even about the powerful men who enabled him. They're about a revelation that terrifies the ruling class: We're finally seeing the structure of division and dehumanization clearly.
Over the past few years, Jeffrey Epstein has dominated our collective attention in ways that are both revealing and troubling. On the surface, the sustained focus on a wealthy sexual predator who trafficked children over decades seems like progress. Perhaps a sign that we're finally holding powerful people accountable. But look closer. This has unfolded during a backlash against survivors of sexual violence, a rollback of protections for women, and the systematic removal of women from positions of power. Research funding for gender equity has vanished. So what does our obsession with Epstein really mean?
Part of it is obvious: The details are sensational, and social media algorithms reward outrage. The names in those files read like a global directory of power: political leaders, billionaires, academics, celebrities. Everyone who's anyone seems to orbit this depravity. That explains the clicks.
But I want to suggest something else is happening. Something more profound. As a psychologist who teaches students to analyze complex social problems, I see us collectively engaging in what I call for in my classroom: a dual analysis, what Lois Weis and Michelle Fine termed as critical bifocality. We're learning to hold two truths, two ways of understanding the world, at once. And that terrifies the powerful.
Americans have been trained to see failure as personal. Lost your home in foreclosure? You must have been irresponsible. Can't afford groceries? You should have worked harder. This is the logic of capitalism, and it's everywhere.
Psychologists call this the fundamental attribution error: We overestimate individual responsibility for others' suffering while excusing our own struggles as caused by circumstances. It's a cognitive bias that protects our self-esteem but destroys our capacity for solidarity.
This isn't just about one man's moral failure. It's about a system where wealth creates impunity. Where the rules simply don't apply.
Right now, this error is especially dangerous. Grocery prices are up nearly 30% since 2019. Jobs feel precarious as AI reshapes entire industries. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids are terrorizing communities, disappearing neighbors and co-workers. For millions in Appalachia and the Rust Belt—regions promised economic revival—things have only gotten harder. This is the case all over the country, no matter whether red or blue designations have been imposed on us by the pundits.
When we're scared, we want simple answers. We want someone to blame. The fundamental attribution error gives us that: blame the immigrant, blame the lazy, blame anyone but the system itself.
But here's what I see happening with Epstein: We're refusing that simple narrative. We're doing something more sophisticated, more dangerous to power.
We're using what I teach as the individual lens: Yes, Jeffrey Epstein made choices. Yes, every person who enabled him (the many who looked away, who benefited, who participated) bears individual moral responsibility. We must hold them accountable. Children were harmed. Yes, Megyn Kelly, they were children. That demands justice.
But we're also using the structural lens: What system allowed this to happen? What conditions enabled it? And here's where it gets uncomfortable for the powerful in the world, like Donald Trump, one of Epstein’s closest friends.
In 2008, Jeffrey Epstein was convicted of soliciting prostitution from a minor. He served barely a year in the private wing of a county jail with work-release privileges, where he was able to leave 12 hours a day, and even the door to his cell was unlocked. Most Americans would have gone to federal prison. But Epstein had connections.
Fast forward a decade. Between November 2018 and July 2019, 10 years after his conviction, Larry Summers was texting with Epstein, seeking advice on how to seduce a female colleague he called his "mentee." Summers was former president of Harvard, former treasury secretary, one of the most powerful economists in America. And he was asking a convicted sex offender to be his "wing man" in pursuing a woman professionally vulnerable.
The correspondence ended July 5, 2019, one day before Epstein's arrest on federal sex trafficking charges.
This isn't just about one man's moral failure. It's about a system where wealth creates impunity. Where the rules simply don't apply.
The wealthy aren't just getting richer. They're extracting from the rest of us at an accelerating rate.
Today, the top 1% hold 30.5% of America's wealth. The bottom 50% (that's half of us) hold only 2.5%.
Imagine 100 of us in a room with a meal to share. It is a delicious platter of burgers and warm, salty fries that fills the room with a savory smell. All of us are hungry.
One person walks up and takes nearly a third of everything. They pile their plate high and walk away.
Nine more people step up and take most of what's left, about another third of the food between them.
The Epstein files are thousands of emails, each one a point of light illuminating how the system actually works. And it's terrifying to those who benefit from it.
That leaves 90 of us to divide the remaining third. But here's the thing: It's not divided equally. Forty people in the middle get modest portions. They have access to just enough to take the edge off their hunger. And the last 50 of us? We're left fighting over a few cold fries and some burger crumbs on the edge of the platter. That tiny pile is 2.5% of the meal that fed one person so lavishly.
The one person who took a third? They're not worried about the 90 of us who got less. They're counting on the 40 who got modest portions to blame the 50 who got crumbs. They're counting on all of us to fight each other instead of asking why one person gets to take so much in the first place.
It wasn’t always this way. Since 1989, the richest 1% have increased their share of national wealth by 34%. The bottom 50% have lost 26% of theirs.
This isn't about hard work or merit. The system is designed for extraction. You work every day. You show up. And still your debts deepen. Your loans grow. Your ability to build security evaporates.
Meanwhile, the wealthy fly on private jets to private islands where they commit acts of cruelty most of us can't imagine but all of us (except Megyn Kelly) agree are unlawful and immoral.
The Epstein files are thousands of emails, each one a point of light illuminating how the system actually works. And it's terrifying to those who benefit from it.
Watch Trump's reaction. On November 14, when Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey asked about the files aboard Air Force One, Trump jabbed his finger at her: "Quiet! Quiet, piggy." Days later, he threatened ABC's broadcast license when reporter Mary Bruce asked similar questions.
This is the powerful suddenly being exposed, the curtain is lifting, and we see that these monsters are just tiny pathetic, greedy people. This is fear.
Trump campaigned in Appalachia promising economic relief. Eleven months later, he's proposed cutting the Appalachian Regional Commission by 93%, from $200 million to $14 million. In a region with 75 counties classified as economically "distressed," he's pulling the last federal lifeline.
The people who voted for Trump because they were promised someone who would fight the elites are watching those same elites protect each other. They're watching the system close ranks.
The Epstein files aren't about one dead predator or even about the powerful men who enabled him. They're about a revelation that terrifies the ruling class: We're finally seeing the structure of division and dehumanization clearly.
This is why they are afraid: the 50 of us fighting over crumbs have far more in common with the 40 who got modest portions than any of us have with the one who took a third of the meal. The worker whose factory closed in Ohio and the immigrant whose neighbor was disappeared by Immigration and Customs Enforcement? We’re all being crushed by the same system. The rural Appalachian who can't afford medication and the urban renter who is being priced out? Same system. The young person drowning in student debt and the parent who can't afford childcare? Same system.
We can hold individual wrongdoers accountable AND dismantle the systems that enabled them.
The powerful maintain control by convincing us we're each other's enemies. Red versus blue. Urban versus rural. Immigrant versus native-born. But Jeffrey Epstein's private island wasn't divided by those lines. It was divided by one line only: those with enough wealth and power to do whatever they wanted to whoever they wanted, and those without.
The Epstein files show us something the powerful never wanted us to see: They protect each other. Across party lines, across industries, across borders, wealth creates a solidarity among the ruling class that transcends everything else. Larry Summers stayed loyal to Epstein a decade after his conviction. Trump's fear when reporters ask questions isn't about embarrassment, it's about exposure of that solidarity.
The question isn't just, "What will we do with what we know?" It's "Who will we do it with?"
The answer has to be each other. All of us who show up and work and still fall further behind. All of us whose neighbors are disappearing, whose communities are being stripped of resources, whose futures are being extracted by those private jets to private islands.
We can hold individual wrongdoers accountable AND dismantle the systems that enabled them. We can refuse the fundamental attribution error that asks us to blame our neighbors while ignoring who's taking the largest share.
This is the moment for clarity. This is the moment we refuse to unsee what's been revealed. This is the moment we recognize each other.
The 99% of us who aren't eating the majority of the meal? We have everything in common. Let's build with each other instead of for those who extract from us.
As city leaders from across the US gather this week to discuss our collective priorities, let’s reaffirm our commitment to protect access to the courts for all our communities.
As local leaders from across the country gather in Salt Lake City this week for the annual National League of Cities conference to advocate for the interests of local governments, the challenges of protecting and preparing our communities for the future are clearer than ever. Local governments and their taxpayers are being stretched thin. Between the rising cost of living, increasingly severe weather disasters, escalating maintenance costs, and other expenses, local leaders like us in Colorado, Wisconsin, and beyond are having to make tough decisions about our priorities—and the last thing we need is to have the tools at our disposal taken away from us.
And yet, there is a campaign in Congress right now that aims to do just that.
Goliaths of industry, including pesticide and oil companies, have been lobbying Congress for legal liability shields that would block communities from holding them accountable in court for any of their bad actions. No matter your politics, we should all agree that it’s dangerous and wrong to hand any industry a blanket get-out-of-jail-free card.
Bayer, the maker of Roundup, is asking Congress to put an end to the lawsuits the megacorporation is facing for the health harms its product has caused for years—and some lawmakers are actually pushing legislation that would do so.
Broad legal shields for entire industries would not only threaten local governments’ ability to pursue accountability, but also violate a core value of our justice system.
Similarly, lobbyists for oil and gas companies are lobbying federal lawmakers for a legal shield that could effectively put the fossil fuel industry above the law and block dozens of state and local lawsuits the companies are currently facing for deceiving the public about how their products’ fuel climate change. Municipalities in Colorado, one of our home states, are among the communities demanding that Big Oil companies pay their fair share of the climate costs taxpayers are now facing to adapt to an increasingly severe climate. Like tobacco and opioid companies, fossil fuel companies have long known their products were dangerous, but pushed disinformation to cover up the evidence and protect their profits, while our communities pay the price.
Plainly, our right to access the courts is under attack. Local leaders understand the power that comes from being able to access the courts, which is why the National League of Cities—which represents more than 2,700 cities across the country—has a standing commitment to oppose any federal legal shield that would undermine municipalities’ authority to bring affirmative litigation.
These attacks on our right to access the courts cannot stand. Broad legal shields for entire industries would not only threaten local governments’ ability to pursue accountability, but also violate a core value of our justice system. When bad actors lie to the public and cause harm in our communities, the legal system is supposed to serve as a fair venue—where arguments and evidence are considered—but that system is not possible when you take away our ability to present arguments and evidence at all.
Imagine if Big Tobacco or opioid manufacturers had secured legal immunity from Congress—communities decimated by cancer and addiction would never have been able to fund treatment centers and public health campaigns without first filing accountability lawsuits only made possible through access to the justice system.
As city leaders from across the US gather this week to discuss our collective priorities, let’s reaffirm our commitment to protect access to the courts for all our communities and speak with one voice across party lines to ensure that our congressional representatives do the same.