There is a certain grotesque Schadenfreude contemplating the way so many rich, powerful, well-connected, self-regarding people are suddenly unable to remember that, or why, they were pals with Jeffrey Epstein. It would be much better if the whole thing had never happened, especially because of the suffering of the victims. But there is something to be learned from the fact that it could and, far from being some shady rogue fringe operator, Epstein was a shady rogue core operator. Something about the culture and prevailing mindset.

For starters, look at how British Prime Minister Keir Starmer is further cementing himself to a plinth labeled “Worm” by sacking everyone around him because he appointed the just-arrested Peter Mandelson as British Ambassador to the United States. And if you’re going “Huh? Who? What?”, as you might well have to the name Jeffrey Epstein until quite recently, Mandelson was not some shady rogue fringe associate of Epstein even after the latter’s conviction for underage sexual abuse. He was close to the heart of the British Establishment.

MP, director of communications for Labour Leader Neil Kinnock, Minister in Tony Blair’s and Gordon Brown’s cabinets including President of the Board of Trade, lobbyist, advisor and um say caught in several of his own financial scandals including with Epstein. But there’s more. Mandelson’s nickname in British politics was “the Prince of Darkness”. And he reveled in it not despite but because he shared it with Satan. Hee hee. Then when the sulphurous flames leap upward it’s all gosh, whatever can it all mean?

I’ll tell you. It’s the transvaluation of all values. Like hiring someone who calls themselves “Bad Bunny” to do the wholesome family Superbowl halftime show and being astonished that his lyrics are obscene and misogynist and the family types watch something else. Why weren’t we told? Oh. We were. He said bad and we heard good. That other guy said darkness and we heard light. Or just personal advantage.

On which subject, did it ever cross Starmer’s mind to take responsibility and step down, for this or any other misstep? Because speaking of princes, even the man who used to be “Prince Andrew” has been brought low. And if I were ever able to speak to him my main question would be “Was it worth it?” He betrayed everyone who trusted him, from the Royal Family to regular Britons, to say nothing of the women involved, and he betrayed everything he believed in.

Or did he? What do people believe nowadays? Because if you look at Epstein’s associates, including Bill Clinton and Bill Gates, their very modern ideology offers a superficially weird combination of Big Government telling people “Thou shalt not” about everything from free speech to freedom of association to free enterprise with a personal ethos of “Do what thou wilt” in which inhibitions are for losers and what happens at Epstein’s island (or between lobbyists and politicians) stays there. From Rabelais to Crowley to Epstein to you.

It’s not a partisan scandal because it’s not a partisan mindset. It reaches up into the Trump Administration. All the way up. But it is a modern, even postmodern one. Why, Scientific American just offered us “The truth about polyamory” which is supposedly that “An anthropologist’s detailed research shows polyamorists focus on intimacy and honesty, not sleeping around”. Monogamy is for repressed squares, man. And the Big Brother at the Playboy Mansion mindset isn’t as weird as it seems because, as Ted Byfield warned long ago, social liberalism necessarily involves a massive state because sheltering people from the natural consequences of self-indulgence is expensive, and ever more so as time goes by.

If I can also name-drop Charles Murray here, he warned long ago that the people the British call “the clevers” were constructing a mind-bogglingly complicated world, convinced their wits and connections would help them navigate it smoothly, profitably and pleasantly while the proles toiled and stared. And to a significant degree they have succeeded (which parenthetically helps explain the rise of populism at which elites sneer). Modern tax codes, for instance, are not so complicated that accounting is a major profession because they’re structured to benefit the complex economic affairs of the downtrodden, who do get crumbs of course, but so the rich can advocate for massive redistribution yet keep their mansions and yachts and hoity-toity gatherings and fun. It was Epstein’s world, and people wanted in.

The situation reminds me of a long-ago Giles cartoon about a British sex scandal where a wife comments casually to her clearly wealthy husband that a lot of prominent men must be worrying while he sweats profusely and bungles cracking his breakfast egg. There’s no telling who will be next, and will babble that they’d forgotten they were close to him and on being reminded can’t remember why.

They all say they’re sorry now, of course, just worldly elite high-achieving innocents taken in by that slick character with his “Lolita express” private jet, whatever that name could mean. But if they were truly sorry, wouldn’t they have backed off when it meant giving up some of the perks of being close to Jeffrey, not when it became a hideous burning embarrassment or worse? Meanwhile Ghislaine Maxwell insists there’s a perfectly reasonable explanation she’ll trade for complete immunity but otherwise she pleads the 5th.

Contrition? It’s for hosers. And the Clintons smirk and refuse to testify like common peasants. But it’s not just individuals. It’s a whole elite that’s not accountable… for anything, from their policy blunders to their carbon hypocrisy to their sexual escapades. Like, yes Bill Clinton, who molested and perjured his way through the #MeToo movement and remained a hero of elite feminists.

One of the odd things about Epstein, and when I say odd I mean very much in keeping with the weird modern elite ambiance, is that nobody seemed very sure where his money came from. He was something-or-other on Wall Street, apparently. But what? Not an expert on finance or economics. Not an investor or an executive or a brilliant lawyer. More sort of a… prince of darkness, a guy who mysteriously made shady things happen and kept them out of the light. Yet people seem gobsmacked that his chronic “networking” wasn’t just a friendly, outgoing personality, it was all about trading favours.

It’s hard to believe hard-boiled journalists didn’t know it’s what that business is all about. Or that the modern world is structured in such a way that gaming the system increasingly beats playing the game by the rules. Or that people who insist that there’s no God, morality is a trick of the genes and it’s all about me would do dark things.

Certainly Epstein had all the right permissive non-judgemental values, or transvalued values. He was a Davos guy, not a Lent guy. Thus UnHerd columnist Kathleen Stock waxed wroth about “the women offered as gifts, the gynaecologist on speed dial”. Not some gross backward patriarchal pro-lifer. Heck no. And was plugged into financiers, politicians, celebrities and academics who were impeccably modern and, like Bad Bunny, used women without assuming any responsibility whatsoever. Her body her choice.

As Stock added, in the Epstein file dump “There’s Deepak Chopra, the New Age spiritual guru who refers to Epstein’s ‘girls’ as if they were a string of polo ponies; Noam Chomsky, the famous Left-wing intellectual apparently indifferent to the economic exploitation under his nose; Lawrence Krauss, the astrophysics professor dealing with his own allegations of sexual assault, asking the veteran offender for advice. (Epstein’s irritated verdict is also recorded for posterity: ‘you may be a great scientist but you suck at this sexual harassment game.’)”

Stock seems to consider it patriarchy, or something. Which is certainly one theme among various commentators, as if it were a rustic Christian fundamentalist scandal not a global urban elite one. (And of course a mishmash of far-left and far-right loons are ranting about Epstein being Jewish.) But Stock is right to conclude “The depressing fact is that sexual behaviour like Epstein’s is absolutely standard in our society”. It’s why it didn’t stand out. He was just better at it, his associates riding the peak hedonistic wave. Until now.

The New York Times complained about “The Epstein Files and the Hidden World of an Unaccountable Elite/ The search continues in the documents for ironclad criminal conduct, but the story of a sexual predator given a free ride by the ruling class has already emerged.” OK. But whose elite? The MAGA/Canadian truckers’ convoy type? Or the New York Times type. As you may have noticed, almost nobody has gone to jail. They have friends in high places. They are friends in high places.

Now I’m no naif. I realize many people have always tried to bend the rules, and the rich and powerful often managed it. But ideas have consequences, and we now live in Epstein’s world, and Hugh Heffner’s, and should not be shocked, shocked, to find the Lolita Express on the tarmac.