I think what we learned about Bill Gates can be extrapolated to similar people, or at least raised as a possibility for them. Before the Epstein releases, pretty much everyone thought of him as dorky-but-broadly-well-intentioned, and the fact that he jumped at the chance to commit adultery and then attempted to conceal the resulting disease from his wife certainly blows a hole into that perception of him. I’d expect that many other publicly silly/wholesome rich people are likewise less than upstanding in their private behavior.
Aside from that, it does tell us a few more cultural things about the ruling class:
There’s very little stereotypical decorum in Epstein’s personal communications; he and his friends talk a lot more like edgy internet users than anything else.
There isn’t the increase in political sophistication that you’d expect to see. Epstein’s political emails, specifically those ranting about Trump later on, seem in line with the kind of thing I’d see from his age cohort on reddit, or facebook, or substack. No special insights; his brilliant plan to “get Trump” in the runup to 2020 involved running some unpopular figure who had zero voter overlap with him as a third party candidate.
There’s very little subtlety or guile—Epstein talked to a Harvard law professor and even a board member of a Holocaust museum about his sex tourism habits very explicitly, with seemingly no concern for plausible deniability.
There seems to be a sharp drop in sincere egalitarianism/cosmopolitanism past a certain level of wealth and power. Epstein and his close associates seemed to view shared ethnic/religious affiliation as very important, and regularly joked about those that did not share those qualities.
The emails regarding Alice de Rothschild’s SAT scores indicate that, contra popular sentiment a while back, you really can’t buy a perfect SAT score no matter how many tutors you can afford. 550 reading and 520 math suggest that anyone painting the wealthiest and most powerful families as a reserve of extreme intelligence and competence is off base.
There’s very little subtlety or guile—Epstein talked to a Harvard law professor and even a board member of a Holocaust museum about his sex tourism habits very explicitly, with seemingly no concern for plausible deniability.
This implies that it’s just a random conversation between Epstein and a board member of the Holocaust museum, but the person you’re talking about was Epstein’s lawyer and they were discussing it in the context of his legal defense.
I think what we learned about Bill Gates can be extrapolated to similar people, or at least raised as a possibility for them. Before the Epstein releases, pretty much everyone thought of him as dorky-but-broadly-well-intentioned, and the fact that he jumped at the chance to commit adultery and then attempted to conceal the resulting disease from his wife certainly blows a hole into that perception of him. I’d expect that many other publicly silly/wholesome rich people are likewise less than upstanding in their private behavior.
Aside from that, it does tell us a few more cultural things about the ruling class:
There’s very little stereotypical decorum in Epstein’s personal communications; he and his friends talk a lot more like edgy internet users than anything else.
There isn’t the increase in political sophistication that you’d expect to see. Epstein’s political emails, specifically those ranting about Trump later on, seem in line with the kind of thing I’d see from his age cohort on reddit, or facebook, or substack. No special insights; his brilliant plan to “get Trump” in the runup to 2020 involved running some unpopular figure who had zero voter overlap with him as a third party candidate.
There’s very little subtlety or guile—Epstein talked to a Harvard law professor and even a board member of a Holocaust museum about his sex tourism habits very explicitly, with seemingly no concern for plausible deniability.
There seems to be a sharp drop in sincere egalitarianism/cosmopolitanism past a certain level of wealth and power. Epstein and his close associates seemed to view shared ethnic/religious affiliation as very important, and regularly joked about those that did not share those qualities.
The emails regarding Alice de Rothschild’s SAT scores indicate that, contra popular sentiment a while back, you really can’t buy a perfect SAT score no matter how many tutors you can afford. 550 reading and 520 math suggest that anyone painting the wealthiest and most powerful families as a reserve of extreme intelligence and competence is off base.
This implies that it’s just a random conversation between Epstein and a board member of the Holocaust museum, but the person you’re talking about was Epstein’s lawyer and they were discussing it in the context of his legal defense.