You’ve probably heard all of the unbelievable coincidences surrounding Jeffrey Epstein’s suicide. Cameras not working, inexplicably quick removal from suicide watch¹, guards sleeping on the job, fellow inmate removed.

It’s not surprising that people are creating a conspiracy theory around it. It’s incomprehensible that any organization could be that incompetent. In a sense, conspiracy theories like this are an example of how much trust we still have in government. We trust it to be basically competent, and therefore assume there must have been a deeper reason for the apparent screwup.

The problem, however, is that this was a government institution, and government institutions are that incompetent every day. It’s standard operating procedure for government programs. It’s what government bureaucrats do to all of us. There is nothing unbelievable about it. The same forces that make DMV offices into a shining example of government competency, and that encourage VA officials to falsify documents with no repercussions—except for the dead veterans—also work on prisons.²

The common rejoinder to the incompetence theory is that nobody’s been fired for incompetence. But that also is common practice among government organizations. It’s only in the private sector³ that employees are fired for gross incompetence. In government jobs, they’re promoted, or sidelined but continue to collect paychecks and benefits.⁴

One of many reasons that conspiracy theories are so compelling is that it’s always more comfortable to believe in a competent government than an incompetent one. But government bureaucracies are never competent over the long-term. At best, they don’t become blatantly corrupt. Given the necessity of government bureaucracy, we’d prefer that they be DMVs rather than VAs.

For Democrats and their palace guard in the media, it’s just one conspiracy theory after another.

And most people who are spreading the “Epstein didn’t kill himself” meme among the groups I frequent seem to get that. They’re not spreading it because they believe it, but to tweak a corrupt media that has been airing outrageous conspiracy theories about President Trump for the last three years and and keeps going from conspiracy theory to conspiracy theory.

But when it comes to real stories, they do their best to bury them if the story reflects badly on Democrats. This same corrupt media was all too happy to let the Epstein story drop once Epstein died. Far too many Democrats continued flying Epstein Air long after his Lolita Express was exposed, and the media talking heads were very uncomfortable reporting on it. They buried the story for as long as they could. They fired the person who they think, probably incorrectly, leaked the story about their burying it. They even tried to manufacture a fake link to the one politician who had repudiated Epstein after Epstein’s crimes were revealed. Tellingly, that politician is not a professional politician at all, and just as tellingly, most professional politicians hate him.

Imagine for the moment that it had been the opposite, that instead of Trump repudiating Epstein, refusing even to let Epstein into Trump hotels, and Democrats supporting Epstein, Democrats had repudiated him and Republicans had continued accepting his gifts.

The media would not have let the story drop just because the main player died. Every member of the Democrat-media complex who is now ignoring this story would have assumed that Epstein didn’t kill himself, that somehow the White House had something to do with it⁵ . They would have floated this conspiracy theory nightly, with no evidence, just as they’re trying to keep the completely fact-free Ukrainian quid-pro-quo story alive even after the transcript came out. Even after all the supposed whistle-blowers end up testifying that they never actually saw any evidence of the crimes they’re alleging.

The media had all their hopes pinned on the transcript, and when it turned out to exonerate the president, they simply stopped reporting about the transcript in order to keep their own outrageous conspiracy theory going. They’re burying the transcript like they buried Epstein’s Lolita Express.

Portland antifa proving Mencken right.

They refuse to report on the corruption surrounding Eric Ciaramella, how closely connected he is to the swamp and to Democrats, because to do so would kill their conspiracy theory about Trump. Again, imagine the scenario turned around. A CIA agent assigned to a Republican White House, whose lawyer threatened that he would remove a Democrat from the White House, attempts to hide behind whistleblower laws in order to claim a conversation that didn’t happen. Journalists would be reading the transcript live nightly to prove that hypothetical Eric wrong. Whistleblower laws that had been changed literally days before so as to allow third party hearsay.

That’s not a conspiracy, they’d be saying. That’s a fact pattern.

The media and Democrats are literally trying to impeach Trump for fighting corruption. It reminds me of something Chesterton wrote in The New Jerusalem:

The mob howls before the palace gates, “Hateful tyrant, we demand that you assume more despotic powers”; and the tyrant thunders from the balcony, “Vile rebels, do you dare to suggest that my powers should be extended?” There seems to be a little misunderstanding somewhere. — G. K. Chesterton (The New Jerusalem)

The same thing in different forms permeates the beltway class. The press literally want the President to designate some people as fascists and beyond the protection of the Constitution, especially the first, fourth, and fifth amendments.

What’s the next step? Once you convince the President of the United States to designate people you disagree with as actual fascists, what’s the next step?

Meanwhile, the press is protecting actual fascists. Well, why not? Once you decide that free speech means shutting up people who disagree with you, it’s not a big leap to beating people up in the name of non-violence.

The brave journalist storming the gates of the DC swamp in order to report the truth about corrupt politicians has become the protector at the swamp’s gate, the personal bodyguard of the corrupt, hiding any truth that reflects badly on swamp Democrats. It’s an upside down world.