“Bigger than Watergate”

In a heated exchange with Attorney General Pam Bondi during the House Judiciary committee hearing on February 11^th in a room packed with people and cameras, including the survivors of the debauched cruelty that we have all come to know, Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky declared that the scandal around the Epstein files was “bigger than Watergate.” He went on to say that “this goes over four administrations. You don’t have to go back to Biden… This cover-up spans decades,” as he pointed to Bondi and with contained fury declared, “and you are responsible for this portion of it.”

Bondi’s adolescent condescension aside, I was struck by this analogy. Watergate represented a turning point in American democracy. People had lost faith in its leaders and in democracy itself, because the foundational covenant of the nation had been broken. Or, it was finally recognized, by some at least, that this so-called American Eden actually bore a resemblance to hell.

The country suffered from a generalized crisis of legitimation. In 1975, the famed sociologist, Robert Bellah, put it this way:

The external covenant has been betrayed by its most responsible servants and, what is worse, some of them, including the highest of all, do not even seem to understand what they have betrayed. Nor can we discount the events that were disclosed in the second presidential term of Richard Nixon as the work of a small band of wicked men. The men in question, it seems, were not notably more wicked than other Americans. When the leaders of a republic no longer understand its principles, it is because of a history of corruption and betrayal that has affected the entire society.

No one and no institution escaped judgment. The rot was exposed. It took significant work, involving substantial legal reforms (that have since been undone), to keep this crisis from ripping apart a country already seized by the social upheavals of the mid-20^th century.

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But Massie sees this moment, our own, as bigger than Watergate. I would agree. When the Epstein files were lodged in the dark conspiratorial corners of the far right, it was easy, at least for me, to dismiss the talk of a cabal of pedophiles, made up of rich and powerful Democrats, as simply the rantings of racist lunatics. Pizza-gate, the delusions of madmen and women whose minds had been corrupted by the bile and nonsense of those who made money off their ignorance.

The Epstein files are much more than that. With each day, Americans take in the horrors and unconscionable actions of powerful men and women: that they raped and sexually abused young girls and that people in government protected them and still protect them.

What follows from this? As President Trump deploys his imps to cast spells to deflect and deny, distrust deepens as the country teeters on the edge of the abyss.

I am not being hyperbolic here. Our country is broken. The institutions of government fail us repeatedly as big money, self-interest, and cowardice gum up any serious attempt to represent the interests of everyday people. Poll after poll offers evidence of the American people’s deep disapproval of all three branches of government. All the while, the Trump administration has taken a wrecking ball to systems and structures, agencies and bureaucracies that have allowed the American people to live with some degree of confidence that the country will not come tumbling down.

But crises overwhelm and basic norms have been cast into the trash bin. And now this: distrust has gotten its teeth into the major coronary vein of America.

The Epstein files, full of wicked men and women, have exposed the rot that remains – the festering corruption and betrayal that has brought this country to its knees. Yes. This is bigger than Watergate. A cascading crisis of legitimation. I pray that we understand that.

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