I will never be the same after researching and writing about the Epstein files.

I read this today, and it was like–yeah, that’s me.

“I realized this morning that I made the crossover.

It’s permanent. You don’t go back.

While getting ready for work, my wife asked me what I thought about the story of Savannah Guffrey and her mother being kidnapped.

Without hesitation, I said, “It’s a psyop.”

She stopped and looked at me sideways. Why? What are you talking about? Where’s your empathy?

And in that moment, I realized how far apart our operating systems now are.

In my head, possibilities started stacking immediately. Maybe it’s a cover story. Maybe it’s meant to pull attention away from the Epstein files resurfacing. Maybe it’s tied to power struggles around the Trump administration. Maybe it’s a distraction from financial instability or rising geopolitical tensions. There are a dozen overlapping crises right now. Pick your explanation.

To her, that sounded unhinged.

When I said, “If you don’t think the Epstein story matters, you have another thing coming,” I could feel the gap widen further. To me, that story represents a line that should never have been crossed and proof that something is deeply broken. To her, it’s noise. Old news. Something better left alone.

That’s when it hit me. We’re not disagreeing on facts. We’re living in different layers of reality.”

Americans are mostly like the authors wife in that they’ve been propagandized for decades to trust authority, believing that America is basically “just and decent,” and that we don’t need to concern ourselves with the domestic or foreign policies because we’ve got highly qualified leaders working hard at fixing them.

Caitlin Johnstone relates: “Believing our society is just and decent allows one to relax under the assumption that they deserve all the comforts they have in life and that the system will never turn against them. If someone is killed by police, or is impoverished or imprisoned or homeless, then it’s because they did something wrong and immoral, and all you need to do to avoid the same fate is follow the rules and make ethical choices.”

Heretics like myself know that the idea of ethical world is a diabolical lie, one that the Epstein Files has confirmed. Meanwhile, I can’t unsee the patterns, incentives, and repeated evidence of a deep state that advances its murderous policies while protecting itself thru seduction and blackmail. Instead of competent, just and moral leaders we have, instead, a powerful class of depraved individuals committing what would be criminal acts, excused by the powers that be.

These different layers of reality are why I can’t have real conversations with most Americans. When I try to talk about any of the crazy-shit that’s happening it gets uncomfortable real fast. And if the conversation somehow survives first contact eventually people will ask me why I care about things that don’t affect me. And then I have to explain why it does affect us. That as Americans we all live in a “Second Gilded Age,” where deregulation, financialization, and elite impunity has produced a feral elite capable of the abuses seen in the Epstein files.

Even worse, Epstein is a preview of what they have in mind for the rest of us.