Ruinous Powers: Trump, the Epstein Tranche, and Laugier’s Martyrs
Mary Boykin Chesnut's Diary from Dixie ends on a haunting note. She recounts how one of her friends, with whom she often corresponded, complained that she was receiving fewer and fewer missives from her. Mary's rationale was grim: "I do not write often now, not for want of something to say, but from a loathing of all I see and hear, why dwell upon those things?" When I read those words, a fitting conclusion to a chronicle that began with wild patriotism but ended in ashes and blood, I sympathized with her. Inspired by her diary, I started this, well, certainly not a diary from Dixie, but rather a Blog of Breakdown, and, like her, I find it increasingly difficult to chronicle the day-by-day descent of my country into ruination.
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Case in point, the murder of Alex Pretti at the hands of CBP goons. As with the murder of Renee Good, Alex, a Veterans Administration nurse, was executed in broad daylight, this time by being shot in the back roughly ten times at point-blank range by two of Trump's uniformed thugs, Jesus Ochoa and Raymundo Gutierrez (never forget Renee Good's murderer was Jonathan Ross, soon to be a roommate with Derek Chauvin).
As with Good, that "fuckin' bitch" according to Ross, the murder of Pretti was caught on video thanks to the many brave protestors in Minneapolis.
1. Alexander Acosta (Former Labor Secretary)
Perhaps the most direct and controversial connection. In 2008, as the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Florida, Acosta approved the non-prosecution agreement that allowed Epstein to serve only 13 months in county jail.
Role in Administration: Trump appointed him Secretary of Labor in 2017.
Outcome: He was forced to resign in 2019 following the renewed public outcry over the "deal of a lifetime" he granted Epstein.
2. John Phelan (Secretary of the Navy)
A more recent revelation that came to light after the massive 2025/2026 document dumps.
The Connection: Flight manifests released from Epstein’s Boeing 727 (the "Lolita Express") showed Phelan traveled on at least two transatlantic flights with Epstein in early 2006.
Role in Administration: He was confirmed as Secretary of the Navy in March 2025. Phelan has not been accused of wrongdoing, but his presence in the logs has caused significant political friction.
3. Howard Lutnick (Commerce Secretary)
The current Commerce Secretary was also identified in the sprawling tranches of documents.
The Connection: Records show Epstein invited Lutnick and his wife to his private island, Little St. James, in 2012.
Role in Administration: Lutnick has stated he distanced himself from Epstein years ago and, like Phelan, has not been accused of any criminal conduct.
4. William Barr (Former Attorney General)
While not a "social" connection in the same vein, his ties are often cited as a conflict of interest in your line of work.
The Connection: Before becoming Attorney General, Barr worked for Kirkland & Ellis, the law firm that represented Epstein during the 2008 negotiations with Acosta. Additionally, Barr’s father, Donald Barr, was the headmaster at the Dalton School in the 1970s who famously hired Epstein to teach there despite Epstein's lack of a degree.
Role in Administration: Served as Attorney General during the period of Epstein’s 2019 arrest and subsequent death in federal custody.
5. Steve Bannon (Former Senior Advisor)
In an email dated April 24, 2009, Epstein sent a sickening email to his apparent friend, asking, "Where are you? are you okay , I loved the torture video."The identity of the mysterious email recipient has not been made public, with their name redacted just like so many others referenced in the Epstein Files.
Second, a sworn affidavit regarding Trump and a missing girl:
As 'Tiffany Doe' swore to:
I personally witnessed Mr. Trump physically threaten the life and well-being of the Plaintiff if she ever revealed any details of the physical and sexual abuse suffered by her at the hands of Mr. Trump.
13. I personally witnessed Mr. Epstein physically threaten the life and well-being of the Plaintiff if she ever revealed the details of the physical and sexual abuse she suffered at the hands of Mr. Epstein or any of his guests.
14. I personally witnessed Defendant Trump telling the Plaintiff that she shouldn't ever say anything if she didn't want to disappear like the 12-year-old female Maria, and that he was capable of having her whole family killed.
15. After leaving the employment of Mr. Epstein in the year 2000, I was personally threatened by Mr. Epstein that I would be killed and my family killed as well if I ever disclosed any of the physical and sexual abuse of minor females that I had personally witnessed by Mr. Epstein or any of his guests.
Bear in mind that this is just one such document that mentions girls who disappear when they become troublesome. There are others with similar claims.
Now, in light of all this, please recall that, according to Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, in the joint memo they issued last July, they stated:
"This systematic review revealed no incriminating “client list.” There was also no credible evidence found that Epstein blackmailed prominent individuals as part of his actions. We did not uncover evidence that could predicate an investigation against uncharged third parties."
Simply: We are witnessing a cover-up of the worst crimes and criminals imaginable. As Trump told Marjorie Taylor 'Jewish Space Lasers' Greene:
President Donald Trump told Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene this year that he opposed the release of the Epstein files because his “friends will get hurt,” Greene said in a New York Times Magazine profile published Monday.
Trump also told Greene, R-Ga., that he would not invite the Epstein survivors to the Oval Office because they had not earned that honor, according to Greene, who was once among Trump’s biggest boosters but has broken with him.
They aren't even pretending anymore.
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The mask covering such grotesquery doesn't just slip in private memos; it is being ripped off in broad daylight. Another case in point: today, Trump reposted an openly racist video depicting the Obamas as primates.
This, in the middle of Black History Month. This isn't just a reposting of a meme; it’s a mission statement of dehumanization. That is the thread running through this endless series of MAGA scandals. It is about the rich and powerful, primarily, if not exclusively, white men and, yes, women, who have preyed upon mankind in their rapacious appetite for power, control, and profit. It is about bigotry elevated to religion, depravity consecrated as sacrament.
In short, it is MAGA, which has never been about uplifting the economically marginalized, but about the corrupt rich and a faithless political class working together to fleece the "poorly educated" (as Trump put it) and implement a plan to install the rich and powerful as techno-tyrants. And they did it the old-fashioned way: by harnessing the bigotry, ignorance, and envy of the most gullible voters. (As Sinclair Lewis observed, "Every man is a king so long as he has someone to look down on.")
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Of late, I haven't been able to get Pascal Laugier's French horror film, Martyrs, out of my mind. Not to be confused with the dreadful and brain-dead American remake of the same name, the original movie is often cited as one of the most brutal films ever made, as it deals with the systematic abduction and torture of young women.
What initially presents itself as a clichéd revenge tale mixed with torture porn, unexpectedly transforms into a chilling and intelligent story of not just existential dread, but also a metaphor about the rich and powerful abusing their way to immortality.
[SPOILER ALERT]
As the narrative unfolds, we learn that the abduction and torture of young women isn't being done by some lunatic, but by a cadre of well-off people, led by the matronly "Mademoiselle", who would have comfortably fit into the Epstein social club. Eventually, we learn that they are torturing these girls not for fun but to ascertain whether an afterlife exists (I won't go into the details to keep spoilers to a minimum, but I found the theory to be an interesting one). You see, while the movie doesn't outright proclaim this to be the case, the viewer gets the clear impression that these people understand that the world is coming to an end, presumably due to the acts of ruthless people such as themselves, and are desperately trying to find a way out to save themselves, with the resultant toll in human lives and suffering just being the cost to get that lifeboat.
The rationale sounds familiar, doesn't it, especially in light of the sudden interest in bunkers for billionaires?
In an interview, the director, Pascal Laugier, described his film with remarkable prescience. (Bear in mind that Martyrs was released in 2008, the year Epstein would be convicted. In other words, it was in production before Epstein even had his day in court, but would be released the same year of his criminal plea. I find that to be an eerie coincidence.)
There are no utopias, ideologies have collapsed and our faith in the future with them. I realise it’s not very original to say this, but I really believe that the Western world is sick. Individual anxieties are at their highest, everyone lives in a constant low-level fear, it feels like we’re going to crash into a wall, there’s something very deathly in our current society...Martyrs is almost a work of prospective fiction that shows a dying world, almost like a pre-apocalypse. It’s a world where evil triumphed a long time ago, where consciences have died out under the reign of money and where people spend their time hurting one another. It’s a metaphor, of course, but the film describes things that are not that far from what we’re experiencing today.
Pascal should change his name to Cassandra.
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Looking at the latest Epstein files, with their whispers of 'disappeared' 12-year-olds, while a blatantly corrupt and authoritarian administration reflexively dehumanizes its own citizens to amass more wealth and power while covering up the crimes of its associates, makes the parallels bleakly inescapable.
We are being governed by the 'Mademoiselles' of the world. To them, the 'breakdown' of our social fabric, the murder of nurses like Alex Pretti, and the increasing economic desperation of the American people, aren't failures of policy. They are part of the plan; necessary blood offerings to achieve their own transcendence. They don't see citizens; they see sacrificial lambs.
The scales have fallen from my eyes, and I am horrified by what I see, by what I now know to be true: The West is sick, and America is in the clutches of evil like never before. We are no longer Winthrop's "shining city on a hill" but rather a decayed and corrupt empire, ruled by ruinous powers who govern a populace that wallows in its own ignorance like pigs in mud.
When I began chronicling the second Trump term, I thought I was documenting a political crisis. Now I understand I’ve been chronicling something older and darker - the death of a nation’s conscience.
Mary Chesnut wrote until she couldn’t anymore. I don’t know how long I’ll keep going. But for now, this is my record of the pre‑apocalypse, written in the hope that someone, someday, will understand how it felt to watch the lights go out.
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