There are times in life when you come to understand something that other people don’t yet ‘see’. Rather than saying something about it, and ending up in ‘you gotta believe me’ land, you wait for others to catch up. Sometimes it feels like it’s better to let an expert on the subject speak up first. If no-one in a position of power does speak up, you end up wondering why. As the unspoken truth becomes more and more obvious, and no experts come forward, the media starts filling the void with all kinds of beating around the bush, asides and innuendos. It appears this is the place America is in now with its predator-in-chief.

First, it might be useful to define terms and understand the nature of the predator. The word to describe the behavior of the Epstein folks is usually pedophile, except that’s not exactly accurate. Pedophile refers to adults who are sexually attracted to prepubescent children. The correct term for people who sought out Epstein for hookups with minors is hebephile — which means an adult who is attracted to pubescent children of ages 11-14. The attraction in and of itself isn’t illegal, but acting on that attraction is a crime called statutory rape. Beyond that, if these children are being trafficked to an island to be exploited, there’s all kinds of additional crimes being committed.

When looking at the predator-in-chief and his henchwomen, are we seeing the remnants of participants in Epstein’s ring?

When girls are being exploited in the way they were on Epstein island, there is a hierarchy that develops among them. The prettier and smarter girls learn to use their looks and intelligence to gain favor with the rich older men exploiting them. They start cooperating in a sense, not really understanding what exactly they are caught up in. It’s a survival strategy, and it’s traumatic.

As the girls become women, they begin to better understand that their childhood circumstances were wrong. At some point they need to come to terms with it, which means going back to the trauma and working through it. If they stay around the people who committed the crimes against them, and ride that into a high powered career, they never get to heal. Their faces, once pretty, slowly turn haggard as they carry around the trauma they never took time out to heal.

So again, when we look at the predator-in-chief and his henchwomen, are we seeing the remnants of participants in Epstein’s ring?

There’s a Chinese proverb that says, “欲蓋彌彰” (yù gài mí zhāng) — which roughly translates to the idiom, “trying to hide it makes it more conspicuous” or “the more you try to cover it up, the more obvious it becomes“. There are similar concepts in criminal psychology where attempts to hide past crimes leads to the commission of similar crimes.

In general, people recreate their pasts — especially the unresolved issues of their past — as they go through life. Criminals live in denial of how they have hurt others; they have increasing cognitive distortions and rationalizations about their behavior. This can include blaming others for their own faults while becoming more protective of their criminal associates. They paint themselves as heroes to outsiders, while inside their psyche (either consciously or subconsciously) they are seeking redemption for past wrongs. All the while, it becomes more and more obvious to outsiders that they are recreating aspects of their past that they want to keep hidden.

When we look at the predator-in-chief, ICE, and what’s happening in Minneapolis, we are seeing the cognitive distortions of a criminal trying to redeem himself. The people here in America illegally are psychologically connected to the people illegally trafficked to Epstein island when he was younger. ICE represents a means of redemption for past harm caused, while also mirroring the barrier in his psyche to keep the crimes hidden so he can function in life. Are the henchwomen doing the same thing they did in the past? Are they making up excuses (no matter how absurd) to protect the lead predator to garner favor? This is done by blindly vilifying the people who get in the way of ICE. Is this a Pretti Good explanation for what is really happening?

If a person dodges personal accountability for bad actions long enough, they lose their conscience. In religious terms it’s analogous to losing one’s soul. Conscience means ‘an inner feeling or voice viewed as acting as a guide to the rightness or wrongness of one’s behavior’. Once it’s gone, there’s no inner sense of right or wrong, but there is a cognitive awareness of what society considers right and wrong.

It’s almost impossible for a person who has a conscience to understand what life is like for a person who doesn’t have one. A person without a conscience can never do the right or wrong thing because they have no moral compass. They just do and then do again in a reactionary way hoping to gain good favor again. Each thing they do ends up revealing more of the bad things they want to hide. This explains where we are with the predator-in-chief; he’s a man with no conscience.

The remaining questions are, why did America Vote for this? And what now?

There’s an idea out there that Americans didn’t vote for this. Except that’s not really true. Sure, it’s become a reality that the rich put up compromised people as political candidates because they are easier to control, but the voters (consciously or subconsciously) still gave a predator the keys to the kingdom so-to-speak when there were other options. Was it a repressed want to elevate reality TV drama into the highest office? Or maybe it has more to do with a need to relearn certain forgotten ideals about putting immoral or conscienceless people into positions of power.

How much more is there to learn? While dealing with this issue within the country and for the country, there is a more important reason to get rid of these people currently in power. There are plenty of outside forces that want to hurt America. How much we have already lost might be minimal compared to how much we might still lose. If Americans are this slow to see their flaws, others outside of America are not.

How much more is there to lose to this predator-in-chief as his power structure crumbles?