Epstein Files

Epstein Files

I have not been willing or able to go through even one page of the 3 million pages of the Epstein files recently released by the Justice Department. Nor have I been interested enough or informed enough to write about the story on The Weekly Bystander. However, in last week’s Wall Street Journal Barton Swaim, a regular columnist on the op-ed pages, gave an excellent summary of the evidence. Here are some highlights. 

In the first place, he noted that the latest release included an earlier assessment of the case by the FBI that “found no evidence in Epstein’s residence and bank accounts of a trafficking ring or of “sex videos” supposedly used for blackmail.” In short, to the dismay of conspiracy seekers on both sides, 

There was in the end, no sex-slave ring, no blackmail operation, no cameras recording dalliances for later use, no client list, just a deeply sick and rich predator with a few enablers.

Secondly, the new documents seem to contain no evidence that Donald Trump “cavorted with Epstein and his harem.” Indeed, Swaim noted the presence of a document from 2006 detailing a phone call from Trump to the Palm Beach Chief of Police where Trump indicated he knew about Epstein’s behavior and “thought it vile.”  Trump told the Chief that on one occasion he was with Epstein, but when some teenage girls appeared, “he got the hell out of there.” Swaim also believes that there is nothing in the files that really can harm ex-President Bill Clinton.  

However, there seems to be a whole group of lesser fry that are exposed by the Epstein files. Swaim notes that there was “a circle of well-connected, wealthy and politically liberal men who looked past Epstein’s taste in girls and remained on friendly terms with this charming, lavishly generous and intellectually conversant epicure.” These men, “liberal VIPs in media, tech, and politics… all held conventional liberal opinions and gave lavishly to liberal causes and Democratic candidates.” Practically every day since the release of the files, headlines tell of resignations from prominent positions by member of this liberal elite. 

I have wondered why the Epstein files were never released during the Biden administration. Could it be because Democrats in the Justice Department knew there was nothing in them to implicate Domald Trump, but that there was plenty to implicate liberal Democrats. Only Trump hatred could have led them to demand the release of the files once the President was back in office. They hoped to find something that would disgrace the President, but so far, no luck.

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Note: It is amazing that our government somehow amassed 3 million pages of documents on this one individual. Even more amazing is the fact that people in and out of the government have spent, and continue to spend countless hours going through these files. This looks like a job for AI.

Success Sequence

 

Wendy Wang

The obvious success of Asian immigrants to this country is hard to square with a systemic racism narrative. If there is systemic racism in America, why do the children of Asian immigrants do so well that American universities have to take measures to prevent too many Asian students from being admitted?  Below is a post written a few years ago that tried to answer the question. **************************

It’s college admissions time in the USA again, and letters of acceptance and rejection are being mailed out. Inevitably, elite colleges and universities will find themselves overwhelmed with extremely qualified applicants with Asian backgrounds. It has long been suspected that admissions offices impose quotas to keep the number of Asian students down. On the other hand, affirmative action administrators  will bend over backwards to find qualified black applicants. 

Why do Asian students do so well in school while black students do so badly? It is easy to blame prejudice and racism but my own experience has led me to believe that the reason is cultural. A Wall Street Journal op-ed by Wendy Wang, the Director of Research at the Institute for Family Studies, bore out my suspicions. 

Ms. Wang argued that there is a “sequence” that must be followed to achieve success in rising out of poverty. The sequence begins with education, at least a high school diploma, followed by a job, and only then marriage and children. There will be exceptions but her research shows that failure to follow this sequence results in a high probability of a life of poverty or worse. In other words, if children come before marriage, work, and education the results are disastrous.

Wang cited statistics concerning so-called millennials from a study that tracked young adults from their teenage years to early adulthood. Of those who failed to follow the “sequence”, 53% were in poverty. The rate dropped to 31% for those who had at least a high school diploma, and 16% for those with a full-time job. Finally, the poverty rate dropped to 3% for those who held off having children until married.

Interestingly, the success sequence worked extremely well for young adults from low income backgrounds. “Eighty percent of those with lower income backgrounds made it into middle or upper income brackets when they followed all three steps.” Missing one of the steps or putting them out of sequence, like having children before marriage, led to a very high probability of failure.

Ms. Wang cited her own Asian background. In the small Chinese city in which she grew up there were practically no childbirths before marriage. It was unthinkable. Today in China, Japan, and South Korea the out of wedlock birthrate is only 4%. Compare that rate to America’s urban centers where the out of wedlock births often exceed children born to married couples.

I know a young woman with a degree in elementary education from a fine college who started her teaching career as a first grade teacher in a Bridgeport school made up largely of black and hispanic children. Her college degree could not have prepared her for the chaos she encountered on her first day. Every day presented new pathological personal and social behaviors, and these were only first graders. In many ways, first grade is pivotal for it is then that the mind is ready to learn how to read. If the opportunity is missed, students will inevitably fall behind and never catch up.

Sadly and significantly, the teacher told me that on Parent’s Night, only four parents showed up to hear about their child’s progress. Maybe parent is the wrong word because most of these Bridgeport first graders didn’t have parents. They were being raised by grandparents some of whom were not even in their forties. Sometimes even great-grandparents were the caregivers for these children. Moreover, in most cases there were no men involved in the raising of these children. 

No amount of money will rectify the tremendous social disaster that has taken place in American cities in the past few generations. Unwed teenage pregnancies create an almost impossible educational problem. To get an education certificate today, teachers have to take courses that would almost qualify them as master psychologists. 

Even the best teachers will not be able to overcome this cultural disaster.  There is a high probability that the parentless first grader will come to regard school as a prison and even before he or she gets to eight grade they will likely be attacking classmates and teachers, and destroying school property. Next, the probability is also very high that they will join a street gang, become a drug addict or dealer, and eventually wind up in jail or dead on the street.

Some will argue that Ms. Wang’s “sequence” success formula of education, work, marriage, and children is old fashioned. Actually, the success formula she finds in Asia was once the norm in the USA, especially among that generation that we now fondly recall as the “greatest generation.” Some may also argue that just getting an education and a job is sufficient for success, and that marriage and children are no longer necessary. However, another recent news article indicated that there is an epidemic of loneliness and depression sweeping over the country today that seems to indicate that love and marriage are still part of the success sequence.

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Political Hatred

In a recent column in the Wall Street Journal, Holman Jenkins cautioned MAGA supporters against falling in love with a politician. Good advice, but he failed to mention that it is perhaps even more unwise to hate a politician. Coincidentally, about the same time a letter to the Journal cited the words of Michael Corleone in the Godfather, "Don't hate your enemies, it clouds your judgment." These words brought to mind a post I had written about political hatred back in 2022 during the Trump interregnum. ***************************

In my quiet suburban neighborhood, I sometimes come across lawn signs that read, "HATE HAS NO HOME HERE." Nevertheless, in the past few years I have never witnessed so much hatred in my town and in my country as has been directed at former President Donald Trump. Like all hatred it seems visceral rather than reasonable. It is as if a large part of the population has received a political vaccination that enables the political immune system to form an immediate and violent reaction to even the mention of his name. 

During the election when I questioned my neighbors about their Trump animosity, they invariably replied that they just could not stand the man, no matter what he might have accomplished in office. They could not even bring themselves to acknowledge that he might have accomplished even one good thing as President. He has been our of power for more than a year but still my Internet home page features almost daily anti-Trump headlines.

I have been thinking about this Trump hatred phenomenon for awhile, and recently I found as good an explanation as I have ever read in a biography of Sir Robert Walpole, an English politician of almost 300 years ago. It would appear that Walpole was as larger than life as Donald Trump, and just as hated despite his accomplishments. Below is J.H. Plumb's concluding appraisal of Walpole that brought Trump and his haters to mind. 

All that he does and says in the early thirties argues a growing inflexibility of temperament, a greediness to grasp and exercise power; the anxiety lessens, and the future is contemplated less than the present. As a young man his contemporaries spoke of his gaiety, of his ebullient life, of the warmth and spontaneity of his nature. Some of this he never lost. Although he could be the most affable of men, quick to respond to his defeated enemies, this should not blind us to the essential ruthless nature of his political actions. Where he differed from many great men who have wielded political power as great as his, is this: he did not require the death or even exile of men who had vainly crossed his path. Their complete political impotence was all he desired. Nor did great power make him secretive or remote or grossly suspicious of his close friends. … He was available to all from field marshals to ensigns, admirals to midshipmen, archbishops to curates, princes to merchants, so long as they were prepared to wait patiently in the throng that daily besieged his doors. And to his colleagues, and to the Court, he remained open-hearted, generous almost to a fault, retaining his delight in ostentatious display, in gargantuan meals and vast potations; his coarseness, his love of lecherous sally, grew rather than diminished with the years… His frankness, his lack of pretentiousness, were nevertheless tinged with vulgarity, with a gross enjoyment, with almost a delight in stimulating the envy of men. 

Certainly that envy was stirred, more profoundly, more publicly than is the common lot of great men of state. He was hated more for being himself than for his conduct of affairs. Not only was his power resented… his whole manner of life bred detestation wherever he went. He paraded his wealth with ever greater ostentation. He bought pictures at reckless prices, wallowed in the extravagance of Houghton, deluged his myriad guests with rare food and costly wine; his huge ungainly figure sparkled with diamonds and flashed with satin. And he gloried in his power, spoke roughly if not ungenerously of others, and let the whole world know that he was master. Such a way of life invited criticism on a personal level. All the opposition press reveled in portraying the grossness of Walpole’s life; ballads were sung of his ill-gotten wealth; obscene caricatures illustrated his relations with the Queen; bitter pamphlets laid bare the graft, the corruption, the favourtism of his regime…. Year in, year out the gutter Press squirted its filth over his reputation. His friends did little better, the institutions by which he governed worse…. His sole aim in life was to amass gold and aggrandize his family. Day after day, week after week, month after month, this twisted and malicious criticism never ceased: and embedded in the heart of the sludge was a grain of truth, enough indeed for this uncontrolled  propaganda to carry with it a certain conviction. The good that he did—the stability, the peace, the prosperity, were taken for granted—the evil magnified to phantom proportions.

Public life and the institutions of government were thereby brought into disrepute: by 1734 Parliament had lost much of the respect it had enjoyed in the early years of the century; an ever franker acceptance of the greedier side of human nature strengthened self-seeking, weakened altruism and vulgarized politics, until critical issues of state became a matter of personal vendetta…. Each year that Walpole remained in power lowered the standards of public life, for the vituperation and criticism were as responsible as the long years of power for hardening his nature and coarsening his response to life.

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J. H. Plumb. Sir Robert Walpole, the King’s Minister. 1961. Pp. 330-332. 

A Winter's Walk

Now that we are in the midst of winter, it seems appropriate to post another poem by my younger brother Robert DeStefano, a retired high school science teacher and a lifelong naturalist who has published a number of his poems and other writings on Amazon. I append his explanation.

A Winter’s Walk

 

up

 before sunrise

like 

a child on Christmas Eve

anxiously

waiting to see

what awaits

me

owls are still

 hooting

hoping to scare a mouse

out of hiding

light rays appear

and

reveal most trees 

have shed their

 leaves

except for

beech trees leaves 

that will

hang on until

spring

I

begin my walk

light illuminates

the green feather-like fronds

of

the Christmas Fern

winter is the time for

this evergreen

to show off its beauty

as all around

 it is

brown

hoar frost glistens

on 

delicate evergreen pine tree needles

they 

defy the

 cold

sway in the

 wind

and

 perfume

 the frigid air

a giant sycamore tree beckons

me

a ghostly sight

eerily white

has shed its outer bark

to remove harmful boring beetles

an icy pond

radiantly reflects sunlight

ducks bob up and down

in a small 

ice-free patch

startled by me

they quack

they fly

 circle the pond

provide

a dazzling display

of color

and as

 light reflects off their feathers

they

wave

 goodbye

A Winter’s Walk

Whenever I go to my little log cabin in New Marlborough, Massachusetts, in late fall or winter, I know I have to be prepared to expect the unexpected.  I have encountered porcupines sleeping just outside the back door to the cabin.  I use a shovel to place the porcupine in a wheelbarrow and move it to the forest, only to have it reappear the next day.     I have had to deal with red squirrels packing Norway Spruce cones between the rafters of the dirt floor cellar for winter food.  They know not to place the cones on the floor because once the thaw arrives, there will be about 12 inches of water in the cellar that will ruin the remaining cones.  In short, I never know what to expect as the cabin is in a remote area with my closest year-round neighbor about three miles away.   I start the wood-burning stove and try to get the cabin to about 65 degrees before nightfall.   I get up early, at least two hours before dawn, add wood to the fire, get dressed, and patiently wait for sunrise.

I once found a book being discarded by a library titled “One Day on Beetle Rock” by Sally Carrighar when I had just returned from the Army in 1972.  The book caught my eye because there was an image of a squirrel on the cover.  When I saw the title on the inside of the book, I almost put it back until I read the first two lines of the book.  They read, “The water of the brook reflected the sunlight up to an alder branch, where it flickered along the gray bark. On the fool’s gold under the ripples lay a web of sunlight, gently shaken.”   I could not stop reading the book.  I realized that Sally Carrighar possessed a gift for observation as well as being able to describe with impeccable detail the events that occur in nature.  One seems as though they are actually in Sequoia National Park, where nine animals are interacting with nature and each other during one day on Beetle Rock.  I have always loved nature, but her book made me realize that I had to use all my senses when walking in nature because there is so much to be seen, heard, smelled, touched, and even occasionally tasted when one gets into “the woods.”

My poem depicts a typical winter’s day for me at the log cabin and the surrounding woods.  I am very fortunate to be in an area scarcely touched by humans.  To me, as a former science teacher and Botanist, the property is like my personal outdoor laboratory.  There is so much happening during every season of the year; however, it requires childlike eyes and a childlike mind to appreciate it all.  

Yes, the Christmas Fern has a story to tell.  How does it survive the freezing temperatures?  Yes, the Sycamore trees have a story to tell.  How did they evolve to shed their bark to avoid insect damage? Yes, the pond has a story to tell. How was it formed, and why is it so important for so many species that live in or near it? I will attempt to answer these questions with future poems and stories. 

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