We’ll never know. We’ll never be able to conclusively rule out the conspiracy theories about Jeffrey Epstein’s death.

Look, I know the Bureau of Prisons is a bureaucracy. I understand idiotic things happen because bureaucracies are so under siege that they trip over themselves trying to get anything done.

This is a real problem: You should have seen the mountain of paper I went through getting hired by the U.S. Census Bureau last year (only to decide I couldn’t live with the ethics of non-voluntary participation[1]). And it was also clear to me in the training that as government employees, as they laid out how our work would be evaluated quantitatively for “efficiency” in dollars and cents, and how we were supposed to be “responsible stewards” of “taxpayer money,” that we were to feel guilty about living (on very low wages—still not a real job[2]) on the taxpayer dime.

I came away from that experience with enormous sympathy for the mid- and low-level employees in government bureaucracy, knowing that this is a part of the price they pay for relatively secure employment.

And it might well be that something like this is all that’s involved with the video that should have been taken outside Jeffrey Epstein’s cell.[3] I really can understand that just from what I saw with the Census Bureau.

The trouble is, now, we’ll never know. We’ll never be able to conclusively rule out foul play in Epstein’s death, even though the coroner has declared his death a suicide. We’ll never be able to rule out the conspiracy theory that other elites arranged or enabled his death to protect themselves.[4]

It’s one thing to hate the government, to want “to strangle the beast.” It’s another to hate it so much that you prevent it from doing things you decided you wanted it to do.

  1. [1]David Benfell, “Ethics,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/ethics/
  2. [2]David Benfell, “About my job hunt,” Not Housebroken, n.d., https://disunitedstates.org/about-my-job-hunt/
  3. [3]David Benfell, “What the hell is going on with the prison video from around the time of Jeffrey Epstein’s death?” Not Housebroken, August 16, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/16/what-the-hell-is-going-on-with-the-prison-video-from-around-the-time-of-jeffrey-epsteins-death/; Mark Hosenball, “FBI studies two broken cameras outside cell where Epstein died: source,” Reuters, August 28, 2019, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-people-jeffrey-epstein-cameras-idUSKCN1VI2LC; Carol D. Leonnig and Matt Zapotosky, “Investigators scrutinizing video outside Epstein’s cell find some footage unusable, according to people familiar with the inquiry,” Washington Post, August 26, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/investigators-scrutinizing-video-outside-epsteins-cell-find-some-footage-unusable-according-to-people-familiar-with-the-inquiry/2019/08/26/df405636-c827-11e9-a4f3-c081a126de70_story.html
  4. [4]David Benfell, “Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Send in the conspiracy clowns,” Not Housebroken, August 11, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/11/jeffrey-epstein-is-dead-send-in-the-conspiracy-clowns/; David Benfell, “Wait, what? Jeffrey Epstein strangled? Probably not. Only probably,” Not Housebroken, August 15, 2019, https://disunitedstates.org/2019/08/15/wait-what-jeffrey-epstein-strangled-probably-not-only-probably/

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