There’s a Hindustani proverb that states: Hammam mein sab nange hain. The phrase refers to public bathhouses common in Persian, Mughal, or Ottoman societies. The phrase’s literal translation is: In a bathhouse, everyone is naked. The idea is that there’s no point pretending behind a veil of hypocrisy because, when the judgement comes, we are all found wanting; when appearances are stripped away, we all stand equally exposed.Nowhere has this phrase been more well epitomised than by the Epstein files, which have stripped away the carefully crafted angelic halos that PR agencies had built up for public figures. Every person of note in the WENA (Western Europe and North American) society as we know it appears to have been on a first-name basis with Jeffrey Epstein. There’s spiritual guru Deepak Chopra explaining that “God isn’t real but cute girls are,” following that up with an apology that has done more harm than good.Noam Chomsky is in there, the Devil’s Accountant and master linguist, lamenting over the “hysteria that has developed about abuse of women, which has reached the point that even questioning a charge is a crime worse than murder,” while trying to explain to his dear friend Jeffrey how to deal with the fallout. The man who taught us about manufacturing consent was instead helping Epstein manufacture narratives.Keir Starmer’s former ambassador to the US, Peter Mandelson, is in there asking Epstein for favours, with the Labour regime at least showing that they are equal-opportunity protectors when it comes to child grooming.Bill Gates makes an appearance, the global messiah of vaccines seeking an antibiotic treatment for his then wife Melinda because he had got an STD from Russian party girls.Elon Musk also makes sporadic appearances, happily wondering when he can come to the island to chill and showing his inability to decipher creep code, in the process becoming perhaps the only person who looks dorkier on the other side of the revelations.But quite surprisingly, the one who has looked most neutral, even angelic, is Donald J. Trump, whose arrival had been treated as the second coming of Lucifer Morningstar by the American media.Even with all the redactions—and the DOJ must be running out of black tape—there’s nothing in the Trump material that makes him look like the monster we were promised.Trump appears in the Epstein files in a strangely spectral way. His name is everywhere, but his voice is nowhere. He shows up in third-party emails, in interview notes, in calendars, in contact lists, and in messages where other people discuss him as a destination, a favour, or a point of access.Trump appears as a setting—Mar-a-Lago—as a brand, as a person others want proximity to, but never quite as an author whose words can be pinned down. Even when he is mentioned in investigative summaries or unverified tips, those references remain second-hand and legally inert. In a cache overflowing with emails, Trump’s absence as a sender or recipient is as conspicuous as his omnipresence as a reference. Perhaps it’s out there, withheld by the regime, but as of now, we have nothing.In fact, there isn’t a single email exchange between Trump and Jeffrey Epstein, who seemed to be emailing much of the Western hemisphere.Many Democrats thought the Epstein files would finally be something they could use to nail Trump, but it has instead made older Democratic leaders look bad. The one in hot water—literally and figuratively—is former president Bill Clinton.And perhaps that explains the Trump phenomenon better than anything else.To borrow lines from Dave Chappelle’s old SNL monologue, no one had ever seen a white male billionaire screaming that the system was rigged because he was inside it, and proudly stating that he didn’t pay any taxes because “crooked” Hillary couldn’t change the tax code as it benefited “her friends.” The American media establishment didn’t know how to deal with that sort of unvarnished truth then, and it still doesn’t now. Trump has always shown the unique Bart Simpson-like ability to not pay for his sins—surviving bankruptcy and even the full might of the American justice system—and coming back from political exile. Even Napoleon failed to manage that.Even today, he has moments of complete disassociation and goes into streams of consciousness rants that can only be described as logorrhoea, and pays no consequence, unlike Biden, whose re-run was felled by his diminishing mental and physical acuity.He can accept gifts openly from foreign governments, create parallel international institutions, threaten opponents and allies, encourage foreign actors to improve his family’s relationship with Mammon, and still walk away without any political price.Most scandals that could fell previous governments simply slip off the Donald’s (pun intended) back.
Hammam mein sab nange hain, and the Epstein files have stripped everyone bare, exposing hypocrisies, double lives, and carefully maintained illusions. But Trump has always behaved as if he were proverbially naked, a reality star through and through.There was never a halo to strip away, no performance of moral purity to dismantle.For others, the curtains removed from the bathhouse have been devastating. For Trump, it barely registers. In a room where everyone is finally exposed, the man who never bothered pretending stands oddly untouched, even sanctified. Go to Source