A searing reflection on the Epstein revelations and what they expose about unchecked power, privilege, and the illusion of democracy—questioning how societies normalized abuse, wealth, and hierarchy while humanity slowly lost its moral centre. By Vinta Nanda. 

The Medieval Face of Modern Power

For the past few days, I’ve been waking up to horror. My eyes open to video footages of the most ugly crimes being committed upon humanity, my ears ring to the echoes of what I see and hear on social media about the Epstein files and the various allegations against the perpetrators of violence and sexual crimes committed upon women and children, my skin cringes because I’m not used to this feeling of utter despair.

Did we not know this happened? Years ago while in Paris I once marvelled at the anorexic models we could see around us and wished I could be as thin as them, and one of my colleagues at the time whispered in my ear saying I should not wish this upon myself because these are young girls from impoverished families driven out of their homes and countries because of hunger and despair resulting from relentless wars in their countries, which at the time were taking place in East Europe.

Young girls, some even as young as 13 and 14, were walking the ramps in the fashion industry and size zero was being looked at as a trend to follow. We saw fashion. We saw aspiration. We did not see displacement, coercion, or the quiet trafficking of vulnerability packaged as glamour. We did not see power working silently in the background. 

We thought the #MeToo movement shocked us. No way. What is unfolding across medias, both old and new, is beyond shock. This is almost like a bombing of our hearts, minds and souls, making us realize that we have slept, slumbered through decades of decadence and darkness. No, this is not an awakening, it is not a reckoning like Melinda French Gates puts it – this is acknowledgement of our self-imposed denial over years and years of what power does to people, especially men and the women who become willing accomplices to them for rewards (yuck!) they believe they deserve.

The Vocabulary of Power

I’m not going to deep dive into the revelations, because there is enough being said and shown across the world about what was going on in Epstein’s world. Rather, I should address what power does to people.

What democracy are we talking about here? Isn’t it just a smokescreen for masses and middle classes which hide what goes on in the corridors of power? My friend Aparajita Sinha, serendipitously sent me this quote: “The measure of a man is what he does with power….” In the middle of my writing this piece, along with the following disclaimer — apparently Plato never said this but it’s a great quote.

We were discussing something else, but however…

My question to the world is, why do we have a word like ‘power’ in our vocabulary? Why is such a pathetic word used to describe a man or a woman who is gifted, wealthy or an achiever? The minute the word power is attached to anything, it legitimizes criminality and provides the license to an individual to exercise dominance over others around him or her. It turns human beings into feudal lords and the rest into subjects.

Also, the more wealth one accumulates, the more bored a person gets. Why? I’ll tell you. The more money one has, the more people we employ and the more comforts we buy with it. Successively, we have nothing to do thereafter. We sit in board rooms where our minions make presentations on our behalf, and the system is such that if what is fielded does not result in addition to the wealth we already have, then the poor minion loses his job. 

We carry on pompously because we have that much wealth expendable to get back into the bloody arena and participate in the show repeatedly. Power becomes theatre. Profit becomes sport. And people become expendable.

Democracies As Eyewash

So, what do we do when we are bored?

When we’ve seen everything, experienced everything, eaten all foods and we own God — yes really — because now it is the temples we have built or pay to run, where ordinary people come to pray for one meal a day, a job, peace and all the things they have nowhere else to go to?

We seek excess. We seek the forbidden. We seek spaces where laws bend and morality dissolves. Whether those places are private islands, hidden networks, elite clubs, or corridors of governance — they exist because power creates them and protects them.

We gravitate to the men and women who can lead us to those places which give us access to the high and mighty, to those who can multiply our wealth if we comply.

And what do we comply with? Agreeing to hoodwink the huge populations we represent, whether as leaders of massive corporations, conglomerates or countries. We go ahead and barter sovereignties of countries, cultures, faiths and human rights for more power and longevity in the state of power that we inhabit.

This is not modern civilization. This is medievalism dressed in couture and constitutional language.

What is this world we are living in? How do we even call ourselves democracies when, in the Congress of the most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, victims of human trafficking and sexual violence stand in a corner, unacknowledged, while systems defend what cannot be defended? As my friend Sharada Ramanathan says, it can’t be called indefensible anymore — because the defence itself has become normalized. It is “evil”! 

Democracy begins to look like theatre.

Elections become spectacle.

Accountability becomes optional.

Justice becomes negotiable.

Flesh Without Value

For the first time in my life, and so must you feel the same my dear readers, I’m feeling like a piece of flesh which has zero value in the eyes of all those men and women who have more wealth and therefore more power than I have. The hierarchies are endless. 

There are those with power. Then those with proximity to power. Then those who serve power. Then those who defend power. Then those who aspire to power. And finally, those who are simply consumed by it.

Where do ordinary citizens stand? Somewhere at the bottom of a pyramid we did not design but continue to uphold through our silence, our aspirations, and our occasional complicity.

We built systems believing they would protect us. Instead, they protect those who built private kingdoms within public democracies. We believed laws were equal. Instead, they bend around wealth. We believed visibility would ensure justice. Instead, visibility has only revealed the depth of injustice.

This is not just about one man or one network. It is about a culture that worships power and excuses its crimes. It is about societies that measure success through dominance rather than dignity. It is about democracies that function as eyewash, while medieval impulses govern the behaviour of those at the top. 

Perhaps the most heartbreaking realization is this: we always knew.

Somewhere, in fragments, in whispers, in rumours, in stories dismissed as conspiracy or exaggeration — we knew. But knowing is not the same as confronting. And confronting power requires courage that societies often lack.

What remains now is not shock, not awakening, not even reckoning. What remains is grief. Grief for the humanity we believed we had evolved into. Grief for the innocence we claimed to protect. Grief for the realization that power, when left unchecked, does not civilize — it corrodes.

And in that corrosion, we are all diminished.

Human Rights Watch, Dignity And Justice, Rights Under Threat, People Over Power, Civil Liberties, Freedom And Equality, Justice Delayed, Documenting Truth, Rights Matter,