By Matt Agorist

If ever you needed a clearer example of the mainstream media’s intentions in this country, you just need compare the amount of coverage given to the 2019 measles non-crisis—used to bolster vaccine manufacturers’ bottom lines while calling for the silencing of those who advocate for vaccine safety—versus the 18,000 children who will go missing from government-run “protection care” this year—many of whom will be sold into sex slavery.

As the Google trend analysis below shows, the former received a ridiculous amount of coverage while the latter received almost zero.

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Unless you’ve been under a rock lately, you’ve probably noticed the utter hysteria over the measles “epidemic” being shoved down the collective throats of America.

If one were to unquestioningly buy into said hysteria you’d think a deadly epidemic is sweeping the nation and children are dropping dead left and right. But that’s simply not true and the reality is there is no epidemic and no one has died.

According to the current numbers from the CDC, there have been just 159 people in the country to report contracting the measles in 10 states.

As a result of the hysterical coverage, however, a widespread war on those who advocate for informed consent has been waged.

For a few dozens cases of measles, Washington declared a state of emergency and media coverage has been devoted round the clock.

To reiterate, as of February 21, 2019, there were only 159 cases of measles confirmed in the entire country, prompting hysteria. But when 18,000 kids a year go missing, many of them being sold into sex slavery, we hear nothing but crickets from these same people.

It is true that some of these kids will run away, others will escape to get away from abuse, and some will get involved with the wrong crowd and follow along. However, many others are outright stolen or kidnapped and end up being sold on the black market like a commodity.

Equally as disturbing as these children going missing is the fact that no one cares to go looking for them, making them easy prey for human traffickers and predators. In fact, in some states, if one of these children goes missing for over 6 months, they are removed from the system entirely and those responsible for them couldn’t care less.

As Darcy Olsen writes for Arizona Central, “giving up on finding a child after six months is contrary to the very purpose of being a guardian. Closing the books also gives predators a green light: If you can keep a kid hidden for six months, you’re home free. Predators should know that we will never give up on finding these children — ever.”

While the media is incorrectly referring to the measles outbreak as an epidemic, the epidemic of child sex abuse is very real.

The fact is that America has a dark secret that no one wants to admit. Talk of this secret will get you labelled as a conspiracy theorist, fake news; and outlets who report on it will have their organic reach throttled by social media and Google alike.

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, many in the mainstream media and the government refuse to see this very real epidemic of child sex trafficking in the United States. What’s more, according to the government’s own data, the vast majority of a portion of these trafficked kids are coming from the government system who promises to keep them safe—a horrifying irony indeed. But it appears to be set up this way.

This system is set up to pull children from their families for ridiculous reasons and turn them over to for-profit systems—funded by your tax dollars—that use these children as cash cows and have no incentive to keep them safe.

In 1984, the United States Congress established the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC), and, as part of Missing Children’s Assistance Reauthorization Act of 2013 they receive $40 million to study and track missing and trafficked children in the United States.

In 2017, NCMEC assisted law enforcement with over 27,000 cases of missing children, the majority who were considered endangered runaways.

According to their most recent report complied from FBI data and their own, of the nearly 25,000 runaways reported to NCMEC in 2017, one in seven were likely victims of child sex trafficking. Of those, 88 percent were in the care of social services when they went missing.

American Natural Superfood - Free Sample

Showing the scope of the abuse, in 2017 alone, NCMEC’s CyberTipline, a national mechanism for the public and electronic service providers to report instances of suspected child sexual exploitation, received over 10 million reports. According to NCMEC, most of these tips were related to the following:

• Apparent child sexual abuse images.


• Online enticement, including “sextortion.”


• Child sex trafficking.


• Child sexual molestation.

Other governmental organizations have corroborated this horrifying trend. In a 2013 FBI 70-city nationwide raid, 60 percent of the victims came from foster care or group homes. In 2014, New York authorities estimated that 85 percent of sex trafficking victims were previously in the child welfare system. In 2012, Connecticut police rescued 88 children from sex trafficking; 86 were from the child welfare system. 

Equally as disturbing as the fact that most sex trafficked kids come from within the system is the fact that the FBI discovered in a 2014 nationwide raid that many foster children rescued from sex traffickers, including children as young as 11, were never reported missing by child welfare authorities.

Even high-level government officials have been ensnared in these foster care abuse scandals. As TFTP previously reported, multiple victims came forward and accused Seattle Mayor Ed Murray of sexually abusing them when they were children in Washington’s foster care system.

The records in that case, dating back to 1984, explicitly noted that Ed Murray should “never again be utilized as a certified CSD resource for children.” It also showed that a criminal case was brought against Murray by prosecutors but in spite of the multiple accusations, charges were somehow never filed and his records buried.

As Snopes and the mainstream media in general attempts to smear those who try to call attention to alleged and very real child trafficking, the government’s own data shows how irresponsible this is. While there are certainly some outlandish theories being presented online, the facts are outlandish enough to warrant serious scrutiny. Until this epidemic is taken seriously, the government, the media, and all those who deny it will remain complicit in keeping it going.

As Michael Dolce, who specializes in these horrific child abuse cases, pointed out last year, “we have set up a system to sex traffic American children.” Indeed, and, whether or not it is deliberate, sensationalizing a measles non-crisis is perfect cover to keep that system going.

Matt Agorist is an honorably discharged veteran of the USMC and former intelligence operator directly tasked by the NSA. This prior experience gives him unique insight into the world of government corruption and the American police state. Agorist has been an independent journalist for over a decade and has been featured on mainstream networks around the world. Agorist is also the Editor at Large at the Free Thought Project, where this article first appeared. Follow @MattAgorist on Twitter, Steemit, and now on Minds.

By Derrick Broze

Tallahassee Police Department documents released in late 2017 reveal evidence of a cover-up of child sexual abuse involving a cult called The Finders.

In February 1987, a mysterious cult known as The Finders made international headlines when they were suspected of everything from child trafficking, pedophilia, satanism, and connections to the Central Intelligence Agency. Now, more than 30 years after The Finders made its way to the front page of newspapers all over the United States, recently released documents from the Tallahassee Police Department threaten to shine a new light on the story of this international cult that once numbered in the hundreds.

The Finders cult was a young group of men, women, and children who claimed to be nothing more than former hippies living an alternative lifestyle and practicing alternative parenting. The Finders were founded by a mysterious man with military intelligence connections nicknamed “The Game Caller” who believed in turning his life, and the lives of those around him, into a constant game or experiment. The Finders members followed Marion Pettie’s every order without question.

The trouble for the group began on Wednesday, February 4, 1987 when an anonymous caller told the Tallahassee Police Department that two well-dressed men were at a local park with six kids and a blue van. The children were described as looking “disheveled” with potential signs of abuse. Tallahassee Police arrived and questioned Douglas E. Ammerman and Michael Houlihan, Finders members who said they were taking the kids to a school for brilliant children in Mexico. The men also said the children were being weaned from their mothers. Authorities eventually took the men and children into custody. A search of the van turned up 20 floppy computer disks, a TSR-80 computer, and a “device that police say could be used to hook into a computer in another location by telephone.”

Immediately it became clear that this case was not like any other. Following the arrests, the Associated Press reported that police had moved the six children from a shelter after receiving a “half-dozen” phone calls threatening the kids. The AP notes, “children were moved to an undisclosed location where they were being protected by armed guards.”

When interviewed by the police, the kids claimed the men are their teachers and that they have been living in a house with other children and adults. The children were unaware of modern technology, including phones, televisions, hot water, staplers, typewriters, and electricity. The oldest child, Mary, said they received instructions from “a man they called a Game Caller or a Game Leader,” the founder of The Finders, also known as Marion Pettie.

The Washington Post reported that a confidential police source previously told authorities The Finders were “a cult” that conducted “brainwashing” techniques at a warehouse and apartment in Washington D.C. The source told of being recruited by The Finders with promises of “financial reward and sexual gratification” and of being invited by one member to “explore” satanism.

At that point, officials with the U.S. Customs Service agency joined the investigation due to suspicion that the potential crimes may have crossed state or national borders. The U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Federal Bureau of Investigations were also said to have been investigating the case. After learning the children were based in the D.C. area, the Tallahassee department contacted D.C. Metropolitan Police to establish the identities of the children. Tallahassee police spokesman Scott Hunt told reporters that D.C. police were already aware of The Finders.

On Friday February 6, Virginia State police raided a 90-acre farm owned by Marion Pettie in rural Madison County, Virginia. Neighbors of the farm say children were often brought to the farm in vans, usually crying. An FBI report states that “evidence of a satanic/cult ritual was discovered.” The same report notes that all reports regarding Finders are to be classified as Secret.

Meanwhile, D.C. Metro Police and U.S. Customs Service agents raided other Finders properties, including a duplex apartment building and warehouse in Washington D.C. Police reports and articles from 1987 indicate that the D.C. police removed large plastic bags filled with color slides, photographs and photographic contact sheets from the warehouse. Some of the photos were of naked children.

U.S. Customs spokesman David Hoover told the Post, “We’re not saying that it’s pornographic, but it has all the earmarks.” A U.S. Customs Service report filed by Customs Agent Ramon Martinez described some of the photos as showing blood rituals involving children slaughtering goats while adults in white robes watched. It also described that they found instructions on how to purchase children.

By Monday, February 9, five days after the children and their two male chaperones were arrested, Metropolitan Police announced they have found no evidence of wrongdoing or satanic activity by The Finders. Health officials in Florida then say they have no evidence of sexual abuse of the children. D.C. Metro Police Chief Maurice Turner Jr. states that the department has not uncovered any evidence to “corroborate allegations made by an informant that the organization is a cult and that its activities involve satanic rituals.” By Thursday, February 12th, Gary Sheppard of the FBI’s Washington field office, says the FBI investigation has “not uncovered any evidence of federal violations.”

But according to the New York Times, “the statement from the Metropolitan Police Department conflicts with accounts from the police in Tallahassee, Fla., where the children were found, unwashed and hungry” and that “Officials there say that morning at least two of the children had signs of sexual abuse.”

Tallahassee Police Reports Released to the Public

This report from the New York Times was confirmed in 2018 when 75 pages of Tallahassee police reports were finally released to the public. The documents make it clear that when Mary, the eldest child, was questioned about sexual abuse she became very evasive. She said there were no “bad touches” between the children and adults, and reportedly became fidgety and wanted the interview to end. The same police report mentions that an official with the Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services, or HRS, said two children were confirmed cases of sexual abuse. Jane Pittilla of HRS stated that a Dr. Moorer had found one of the children lacked “anal sphincter control,” consistent with acts of sodomy. Also, one of the girls had signs consistent with vaginal penetration by fingers.

Despite these reports, by February 24 lead investigator Rick Huffman officially ended the Tallahassee Police Department’s investigation into The Finders. Huffman did not mention the reports of sexual abuse by doctors with HRS. The release of the TPD documents add more evidence to the theory that agencies within the federal government covered up the crimes of The Finders.

This alleged cover-up even made headlines in 1993 when U.S. News and World Report reported that the Department of Justice was initiating a new investigation into allegations that the CIA was somehow connected to The Finders cult and had worked to cover up the case. U.S. Customs Agent Ramon Martinez, as well as local police officers in Tallahassee, had spent the previous years attempting to alert the authorities to the apparent cover up.

After interviewing dozens of people directly involved in the case and reviewing hundreds of documents, the DOJ concluded there was no evidence of child abuse or trafficking, satanic cult activity, or law enforcement complicity. In the minds of the authorities, the case was closed. However, as we have uncovered here, there are many details that ought not be forgotten.

While it may be easy to dismiss these claims as nothing more than conspiracy, it’s difficult to ignore the statements from the Tallahassee Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services regarding signs of sexual abuse. There’s also the original reports from Customs Agent Ramon Martinez describing detailed information related to trafficking. Martinez conducted a limited search of the documents taken from The Finders warehouse and claims his search of the documents revealed the following:

• Detailed instructions for obtaining children for unspecified purposes


• Instructions on the impregnation of female members of The Finders


• Telex messages using MCI mail, an early version of email


• One such telex specifically ordering the purchase of two children in Hong Kong to be arranged through a contact in the Chinese Embassy

Brave - The Browser Built for Privacy

When asked for a comment about his initial report, Ramon Martinez agreed to speak to us as long as we did not record. In one email exchange, Martinez makes it clear that he stands by his original report and does not believe anyone will be held responsible. On November 1, 2018, Martinez wrote:

Although the release of the TPD documents does fill in some of the gaps in story of The Finders cult, questions still remain. Did the Game Caller’s games involve trafficking of children? What exactly were The Finders finding? Why did this story make mainstream headlines and then disappear in less than a week? Was the story part of the “moral panic” of the 1980’s, or something more?

To learn more about this story please watch the following two part documentary: 



Derrick Broze is the founder of TCRN.

This article was sourced from The Mind Unleashed.

Also Read from Activist Post: Child Sex Rings Reveal Unspeakable Acts of Power Elite

By Tyler Durden

Update: Prosecutors alleged during a Monday morning press conference that they discovered nude photos of underage girls during a raid at Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.

Prosecutors say nude photos apparently showing underage girls found during raid at Jeffrey Epstein’s Manhattan mansion.

— The Associated Press (@AP) July 8, 2019

Prosecutors told reporters that they will seek Epstein’s detention pending trial due to flight risk, and that the case was “assisted by some excellent investigative journalism,” likely in reference to the Miami Herald‘s ongoing coverage of Epstein.

FBI pried open Jeffrey Epstein’s front door in Manhattan during raid pic.twitter.com/cfMAhvmbnv

— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) July 8, 2019

Prosecutors unsealed an indictment against billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, revealing two counts of child molestation involving “dozens of minor girls” as young as 14 between 2002 and 2005 in New York and Florida, according to Bloomberg.

Of note, this is separate from last week’s order by the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals that documents in a defamation lawsuit against Epstein be made public, which may contain the names of high-level individuals.

The case was unsealed early Monday in Manhattan federal court, where Epstein is slated to make an appearance and will likely seek release on bail. Prosecutors have scheduled an 11 a.m. press conference to discuss the case.

According to the indictment, Epstein “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan… and Palm Beach,” per ABC7.

“EPSTEIN intentionally sought out minors and knew that many of his victims were in fact under the age of 18, including because, in some instances, minor victims expressly told him their age,” according to the indictment.

Epstein, 66, was arrested on Saturday at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, after arriving from France on a private flight, according to the New York Times.

According to the indictment, he “created a vast network of underage victims for him to sexually exploit in locations including New York and Palm Beach” using victims and employees as recruiters.

Epstein’s “Employee-1” used a network of recruiters to find underage girls.

“Dozens” of underage victims at his NY residence. This adds to the 30+ victims at his Florida home. pic.twitter.com/P8yh7ZtP3h

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— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) July 8, 2019

“There are some women who now feel they need to come forward. I hope more do. it takes a lot of courage understandably,” Miami Herald Investigative Reporter Julie K. Brown said in a statement to CNN, adding “They were taken advantage of by someone who knew how to prey upon them and groom them to do things he wanted them to do.”

In 2008 Epstein pleaded guilty to procuring a person under 18 for prostitution and felony solicitation of prostitution, serving just 13 months in a Florida state prison after cutting a sweetheart deal with current labor secretary, and then US Attorney, Alex Acosta.

The Miami Herald last year published a series of articles reporting that the top federal prosecutor in southern Florida at the time, Alex Acosta, worked with Epstein’s lawyers to fashion the deal. Acosta, now the U.S. labor secretary, violated federal law when he failed to clear the federal non-prosecution agreement with many of Epstein’s alleged victims, a federal judge ruled in February.

The Herald said it found about 60 victims. –Bloomberg

“Local victims have said that when they were 14, 15 years old they brought 25, 30 girls to him. That’s just one person,” said attorney Bradley Edwards, who represented one of Epstein’s accusers – and noted that President Trump was the only person linked to Epstein who cooperated with his investigation.

“Nobody has really had the opportunity or ability to see how deep this goes in any other jurisdiction,” Edwards added.

Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today!

This Epstein case is horrific and the young women deserve justice. It is quite likely that some of our faves are implicated but we must follow the facts and let the chips fall where they may – whether on Republicans or Democrats. #WeSaidEnough #MeToo https://t.co/2mvskwQwW1

— Christine Pelosi (@sfpelosi) July 7, 2019

According to Bloomberg, the new case includes additional alleged victims who weren’t covered by Epstein’s non-prosecution agreement. He is alleged to have committed these crimes in Manhattan.

Learn more about the Jeffrey Epstein story:

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By Tyler Durden | ZeroHedge.com

Also Read from Activist Post: Child Sex Rings Reveal Unspeakable Acts of Power Elite

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By John W. Whitehead

“As political and economic freedom diminishes, sexual freedom tends compensating to increase. And the dictator (unless he needs cannon fodder and families with which to colonize empty or conquered territories) will do well to encourage that freedom.”—Aldous Huxley, Brave New World

Power corrupts.

Anyone who believes differently hasn’t been paying attention.

Politics, religion, sports, government, entertainment, business, armed forces: it doesn’t matter what arena you’re talking about, they are all riddled with the kind of seedy, sleazy, decadent, dodgy, depraved, immoral, corrupt behavior that somehow gets a free pass when it involves the wealthy and powerful elite in America.

In this age of partisan politics and a deeply polarized populace, corruption—especially when it involves sexual debauchery, depravity and predatory behavior—has become the great equalizer.

Take Jeffrey Epstein, the hedge fund billionaire / convicted serial pedophile recently arrested on charges of molesting, raping and sex trafficking dozens of young girls.

It is believed that Epstein operated his own personal sex trafficking ring not only for his personal pleasure but also for the pleasure of his friends and business associates. According to The Washington Post, “several of the young women…say they were offered to the rich and famous as sex partners at Epstein’s parties.” At various times, Epstein ferried his friends about on his private plane, nicknamed the “Lolita Express.”

This is part of America’s seedy underbelly.

As I documented in the in-depth piece I wrote earlier this year, child sex trafficking—the buying and selling of women, young girls and boys for sex, some as young as 9 years old—has become big business in America. It is the fastest growing business in organized crime and the second most-lucrative commodity traded illegally after drugs and guns.

Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.

It’s not just young girls who are vulnerable to these predators, either.

According to a 2016 investigative report, “boys make up about 36% of children caught up in the U.S. sex industry (about 60% are female and less than 5% are transgender males and females).”

Who buys a child for sex?

Otherwise ordinary men from all walks of life. “They could be your co-worker, doctor, pastor or spouse,” writes journalist Tim Swarens, who spent more than a year investigating the sex trade in America.

Ordinary men, yes.

But then there are the extra-ordinary men, such as Jeffrey Epstein, who belong to a powerful, wealthy, elite segment of society that operates according to their own rules or, rather, who are allowed to sidestep the rules that are used like a bludgeon on the rest of us.

These men skate free of accountability by taking advantage of a criminal justice system that panders to the powerful, the wealthy and the elite.

Over a decade ago, when Epstein was first charged with raping and molesting young girls, he was gifted a secret plea deal with then-U.S. Attorney Alexander Acosta, President Trump’s current Labor Secretary, that allowed him to evade federal charges and be given the equivalent of a slap on the wrist: allowed to “work” at home six days a week before returning to jail to sleep. That secret plea deal has since been ruled illegal by a federal judge.

Yet here’s the thing: Epstein did not act alone.

I refer not only to Epstein’s accomplices, who recruited and groomed the young girls he is accused of raping and molesting, many of them homeless or vulnerable, but his circle of influential friends and colleagues that at one time included Bill Clinton and Donald Trump. Both Clinton and Trump, renowned womanizers who have also been accused of sexual impropriety by a significant number of women, were at one time passengers on the Lolita Express.

As the Associated Press points out, “The arrest of the billionaire financier on child sex trafficking charges is raising questions about how much his high-powered associates knew about the hedge fund manager’s interactions with underage girls, and whether they turned a blind eye to potentially illegal conduct.”

In fact, a recent decision by the Second Circuit Court of Appeals allowing a 2,000-page document linked to the Epstein case to be unsealed references allegations of sexual abuse involving “numerous prominent American politicians, powerful business executives, foreign presidents, a well-known Prime Minister, and other world leaders.”

This is not a minor incident involving minor players.

This is the heart of darkness.

Sex slaves. Sex trafficking. Secret societies. Powerful elites. Government corruption. Judicial cover-ups.

Once again, fact and fiction mirror each other.

Twenty years ago, Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut provided viewing audiences with a sordid glimpse into a secret sex society that indulged the basest urges of its affluent members while preying on vulnerable young women. It is not so different from the real world, where powerful men, insulated from accountability, indulge their base urges.

These secret societies flourish, implied Kubrick, because the rest of us are content to navigate life with our eyes wide shut, in denial about the ugly, obvious truths in our midst.

In so doing, we become accomplices to abusive behavior in our midst.

This is how corruption by the power elite flourishes.

For every Epstein who is—finally—called to account for his illegal sexual exploits after years of being given a free pass by those in power, there are hundreds (perhaps thousands) more in the halls of power and wealth whose predation of those most vulnerable among us continues unabated.

While Epstein’s alleged crimes are heinous enough on their own, he is part of a larger narrative of how a culture of entitlement becomes a cesspool and a breeding ground for despots and predators.

Remember the “DC Madam” who was charged with operating a phone-order sex business? Her clients included thousands of White House officials, lobbyists, and Pentagon, FBI, and IRS employees, as well as prominent lawyers, none of whom were ever exposed or held accountable.

Power corrupts.

Worse, as 19th-century historian Lord Acton concluded, absolute power corrupts absolutely.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about a politician, an entertainment mogul, a corporate CEO or a police officer: give any one person (or government agency) too much power and allow him or her or it to believe that they are entitled, untouchable and will not be held accountable for their actions, and those powers will eventually be abused.

We’re seeing this dynamic play out every day in communities across America.

A cop shoots an unarmed citizen for no credible reason and gets away with it. A president employs executive orders to sidestep the Constitution and gets away with it. A government agency spies on its citizens’ communications and gets away with it. An entertainment mogul sexually harasses aspiring actresses and gets away with it. The U.S. military bombs a civilian hospital and gets away with it.

Abuse of power—and the ambition-fueled hypocrisy and deliberate disregard for misconduct that make those abuses possible—works the same whether you’re talking about sex crimes, government corruption, or the rule of law.

It’s the same old story all over again: man rises to power, man abuses power abominably, man intimidates and threatens anyone who challenges him with retaliation or worse, and man gets away with it because of a culture of compliance in which no one speaks up because they don’t want to lose their job or their money or their place among the elite.

It’s not just sexual predators that we have to worry about.

For every Jeffrey Epstein (or Bill Clinton or Harvey Weinstein or Roger Ailes or Bill Cosby or Donald Trump) who eventually gets called out for his sexual misbehavior, there are hundreds—thousands—of others in the American police state who are getting away with murder—in many cases, literally—simply because they can.

The cop who shoots the unarmed citizen first and asks questions later might get put on paid leave for a while or take a job with another police department, but that’s just a slap on the wrist. The shootings and SWAT team raids and excessive use of force will continue, because the police unions and the politicians and the courts won’t do a thing to stop it.

The war hawks who are making a profit by waging endless wars abroad, killing innocent civilians in hospitals and schools, and turning the American homeland into a domestic battlefield will continue to do so because neither the president nor the politicians will dare to challenge the military industrial complex.

The National Security Agency that carries out warrantless surveillance on Americans’ internet and phone communications will continue to do so, because the government doesn’t want to relinquish any of its ill-gotten powers and its total control of the populace.

Unless something changes in the way we deal with these ongoing, egregious abuses of power, the predators of the police state will continue to wreak havoc on our freedoms, our communities, and our lives.

Police officers will continue to shoot and kill unarmed citizens. Government agents—including local police—will continue to dress and act like soldiers on a battlefield. Bloated government agencies will continue to fleece taxpayers while eroding our liberties. Government technicians will continue to spy on our emails and phone calls. Government contractors will continue to make a killing by waging endless wars abroad.

And powerful men (and women) will continue to abuse the powers of their office by treating those around them as underlings and second-class citizens who are unworthy of dignity and respect and undeserving of the legal rights and protections that should be afforded to all Americans.

As Dacher Keltner, professor of psychology at the at the University of California, Berkeley, observed in the Harvard Business Review, “While people usually gain power through traits and actions that advance the interests of others, such as empathy, collaboration, openness, fairness, and sharing; when they start to feel powerful or enjoy a position of privilege, those qualities begin to fade. The powerful are more likely than other people to engage in rude, selfish, and unethical behavior.”

After conducting a series of experiments into the phenomenon of how power corrupts, Keltner concluded: “Just the random assignment of power, and all kinds of mischief ensues, and people will become impulsive. They eat more resources than is their fair share. They take more money. People become more unethical. They think unethical behavior is okay if they engage in it. People are more likely to stereotype. They’re more likely to stop attending to other people carefully.”

Power corrupts.

Avoiding The Eye - Ships Free Today!

And absolute power corrupts absolutely.

However, it takes a culture of entitlement and a nation of compliant, willfully ignorant, politically divided citizens to provide the foundations of tyranny.

As researchers Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky found, those in power not only tend to abuse that power but they also feel entitled to abuse it: “People with power that they think is justified break rules not only because they can get away with it, but also because they feel at some intuitive level that they are entitled to take what they want.”

As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, for too long now, Americans have tolerated an oligarchy in which a powerful, elite group of wealthy donors is calling the shots. They have paid homage to patriotism while allowing the military industrial complex to spread death and destruction abroad. And they have turned a blind eye to all manner of wrongdoing when it was politically expedient.

We need to restore the rule of law for all people, no exceptions.

Here’s what the rule of law means in a nutshell: it means that everyone is treated the same under the law, everyone is held equally accountable to abiding by the law, and no one is given a free pass based on their politics, their connections, their wealth, their status or any other bright line test used to confer special treatment on the elite.

This culture of compliance must stop.

The empowerment of petty tyrants and political gods must end.

The state of denial must cease.

Let’s not allow this Epstein sex scandal to become just another blip in the news cycle that goes away all too soon, only to be forgotten when another titillating news headline takes its place.

Sex trafficking, like so many of the evils in our midst, is a cultural disease that is rooted in the American police state’s heart of darkness. It speaks to a far-reaching corruption that stretches from the highest seats of power down to the most hidden corners and relies on our silence and our complicity to turn a blind eye to wrongdoing.

If we want to put an end to these wrongs, we must keep our eyes wide open.

ABOUT JOHN W. WHITEHEAD

Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new book Battlefield America: The War on the American People  is available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected].

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John W. Whitehead’s weekly commentaries are available for publication to newspapers and web publications at no charge. Please contact [email protected] to obtain reprint permission.

Also Read from Activist Post: Child Sex Rings Reveal Unspeakable Acts of Power Elite

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