You might well think that Americans have heard more than enough by now about how the influence peddler and sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein "networked" his accomplices, victims, and apologists. But that plutocracy-serving elite's tawdry cravings for money, sex, power, and, later, conspiratorial dealings were merely symptoms, not causes, of a deeper, more dangerous craving that we need to understand. No matter whether we characterize it as pathological or as sinful in the nature of our divided human hearts, it's been poisoning the country since long before Epstein and Trump rode it and accelerated it in an ever-widening gyre. I came to it nearly half a century ago, when I got to know, and, soon enough, condemned, a carrier of methods and 'morals' that anticipated Epstein's and Trump's.Instead of joining the mad scramble to expose more individuals who've worked with Epstein to massage the cravings for money, sex, and political power, we'll be better off facing a fundamental challenge posed by California Congressman Ro Khanna, who has urged Americans "to ask ourselves how we have produced an elite that is so immature, reckless and arrogant."How, indeed? How and why have "respected" leaders who knew that Epstein was criminally perverse forfeited their public credibility and even their own self-respect by dancing so tightly with him? What did Epstein himself need so desperately that he couldn't stop spinning the vast spider's web that connected and indebted these people to him?And why did "progressive" opponents of Epstein's most noteworthy patron imagine that "No Kings" protests, impeachment trials, lawsuits, and fiery polemics would stop all the king's horses and all the king's men from putting Trumpty Dumpty back in office again? How did so much of America accept the hand-in-glove fit between Epstein's and Trump's thirst for adulation and their adulators' thirst for cheap simulacra of love, wellbeing, and social standing whose masters lord those delusions over the powerless?The answers have a lot to do with Epstein's earlier models and predecessors, one of whom I encountered almost half a century ago as a proficient rider of the storm of injustices that's now enveloping us. Recently a veteran New York City police officer warned me that Trump Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents' "bravado, inadequate instruction, lack of transparency, and immunity from prosecution" are "a deadly cocktail being forced down Americans' throats, leaving law-abiding immigrants, asylum seekers and even full citizens fearful, helpless, or dead."Even when brave Americans in Minneapolis and much of the rest of the country rejected that cocktail, Epstein was stirring and offering another, smoother brew to the roughly 9 percent of Americans whom Yale Law Professor Daniel Markovits has characterized aptly as a "meritocracy-trapped" class that serves the top 1 percent while exploiting (often by bedding) its victims.The Epstein files "lay bare the once-furtive activities of an unaccountable elite, largely made up of rich and powerful men from business, politics, academia and show business," the Times' Robert Draper noted. "The pages tell a story of a heinous criminal given a free ride by the ruling class in which he dwelled, all because he had things to offer them: money, connections, sumptuous dinner parties, a private plane, a secluded island and, in some cases, sex… That story of impunity is all the more outrageous now in the midst of rising populist anger and ever-growing inequality."Many in the Epstein elite remind me of the "panderers, procurers, and go-betweens" who were satirized in the 1962 Broadway musical "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," produced when Americans could joke more innocently about ancient, decadent Rome. Many such "middlemen" now perform less funnily at the podiums of Trump administration press conferences and in congressional hearings.Some of them were drawn into Trump's and Epstein's spider's webs at first by legitimate, pressing needs and projects. But a terminally cynical, corrupt minority has orchestrated such needs without any humane sentiment or scruple, following the example set by Trump, who told New York Magazine in 2002, "I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side." Only four years later, when Trump and Epstein had fallen out over unrelated business matters, he denounced Epstein to a police chief who was investigating the solicitations, telling him, 'Thank goodness you're stopping him, everyone has known he's been doing this,' according to a document recounting their conversation… Mr. Trump said it was known in New York circles that Mr.