Denouncing Depravity

Persons > Brand

Please forgive this detour from my normal posts about science. If you’re only looking to read about science, I will be back to my regularly preferred topics once I feel other, more pressing matters no longer require my moral participation.

Consistent with this post being a departure from my normal content on “A Biologist’s Guide to Life”, I am deeply disturbed by a pattern of brand myopia in our modern social media and influencer society.

Social media entices us to become something, to share content, acquire “followers”, track engagement, and build a “personal brand”. In times of relative moral peace, it’s not surprising that the economics of influence have thus created an ethos around personal brands that motivates sticking to your brand. When I did COVID work, for example, I built a social media account with many followers, significant engagement, and on the outside people perceived me as having a personal brand of a COVID guy.

The problem is, I never cared about influence, so any projection of a brand on my person wasn’t me. I came to appreciate the distinction, and my non-conformity with the norms of influencer culture, when in February 2025 I voiced concern for other moral and ethical issues du jour such as Trump’s threats to invade Greenland or ICE’s dehumanization of migrants. MAGA acolytes who followed me for COVID and amplified my words whenever I wrote ill of Anthony Fauci or the Democratic Party’s biases on COVID origins suddenly became furious at me when I shared my other views that were more important to me at that time than COVID was.

You’ve surely seen many influencers concede “I’ll probably lose followers for this…” Such concessions are a modern form of protest as an authentic person behind the account attempts to escape the confines of a “personal brand”. In people of outstanding character, moral outrage can and should overwhelm any desires for greater fame or fortune. The brand is less important than the person behind it.

I’ve reached yet another moment in this administration where fame, fortune, and whatever other battles I was fighting are less important than some urgent issues du jour that demand our attention and moral participation.

As we all watched Alex Pretti get murdered in broad daylight, every single one of us knew that was wrong. First and second amendment rights shall not be infringed. By murdering Alex Pretti after he was disarmed, the government deprived him of due process. With Bondi’s cartel-like threat to withdraw ICE from Minneapolis in exchange for voter data in the state, the government aimed to coerce states to abandon their unenumerated powers and thus tossed the 10th amendment out the window.

As we read through the Epstein files, we see a litany of accusations that Donald Trump, many members of his administration, many of his media acolytes such as Bari Weiss and Larry Ellison, and many of his most well-financed supporters such as Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, have all visited Jeffrey Epstein’s island where the cameras went dark (so we’re told) and from that island emerged accusations of pedophilia, rape, murder, cannibalism, and more. You cannot make up a more horrific list of crimes if you tried. In addition to crimes and criminality, Jeffrey Epstein appears to have had close ties to Israeli intelligence and Russian government officials, and within the files there are additional accusations by a credible source that the Trump administration is compromised by Israel with Jared Kushner serving as a key intermediary.

With this information, we now have to revisit many things for a full moral account of where we are in history, and where our humanity has gone.

Against protests from many world leaders, the prime minister of Israel Benjamin Netanyahu proceeded to carpet-bomb Palestine, ignoring many efforts to establish a ceasefire as Israel commit genocide against the Palestinian people. Recently, at Davos, this Jared Kushner of lore presented a real estate plan for a New Gaza showcasing futuristic buildings built on the site of a genocide sanctioned by many of the same people named in the Epstein files and accused of pedophilia, rape, murder, and more.

We are in the midst of a moral revolution in our society.

On one side, there is an increasingly unaccountable class if ultra-wealthy people capable of influencing governments at home and abroad, capable of winning lawfare by attrition that is cheap relative to their net worth, capable of funding candidates that support their causes, and even capable of flying “John Roberts” on private planes as Jeffrey Epstein’s private flight longs suggest (although I’m not aware of any confirmation that this is the same John Roberts now serving as chair of the US Supreme Court, the same John Roberts whose rulings on Citizens United allowed limitless financial influence tilting the scales of our elections).

On the other side, there are the rest of us human beings of limited to moderate wealth and good character trying to play by the rules to get ahead in life. There was Alex Pretti the ICU nurse at the VA hospital. There are migrants seeking a better life for their kids who never commit violent crimes during their stay in America. There are everyday Americans struggling to pay their bills. There are influencers and influential people, including scientists like myself, who are torn between their personal brand and the personhood of fellow humans. There are all of us who would be arrested and prosecuted if we were accused of but one of the thousands of crimes listed in the Epstein files. On this side, there is every person of good character and sound conscience who can still tell the difference between right and wrong, who still believes in the central premise of our country that all men are created equal, that nobody, not even the king, is above the law.

On one side, there is an unaccountable ruling class living Lord of the Flies fantasies and relishing in their wealth, power, and ability to influence the world’s governments.

On the other side are persons, personhood, humanization, and humanity.

Personal brands can make people feel trapped, torn by tension between what they feel they must do to continue advancing in our society and what they ought to do to fight for our common humanity.

Personhood is infinitely more important than brand. A brand can be rebuilt or redefined, but forgetting who we are as human beings and staying silent in the face of human rights violations can cause irreparable harm to ourselves, our reputations, and the legal and social structures protecting all of us from exploitation and violence.

If my personal brand were selling ice cream on a corner and somebody was getting mugged nearby, I would stop selling ice cream and rush to the scene to help the person getting mugged. I’ve seen many people choose otherwise, choose to remain bystanders, to stay silent and fear what could happen to their company or their brand or their reputation on other matters if they speak up on these. These people would either stay silent at the ice cream stand, or, worse yet, they would shout and keep selling ice cream in a way that distracts from the imminent threat to another person’s life behind them.

Every one of us selling our figurative ice cream needs to look in the mirror and ask if that person in the mirror has what it takes to do the right thing. Take it from me: doing the right thing is often not easy. You will lose followers, but it will make you a leader deserving of being followed. Every person with a platform who speaks up for the humanity of the people without a platform serves as a lamp post in the dark night, pushing back the darkness and providing safe passage to others within their sphere. Every person who decides to stop being a bystander and start intervening with the mugging displays the social and moral vigilance that deters future violence.

Take another look at the accusations of the Epstein files. According to sworn testimony, Donald Trump is accused of raping a 13 year-old girl and then threatening to kill someone. Jeffrey Epstein ran a sex trafficking operation, a modern day enslavement of women and girls, and many of the world’s wealthiest people knew about this operation, willfully participated in the Lord of the Flies debauchery on Epstein’s island, and didn’t speak up about it. Bill Gates asked Epstein for antibiotics to secretly dose his wife after apparently acquiring an STD from having sex with a Russian prostitute. Elon Musk eagerly asks Epstein if he can visit the island, asking about the girls there and clearly indicating Musk wanted to get wild. Peter Thiel is shown to be communicating with Russian government officials, as is Jeffrey Epstein. Epstein discussed a torture video with a redacted individual who was traveling to China and US at the exact same time as Benjamin Netanyahu, Epstein sought to meet Vladimir Putin to discuss Donald Trump, and Epstein was in touch with people believed to have ties with Israeli intelligence. When a Russian woman was attempting to blackmail NYC businessmen (with what information?), Epstein contacted a Russian government official and shared the address where the woman was staying in New York.

There are reports of cannibalism and there appear to be pictures of dead babies on a kitchen platter between chickens. Many people involved in these files have disappeared. Many, including Epstein himself, have been found dead from suicide under suspicious circumstances.

The depravity and corruption of these accounts is beyond compare. Truth and reconciliation are the very least we deserve. Any government by the people, for the people, must never be above the people. The government officials in these accounts need to be investigated. If anyone is found guilty of crimes, they need to be prosecuted. All signs of immorality and poor character, including willful silence while being aware of atrocities occurring at the hands of their friends, must answer to the people.

The Lord of the Flies characters running our governments don’t just pose a crisis of moral confidence, they may pose a grave threat to US national security. If administration officials engaged in horrific acts that were caught on video, they could be coerced and put under duress to advance the interests of our adversaries.

We’re left with questions of grave consequence: as Trump sent weapons to Netanyahu for the genocide of the Palestinian people, did he do this truly out of his interest to Make America Great Again, or did Trump’s affairs during his many trips to Epstein’s island, and Epstein’s connections to Israeli intelligence and possibly even Netanyahu, provide a lever of coercive influence no foreign government should ever have on an American president?

When Trump accepted half a billion dollars from Qatar before sending NVIDIA chips to Qatar, did he do this out of his interest to Make America Great Again, or did his personal financial conflicts of interest compel him to provide Qatar hardware that can be used to recognize American or dissident faces in terminator drones to support authoritarians abroad?

When Trump bombed Iran’s nuclear facilities, did he do so out of genuine concern for US national security, or was he unduly influenced by Israel?

When Trump and Trump officials send ICE to Minneapolis with instructions to violate the 4th amendment, disregard the 1st and 2nd amendments, disregard the human rights and dignity of migrants, and subvert the 10th amendment, is he living up to his oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” the Constitution of the United States of America?

Or is he infecting our government with the same moral disease that Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Bari Weiss, and many others acquired when they visited Epstein’s island and imagined themselves above the law, above the humanity of the rest of us?

There is no personal brand more important than our common personhood. I’ve long suffered from integrity. I’ve been stabbed many times when I’ve tried to help someone or some higher principle getting figuratively mugged. I’ve stuck my neck out when others’ heads were down, I’ve spoken up when others were silent. I’ve been here before, and all I can say is that I would rather die poor and anonymous having done the right thing than become a world-famous billionaire who says nothing when they hear about the rape of a minor, let alone a billionaire who abandons all remnants of their soul to participate in the rape and murder of anyone, especially minors.

Beyond the depravity of the many people across many governments and many political parties appearing to be horrific human beings in the Epstein files, it’s essential that all of us evaluate whether or not we are the kind of person who would participate if that meant acceptance into this club of corruption, or if we’re the kind of person able to make sacrifices to say and do the right thing.

It might be uncomfortable to deviate from technology, art, cuisine, fashion, or whatever niche topic defines your personal brand, but it’s better than staying silent to create space for deviants who rape, murder, and lie.