Unmoored: When Power Cuts Its Leash

He curated access like a private religion. A tight inner circle. A court that laughed a little too hard at the wrong jokes. A stream of hangers-on and “serious people” who somehow found time for the parties but not for the questions. Rumours multiplied, then congealed into the kind of public secret everyone recognizes and nobody touches. And at the center was a particular kind of appetite: the pleasure of asymmetry, the thrill of being the one who sets the terms, who makes consent feel like a formality, who treats boundaries as theater. The stories that gathered around him were about excess; about people reduced to tribute, and about a circle trained to call it “taste,” “privilege,” or “just how things are.” A few brave voices tried to speak, and the room learned a new skill: coordinated deafness. The man himself moved with the calm of someone who had ceased to recognize limits as a real category: law, shame, consequence, even time. When scandal threatened, there were intermediaries. When accountability approached, it slowed down, got “complicated,” became “sensitive.” And behind the velvet curtain sat the oldest confidence trick in politics: the belief that some bodies exist to be used and discarded, and some names exist to be protected. 

I am talking about Caligula.

Bust of Caligula, Rome, AD 37-41

Not the meme-version (“mad emperor, funny sandals”), but the structural story: a young grotesque ruler inside an elite machine, surrounded by status-hungry courtiers, operating in a world where proximity to power becomes its own currency. Caligula’s reign (37–41 CE) ended in assassination; he was killed on January 24, 41, in a conspiracy involving members of the Praetorian Guard, and within a day, the regime simply… moved on.  And even our “facts” about him arrive through ancient accounts that are famously hostile, which matters, because it reminds us how power writes history twice: first with force, then with narrative. 

Now, about that movie.

There is a 1979 film called Caligula (and later a reconstructed edit, Caligula: The Ultimate Cut). It’s a strange artifact: part lavish historical pageant, part production scandal, part cautionary tale about what happens when money, access, and appetite enter the editing room after the director leaves. The backstory is almost parody: Bob Guccione, the Penthouse publisher, financed it; later, explicit material was added in ways that made the finished product infamous. The cast is real, Malcolm McDowell, Helen Mirren, others and that fact alone should tell you everything you need to know about how prestige can be recruited to launder a mess.  I do not recommend watching it. It is too much. And Mostly life is short, and the world has already given us enough evidence that exploitation does not become art simply because the production is expensive.

Both the historical and cinematic narratives surrounding Caligula enable the identification of the underlying pattern without immediate immersion in the gravity of the Epstein files. This approach provides necessary detachment, a controlled environment, and a clean analytical space. Observing this operational mechanism in ancient Rome reveals its persistent echo in contemporary settings, be it Florida, New York, London, or Washington where concentrated privilege silently establishes its own jurisdiction.

In the past few days, the U.S. Department of Justice published millions of pages in what it describes as compliance with the Epstein Files Transparency Act (a law signed November 19, 2025, per the DOJ’s own memo). Reporting from Associated Press and Reuters describes a release that includes documents and emails, alongside political blowback and renewed scrutiny. At the same time, survivors’ attorneys have blasted how this has been handled, alleging redaction failures that exposed victim identities while still shielding powerful people, and arguing that the process itself can become another injury. 

So yes: the content is horrifying.

But after the first wave of disgust, the more disciplined question would be: Is there an ideology behind this?

This phenomenon may be termed the ideology of unmoored power, the precise juncture at which an elite transcends mere exploitation of established regulations and begins to operate under the conviction that rules are merely a quaint superstition for others. It mirrors Pharaoh logic, Imperial logic, and the logic of the royal court. In its contemporary manifestation, it is the operational logic of a global bourgeoisie that has learned to regard institutions as mere furnishings: readily movable, purchasable, and subject to redecoration. We once believed such forms of power had been permanently eradicated, relegating them to the realm of fiction or speculative theory. Yet, this dynamic persists because we have unwittingly engineered a system allowing certain individuals to manipulate it, concealing their actions while controlling complex organizations. In my forthcoming work, I designate this entity the "Shadow King."

“Shadow King isn't a tangible entity with a crown and scepter. It is rather an impersonal, systemic form of narcissism that operates beneath the surface of our collective consciousness. It is a pervasive force that prioritizes self-preservation and self-aggrandizement of the system itself. The Shadow King represents the institutionalization of self-interest, the unconscious drives and priorities embedded within our organizations and societal structures, relentlessly shaping our realities and subtly dictating our choices. It is the insidious undercurrent that has transformed individual narcissism into a collective, almost invisible, form of control.”

Caligula, in the hostile ancient portrait, is the archetype of that unmooring. The film Caligula is unmooring turned into spectacle, money and appetite grabbing the steering wheel. And Epstein what the public record already established long before this release, and what these releases are now re-stirring is unmooring modernized: private aircraft instead of imperial corridors; “philanthropy” instead of public games; professional respectability instead of senatorial flattery; NDAs and fixers instead of Praetorians. Different props. Same play.

In The Age of Narcissus, I have been exploring systems where objective reality is managed rather than acknowledged, where the historical record becomes malleable, and where those in positions of authority dictate the exchange rate between veracity and public perception (not parity). The Epstein scandal clearly demonstrates this principle: the issue isn't just the events themselves, but the sustained period over which they unfolded because a powerful network decided that willful ignorance was an acceptable professional strategy.

Consequently, the mere dissemination of documents will not suffice to ensure accountability. A vast volume of pages can ultimately devolute into an obfuscating element if the fundamental systemic incentives remain unaltered; if the penalty for disclosure continues to outweigh the benefit of silence; if professional standing is protected more swiftly than the welfare of victims; and if the narrative is weaponized for partisan purposes instead of functioning as a mechanism for accountability. Even the current controversy surrounding the document release, concerning which materials are made public, which are withheld, the extent of redactions, and the individuals negatively impacted in the process, underscores the overarching theme: institutions are capable of simulating transparency while simultaneously restricting the imposition of consequences.

The pervasive nature of the corruption described reveals that, this is not a peculiar outbreak of a "new evil." On the contrary, it is an enduring, ancient malignancy, a pattern of abuse that merely undergoes periodic rebranding to suit the anxieties and political climate of the time. It is a cycle of moral and institutional failure, one that is periodically embarrassed and momentarily shamed when a spectacular scandal breaks the surface, yet it is rarely, if ever, truly abolished.

The failure to abolish this deep-seated corruption is rooted in the simple fact that its eradication demands far more than the temporary shockwaves of a public scandal. True abolition requires a profound, systemic overhaul of the very mechanics of governance and public accountability. Specifically, it necessitates the installation of "governance with teeth", a regulatory and legislative framework that possesses genuine enforcement power, uncompromised by political influence or financial inducement. This framework must be buttressed by an unwavering commitment to transparent, immutable records, data and documentation that cannot be covertly edited, altered, or simply deleted under the cover of night by those seeking to erase their culpability. Only if we had such technology, like, say, a decentralized, chronologically linked ledger where every transaction is verified by a network of peers and permanently recorded in a cryptographically secured 'block'. Oh wait, we do.

Crucially, the success of this enduring evil relies heavily on the compliance or at least the complacency of the governed. Its final pillar of longevity is a public that maintains an active, resolute refusal to be perpetually lulled into submission by the deceptive comfort of prestige. That refusal begins with freedom of conscience: no title, institution, or fortune gets to lease your mind, outsource your judgment, or dictate what you are permitted to notice. It is strengthened by a simple insistence on equality in human dignity, rank and status are noise next to character, and no one’s résumé is a substitute for moral accountability. As long as the public equates high office, institutional seniority, or inherited wealth with inherent authority, they will remain vulnerable to manipulation and the perpetual recycling of abuse. Only an informed, skeptical, and demanding populace, guarding its mental independence and measuring people by conduct rather than costume, can complete the triad necessary to finally dismantle this old evil.