For years during the early Twenties we heard about the “Biden Crime Family.” Shady dealings in Ukraine. Board memberships that reeked of pay-to-play implications. Personal enrichment for a scofflaw scion. Special treatment from the so-called Department of Justice. Another example of two-tiered courts in the USA.

Right on to all of that. No objections from me.

But now it is 2026, and there is a new family in the White House. What do we find now that the Biden Crime Family has decamped? Shady dealings in Qatar. Board memberships that reek of pay-to-play implications (here). Personal enrichment for scofflaw scions (here) and for a scofflaw scion-in-law (here). Special treatment from the so-called Department of Justice (here). Another example of two-tiered courts in the USA (here).

By the way, where are the rest of the Epstein Files? And why has no one but Epstein (murdered in prison under Trump’s watch) and his pimp, Ghislaine Maxwell, been prosecuted for heinous crimes spanning many countries and federal jurisdictions?

The lesson is obvious. Lying, cheating, stealing, raping, and murdering come with no this-worldly consequences as long as one’s family is or has been in a position of political power. Jeffrey Epstein’s downfall was that he didn’t get himself elected to some position he could use to destroy his crime rivals before they did the same to him. Biden Crime Family, Trump Crime Family — all that is old news. How many Americans still believe that the ideals written as slogans on government buildings have anything to do with the goings-on inside?

We ought to go further, though. Crime families are much older than we might think. The Daley years in Chicago were surely nothing compared to the Medicis in Florence. The Kims have been in power on the Korean peninsula for nearly eight decades — a drop in the bucket compared to the Hapsburgs’ nearly seven centuries. From the pharaohs to the Kennedys, the Ming Celestial Court to the Sapa Inca, there is almost always some family sitting on a throne somewhere, having grapes fed to them while peasants and slaves toil in the fields. Whatever crimes the powerful family commits — Uday and Qusay Hussein would have fit in wonderfully at the royal banquets in ancient Rome — are forgotten, covered up.

Law is for the little people. The lawgiver has a harem filled with kidnapped girls and a treasury full of stolen loot, but what is it to you, peon? Pay more taxes, break more rocks, take up arms and invade the neighboring country. Dulce et decorum est pro Deep State mori.

And yet, in the nudity of political corruption, the raw and blinding criminality that distinguishes government gangsters from their lesser rivals like the Gottis and the Gambinos, there are still theologians and philosophers who seek legitimacy, a just entity for waging a just war. There is no just war, because there are no non-psychopathic rulers. If becoming a priest does not change his human nature, then becoming a president sure as hell doesn’t, either. Being in a government does not confer justice on anything, especially not on war. If you’re looking for a good governor, you’ll have to keep looking… and looking.

The last just man hung on a cross at Golgotha. The rest of us are miserable sinners, but even we may say the Pharisee’s Prayer that we have not been made as wicked as those who govern us. When you see a president, a prime minister, an emperor, a king, bow and scrape if you must, but be clear in your own mind what business he is in. Crime families are not the exception to government. Crime families are government. Let us not be fooled when one crime family calls out another crime family, inciting us to vote them into office. All they are trying to do is expand their crime empires at the expense of all of us.