It’s getting harder and harder for “rational” people practicing respectable politics to deny the outright evil workings of global capitalism. It’s becoming more and more clear that what was once thought to be a radical conspiracy is now appearing as a horrifying truth: global capitalism is an oligarchy run by billionaires complicit in global human trafficking and pedophilia.

Jeffrey Epstein died in a prison cell last night and few would doubt that he was murdered, with the official story being the ridiculous fabrication that he somehow committed suicide while under 24/7 suicide watch. With Epstein’s murder, there is only so much further we can go down the dark path of apathy. Epstein was a potential informant on a global capitalist ring of pedophiles and power-hungry monsters (and make no mistake, he was one of them) and he was killed for it.

Those engulfed in electoral politics will take sides against either Trump or Clinton, confused liberals will blame Russia, and those on the far right will pathologically blame the Jews. This is not simply a case of bad people doing bad things, this is a symptom of wealth and power. Wealth is concentrated at the top more so now than in all of human history. A small minority of capitalists have more wealth than any monarchy or great empire has ever had in the past and they got this power because of an economic and political system based on property rights and the rule of law – rights and laws written by themselves and for themselves. If we got rid of every single one of them and kept the capitalist system intact, we would just create a new batch of demented oligarchs. Like mass shootings, neo-nazis, and the fall of liberal democracy, these perverted acts of power are endemic to capitalism.

It is clear that the thirst for power doesn’t stop at being able to provide a life of leisure for you, your family, and your descendants. When you’ve done that and still have billions left over, your sights shift to degenerate rituals of power. You buy political influence, you start consolidating world governments, you traffic children to rape with your powerful colleagues, you start buying large swaths of land so you can protect yourself from climate change as the world burns, and you make friends with mercenaries who will gun down the unwashed masses when the shit hits the fan.

The cabal of capitalists surrounding Epstein is bipartisan and spans the whole world. It is the result of decades of corruption and is fueled by the fact that they know they are untouchable. They know that we can’t do anything even if we want to. They can topple democratically elected politicians, they can kill and rape as they please, and they can turn us into a pink mist if we take to the streets in any kind of serious protest.

How long will we remain paralyzed in the face of awe-inspiring power? When the rich and powerful can so brazenly murder the subject of the highest profile criminal case in the world while he sits in a 24/7 monitored cell, what are we supposed to do? Is this sustainable? The obvious answer is no, but what will come after? Perhaps the new trend of neo-nationalism will simply keep growing until we break off into warring factions lead by various groups of ruthless capitalists. Will the masses put their lives on the line to protect national monopolies of private interests against foreign monopolies of private interests?

Those of us that make up the vast majority of the population have successfully been divided. We aggressively take sides within the narrow scope of capitalist politics. The right has been whipped up into a nationalistic and bigoted fervor while the left has been duped into abandoning class consciousness for neoliberal-friendly identity politics. We are busy ruthlessly attacking each other when we ultimately form one large group with a common enemy. And when the right and left aren’t attacking each other, they are busy fighting amongst themselves in an endless civil war. Meanwhile, capitalists are literally lighting the world on fire and fucking kids.

So what is to be done? As a socialist, the answer from my end is clear – we need to democratize our economy, hold all property in common, and promote full legal transparency. We need to bring those in power to justice but we need to recognize them as symptoms of a broken system. Capitalism is beyond fixing, it is now bursting at the seams. Those who write the laws float above them and the wealth they’ve amassed is so great that they’ve turned to depraved pedophilic rituals to get their kicks. We need a hard reset. We need to bring ourselves, the majority, to power and stop picking from a pre-selected choice of oligarchs. And once we do all of that, we need to start from the beginning.

We should look back on this period of history and never forget its lessons. Our children will either be proud of our courage to make radical changes when we most needed them or they will look at us and say, “How could you let this happen?”