In recent years, public trust in American institutions has collapsed, and understandably so, given the overt politicization of supposedly objective fields such as medicine and education — you know, The Science. Meanwhile, this distrust has also spread throughout our justice system, an already fragile institution thanks not only to its own politicization but ongoing campaigns under the banner of Black Lives Matter to defund police departments and replace law enforcement with some nonexistent idea of socialist utopia.

In an ideal world, a truly just justice system is built upon a platform of absolute objectivity and absolute equality. But, since we clearly live in a world that is far from ideal, justice is routinely doled out by a Lady Justice whose blindfold has been replaced with blinkers, adjusted as needed by the political players in the shadows. Worse, the scales held aloft are weighed down by our society’s widespread and almost bloodthirsty desire for vengeance, in which justifiable calls for accountability skip the frustrating and yet entirely necessary step of due process.

A particularly uncomfortable example of this issue is the treatment of the so-called Epstein files, with a never-ending demand for the release of every single document collected by every single law enforcement agency that may have come within 1,000 miles of Jeffrey Epstein. This is not to say — of course — that a certain sprinkling of human filth throughout Epstein’s sordid orbit should escape justice. No, it is to say that due process still matters, and especially in the case where the mob demands justice, no matter the cost.

And right now, the mob is demanding justice, no matter the cost.

By releasing document after document, not only have victims been needlessly exposed without their consent, but we also risk applying guilt by association to anyone for the sole crime of simply being named in the files — a door that, once opened, cannot be closed. While it remains unquestionably true that many of those named in the files are, at the very least, examples of the immoral depravity that continues to fester in our society, is the casual reader of snippets of these files equipped to apply objective judgment within the confines of the law, and set aside judgment for those who do not meet this legal threshold?

No, they are not, and yet we are skipping over the very protections provided to all citizens — good and bad, moral and immoral — regardless of pesky things such as lack of evidence.

The fetishization of online sleuthery may have convinced your average internet user that they are a one-person investigation team capable of uncovering even the deepest conspiracy, but in reality, waterboarding ourselves with context-free documents — themselves dripping in innuendo, implication or irrelevance — does nothing to achieve true justice and does even less to protect the innocent.

Consider our society’s response during the MeToo era, in which accusations alone, along with associations with those accused, were sufficient to dole out mob justice. How many were incorrectly tarred and feathered when due process was sidelined in favor of rumor and one-sided assumptions that we should “believe all women”?

Our world is full of evil and wrongdoing, and we should certainly want justice to be served to those responsible for it. But justice applies both to the guilty and the innocent, with the guilty proven so in a court of law. Skipping the need for proof and instead combing through an endless stream of documents relating to Epstein in search of a cherry-picked perpetrator might yield some results…but at what cost?

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