The Wealth We Worship, The Harm We Ignore
Power, Proximity, and the Architecture of Accountability
December 18, 2025
By Dr. Mya Fisher
There is a growing narrative that the release of the Epstein files will shock the American public by revealing something new about the U.S. President or other high profile figures. But that is not the real disruption at hand. What these files threaten is something far deeper, far more destabilizing to the American psyche: the breaking of the moral mythology of extreme wealth .
For generations, American capitalism has operated on an unspoken but widely accepted ethos:
This foundational belief has functioned as a kind of civic scripture. It sanctified the wealthy. It made their behavior irrelevant as long as they produced capital. It created an economic theology: the wealthy are indispensable, therefore untouchable. We must protect and prop them up by any means necessary. Because their success is America’s success. And if their innovations or ventures fail, we are told the entire system will collapse. No one wants to be labeled anti capitalist, especially in a society that insists every alternative has failed — not because the systems themselves were unworkable, but because corruption undermined them.
But that is not the truth of the matter.
In fact, what the Epstein files will likely show — and what many people already know — is that the men who operated in this orbit were not indispensable. They were not benevolent. They were not even the best of us. Nor were they neutral actors.
The reality is, they were depraved. They were destructive. They were dangerous — particularly to women and girls. They inflicted real harm on real people. They corrupted institutions. They compromised leaders. In short: they were very bad for America.
These men moved through the world as if — in the words of Scott Galloway — they were “protected by the law, but not bound by it.” Their wealth was a shield, insulating them from accountability. Their networks were built on entitlement, exploitation, and unaccountability.
And for the average American, seeing that truth laid bare — not whispered, not implied, not left to impressions of an “ick”, but documented in pictures and on video — will rupture something fundamental. It will shatter the illusion that wealth is both synonymous with virtue and of intrinsic value to the character and exceptionalism that America prides itself in. It will dull the sheen of reverence we have been conditioned to direct toward capital.
When that happens, leaders across the political spectrum will face a choice: align themselves with a culture/system that protected this behavior, or stand against it. The familiar script — that such behavior is a necessary evil in the pursuit of prosperity — will no longer function as currency. It will no longer be unchallenged.
Once Americans see the rot in the system — the rot long presented as “success” — the political consequences will cut across every policy arena previously considered untouchable. When it becomes clear how consistently the system fails the many while protecting only a select few — who have now been exposed (with photographic and video evidence) to be unworthy of our deference, aspiration, or acceptance — that is when the ground may truly shift.
Which raises the question: If the veil tears — and the ethos we’ve lived under is proven false — what replaces it? What guiding philosophy might shape the future we choose? What new assumptions — about dignity, prosperity, and our obligation to one another — might anchor a different kind of American economy and civic life?
Those are the questions that energize and excite me — not collapse, but possibility.
What Might Change
When the public finally sees the depth of the harm — and the system that enabled it — the country will enter a period of political, economic, and cultural re evaluation. Long standing assumptions may unravel. Arguments that once justified inaction may lose their power. In that environment, several profound shifts could unfold. The full weight of our collective imaginations could reshape the world to be something not yet seen – one that reflects the full potential and promise of the American experiment.
Some of the areas where we may see the most significant changes in how Americans orient themselves toward wealth — and to the power it confers — include:
- Campaign finance reform at a scale once unimaginable. As money’s outsized role in politics becomes harder to morally defend, being tethered to wealthy donors and special interests may become politically toxic. The Supreme Court has equated money with speech, allowing it to flow freely through our political system — but the public may begin to ask whether they want their leaders to be affiliated with the messages that kind of “speech” carries, and whose interests it ultimately serves.
- Wealth taxes and taxation of non-salary income, driven by a reframed question: Why do ordinary Americans pay more in taxes than the ultra-wealthy who profit from labor they do not perform? Why is hard work undervalued while passive capital accumulation is rewarded? The mythology of hard work leading to prosperity collapses when we begin to peel back the layers of a system that structurally prevents it.
- The collapse of trickle-down economics mythology not because Americans suddenly master economic theory, but because lived experience no longer supports the promise it made. For decades, people have been told that protecting wealth at the top would eventually secure opportunity, stability, and prosperity for the rest of us. As hoarding, exploitation, and harm by the top 1% become visible through contemporary, lived examples, that myth no longer survives scrutiny. Americans already understand the connection between their economic realities and political decisions. What may change is the tolerance for delay: a shorter grace period, and far less patience for leaders who campaign on economic relief but fail to deliver once in office.
- Health care reform. The public will increasingly reject systems designed to protect corporate profit rather than public health. A more holistic understanding of health — beyond emergency care or insurance status — will drive reforms that acknowledge multiple interlocking dimensions of wellbeing. A system intentionally built for the betterment of all will be harder to dismantle because it requires shared responsibility and shared investment. When we are healthy, all sectors of society benefit. When we are not, the economics are not in our favor.
- Worker protections and labor reforms. As limitless wealth loses its cultural reverence, workers will no longer be expected to absorb harm in the name of maximizing profit. Unions and worker organizing may gain support, and a federal living wage may pass. While these shifts may challenge short-term profit models, they will ultimately strengthen the economy by producing more stable, engaged, and secure workforces — signaling a broader move from immediate extraction toward long-term collective wellbeing.
- Voting protections and democratic safeguards. The public may demand a renewed commitment to ensuring that elections reflect the will of the people rather than the influence of money or entrenched incumbency. This could include reinforcements of the Voting Rights Act, the elimination of gerrymandering, and making Election Day a public holiday — concrete mechanisms to ensure that those who wish to participate can do so freely and fully.
- Restoration of humanity as a core American value. Care for one another will no longer be framed as weakness or naïveté. Instead, humanity, humility, and mutual responsibility may be rebranded as forms of strength — modeled and made visible throughout public and civic life. These examples may not serve as rigid templates, but as guides, reminding us of the kind of society we are capable of building when care is elevated rather than derided.
- A renewed commitment to public service. Serving the American people — rather than a political party or individual — may once again be understood as vocational, honorable, and aspirational. Public servants serve all who are within our borders — citizens, immigrants, visitors, and tourists alike — without judgment and in accordance with the law. This simple truth may be reaffirmed through stronger protections against political retaliation and a broader cultural reframing of service as essential to a functioning democracy.
The Zero Sum Mythology
This question — what replaces the veil? — requires us to confront one of the most enduring myths shaping American public life. Before we can imagine a more equitable future, we must acknowledge the narrative that has long undercut it.
To move toward a more equitable future, we must confront another mythology: the belief that life is a zero sum game. For decades, Americans have been taught — implicitly and explicitly — that someone else’s gain must come at their expense. This worldview makes solidarity feel dangerous, empathy feel naïve, and collective care feel threatening. It keeps people divided and blinds them to the harms committed by the powerful.
And yet, in the current climate, we’ve seen this mythology begin to crack. Neighbors protecting neighbors. Communities organizing around care. Good managers shielding their teams rather than sacrificing them. These small but significant acts reveal a different truth: life is not zero sum. One person’s wellbeing can strengthen — not threaten — the wellbeing of others.. We must normalize the idea that a rising tide really does lift all boats. What is good for me can also be good for you.
And we have empirical evidence that reinforces this truth and dismantles the myth:
- When women participate fully in the workforce, GDP grows.
- When girls receive education, economies expand and public health improves.
- When diverse perspectives are present, innovation accelerates.
The data is unequivocal: inclusion, care, and shared prosperity generate more growth — not less.
When the veil tears, it will expose not only the men who abused their power, but the zero sum mythology that allowed their behavior to flourish. This is the connective tissue between individual wrongdoing and systemic failure — a worldview that insists someone must lose for someone else to win. Undoing this belief is essential to building any future that values shared dignity and shared prosperity.
What Do We Do With the Truth?
To keep the truth from being drowned out — and to resist the spectacle that will inevitably surround these revelations — we need practices that anchor our attention, strengthen our discernment, and preserve moral clarity: a shared understanding of what constitutes harm, responsibility, and wrongdoing. Here are three ways each of us can hold steady when distraction becomes the strategy.
When systems of power are exposed, distraction becomes the oldest tool in the playbook. There will be noise, deflection, partisan spin, and manufactured spectacle designed to pull attention away from what truly matters.
- Stay focused on systems, not scandals. The spectacle will try to convince us this is about a few bad men. The sheer volume of photos and documenting the number of men connected to Epstein exposes that claim as false. This is not about isolated individuals. It’s about architecture. We must continually name the institutions, incentives, and protections that made their harm possible.
- Refuse the politics of exhaustion. Distraction wins when people become overwhelmed, numbed, or fatigued. Choosing rest, discernment, and clarity is a form of civic resistance. We must keep returning — clearly, calmly, and relentlessly — to the central truth: harm was done, and the system allowed it. Truth does not need embellishment; it needs repetition, steadiness, and resolve.
- Tell the truth in community. When institutions wobble, public storytelling becomes essential. People must talk about what happened, name the patterns, and share the evidence — not to amplify spectacle, but to keep the focus on accountability, repair, and the people who were harmed.
Together, these practices offer a blueprint for resisting the noise and keeping our attention where it belongs: on the systems that failed, the people who were harmed, and the future we are responsible for building.
The Architecture of Harm
To understand the magnitude of this moment, we must look beyond the individuals named and attend to the shape of the structure that made their actions possible. The architecture of harm is not accidental, nor is it static. It has been built, reinforced, and refined over time — assembled from cultural permissions, institutional loopholes, concentrated wealth, and a public conditioned to equate success with virtue. It is a design — not a coincidence.
This architecture does not merely exist; it operates. It channels power upward, shields those at the top, and absorbs the costs of harm elsewhere. It functions like a machine — grinding quietly, predictably — normalizing exploitation while rendering accountability optional or eliminated all together.
The truth beneath the surface is this: the Epstein files don’t merely expose individuals. They expose a system engineered to protect certain men from consequence. A system that conflated wealth with wisdom. That mistook power for character. That allowed a small circle of wealthy and influential men to move beyond the boundaries of law because they were considered “good for America.”
Once the veil tears — once people see the machinery clearly — it cannot be unseen.
The mythology of capital as king cannot survive this level of truth telling.
When it falls, something else becomes possible: a political landscape where protecting the public matters more than protecting the powerful; an economy in service of people rather than people in service of wealth; and a democracy no longer hypnotized by the shimmer of money.
Toward an Equitable Economy: A Vision for 2026 and Beyond
If the veil tears — and stays torn — we have an opportunity to build an economy shaped not by scarcity narratives or wealth worship but by dignity, accountability, and shared prosperity. An equitable 2026 economy would not be about punishing success; it would be about aligning wealth with responsibility and growth with inclusion.
A more equitable economic landscape could include:
- A mixed-model American system where markets remain dynamic but operate within ethical guardrails — ensuring that prosperity is not synonymous with extraction, and innovation is not a cover for exploitation.
- Progressive taxation tied to civic responsibility, in which billionaires — whose fortunes rely on public infrastructure, labor, and legal protections — reinvest proportionately in the society that enabled their wealth.
- Strong public goods — health care, education, transportation, and housing — funded at levels that reflect their necessity to national prosperity and collective stability. These systems benefit not only those who rely on them most visibly, but everyone whose lives, labor, safety, and opportunity depend on a healthy, educated, mobile, and securely housed society.
- Worker centered policies that align wages with productivity and guarantee fundamental protections.
- Innovation anchored in ethics, rejecting the myth that disruption is inherently good simply because it breaks the status quo. Innovation that reproduces exclusion, concentrates control, or treats harm as inevitable is not liberation — it is a rebranding of the same inequities.
- A political system where influence cannot be purchased and democratic participation is meaningfully strengthened.
This is not capitalism as we have practiced it, nor is it socialism as it is often caricatured. It is something distinctly American: a system that pairs ambition with accountability, wealth with responsibility, and success with shared benefit.
What We Choose Now Matters
The exposure of this system — its mythology, its protections, its harm — is not the end of the story but a threshold. What comes next is not predetermined; it will be shaped by what we choose to see, what we refuse to normalize, and what we are willing to rebuild. Moments like this are often swallowed by spectacle or distraction, but they are also moments of rare clarity, when the veil lifts and we must decide whether to stitch it back together or learn to live without it. An economy built on dignity rather than domination is possible. A civic life grounded in shared responsibility rather than zero-sum competition is possible. But neither will emerge on its own. They require attention, courage, and a collective willingness to imagine differently — and to act accordingly. What we choose now will shape not only our politics or our economy, but the moral boundaries of the society we pass on. The future is not waiting to happen; it is being decided. By each of us. Together.
Editor’s Note (December 2025): As this essay was completed, additional public releases of new photographs from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate (via Congressional Committee) renewed attention ahead of the December 19 deadline for the full disclosure of government records. While such images invite reaction and debate, they also serve as a test of public discernment. Whether this moment leads to accountability or distraction will depend less on what is revealed than on our willingness to see beyond personalities to the deeper systems of power, access, and protection that made such harm possible.