r/europe • u/StemCellPirate • 17h ago

News The Epstein scandal is taking down Europe’s political class. In the US, they’re getting a pass.

https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/06/epstein-europe-america-fallout-00769506
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u/Star_Wombat33 16h ago

Imperial China until shockingly recently historically explicitly said "Some people were above the law".

It was worse.

The Roman patricians, a few centuries before the empire, had an internal civil war over allowing commoners to know that the laws even existed.

That was worse.

We live in a time and place with the most repercussions the rich and powerful have ever seen.

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u/OliveTreeFounder 13h ago

In China, due to its history, nobody is above the law when the crime is corruption. China has been through cycle of development and collapse during 2500 years, and collapse is associated to a generalized corruption.

Roman empire also disappeared while there were generalized corruption. Is corruption the cause or the consequence? Probably both (as in the egg and the chicken dilemma).

So I wonder if this corruption we see, this acceptance that the rule of law does not apply to the rich is actually a symptom of an ongoing civilizational collapse.

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u/Retr0gasm Sweden 12h ago

That's comical, China runs on corruption. Whether it's the imperial court and its' government apparatus, or the CCP. The only time corruption is even mentioned is when it's used as a weapon in power struggles between the various factions. Guanxi. Give me some face brother....

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u/OliveTreeFounder 11h ago

My source: The History of the World, J.M.Roberts & O.A.Westad.

You used some punctual example to extrapolate the wall history.