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{*Editor’s Note: Please note that this article contains some explicit topics and very honest viewpoints regarding both confirmed sexual crimes and alleged sexual abuse. This information is still coming to light and being investigated. We encourage you to inform yourself using reputable sources of journalism as we fight to uncover the truth both at home in the United States, and abroad. Elephant Journal articles represent the personal views of the authors, and can not possibly reflect Elephant Journal as a whole. Disagree with an Op-Ed or opinion? We’re happy to share your experience here.}
How identity, trauma, and the need to “be right” fracture our shared reality.
While my name does not appear in the Epstein files, I do know what it feels like to be a sexually abused child unable to find safety in surrounding adults.
Not because they were evil. But because seeing it would have changed too much of their identity. It would have forced them to reconsider who they were, what they tolerated, what they missed. That is a hard thing for anyone to do—especially inside a system whose survival depends on everyone agreeing that “everything is fine.”
In family systems with a history of abuse, denial is rarely dramatic or loud. There is no big announcement. Maybe a few murmurings. Life just keeps moving. Conversations shift. Evidence softens around the edges. Discomfort gets renamed. Eventually reality adjusts itself to protect the people who need it to.
The truth stops being the danger. Admitting it becomes the danger.
Over the last decade, I have watched the cultural and political divide in this country widen, and I have felt an uncomfortable sense of familiarity. Not because the situations are the same, but because the dynamics feel parallel. The way people attach to stories about themselves and others. The way information gets filtered depending on what—and whom—it threatens. The way changing your mind can feel less like growth and more like losing part of who you are.
What we are living through does not feel purely political. It feels psychological—a collective instinct to protect belief, even when reality pushes back.
You can often tell something deeper is festering by watching what culture mirrors.
The Super Bowl used to be one of the few moments everyone experienced together. Recently, even that felt fractured. In February 2026, Bad Bunny, a Latino artist—Puerto Rican, globally dominant in popular culture—took the halftime stage. For many people, it was simply entertainment. For others, it represented something changing, something…unfamiliar.
The reaction was often not about the performance itself. Instead, it centered on language, symbolism, and what the moment supposedly represented. An alternative “All-American Halftime Show” on Turning Point USA appeared almost immediately, framing the opportunity as a return to more traditional “American values”—a halftime show more recognizable to decades past.
This is not an unusual human response.
When something unsettles us, we do not always name the real discomfort. We assign it somewhere safer. Tone becomes the problem. Language becomes the problem. The tangible is easier to argue with than the emotions underneath.
Parallel realities begin to form. Not always out of hatred. Often out of anxiety. People look for spaces where the world still feels stable, where their narrative still makes sense.
What’s revealing is not the disagreement itself. It is the inconsistency. The same behavior feels offensive in one context and acceptable in another, depending on who is performing it. Once identity fuses with belief, evidence loses its power. We no longer evaluate information evenly. We protect what protects us.
Nowhere is this shift more visible than in American politics over the last decade.
As controversies surrounding Donald Trump accumulated, many supporters did not abandon their beliefs. They adapted around them. Criticism became persecution. Contradictions became proof of conspiracy. The question slowly shifted from “Is this true?” to “Who is telling me this, and why should I trust them?”
Something important happened in that shift. Distrust stopped being selective and became foundational. Institutions were deemed illegitimate unless they confirmed the narrative.
History shows that authoritarian movements often rise not only by offering a new vision, but by eroding confidence in shared sources of truth. When citizens no longer trust traditional information channels, loyalty and belonging become the compass.
In modern America, distrust of media credibility, electoral legitimacy, and institutional neutrality has deepened across political lines. “Fake news” became shorthand not just for disagreement, but for dismissal. Courts, journalists, agencies—any entity delivering unwelcome information—could be framed as corrupt.
The power of that strategy is psychological. Once trust in verification collapses, identity and belief fill the vacuum. If every source can be discredited, allegiance becomes the only stable ground.
In such an environment, disagreement feels threatening. Changing your mind does not simply mean updating an opinion. It means risking your belonging.
When materials connected to Jeffrey Epstein and his network became public, what emerged in court filings and reporting described the sexual exploitation of minors and systems that allowed vulnerable children to be harmed. The harm itself was not ambiguous; it was vile and specific.
Prominent public figures across political and social spheres appeared in documents related to the investigation. Yet the reaction was telling:
The conversation quickly shifted away from what happened to the victims and toward what it might mean politically.
Some emphasized uncertainty. Others used it as ammunition. In both cases, the reality—that children were exploited within systems protected by power—risked fading into the background.
Survivors recognize this dynamic immediately. Harm becomes negotiable when acknowledging it would threaten identity or status. The discussion moves away from victims and toward preserving narratives.
The deepest injury is often not only the abuse itself, but watching bystanders explain away their indifference because facing reality directly would require too much introspective change.
None of this belongs to one political ideology. Humans everywhere protect beliefs tied to belonging. It is how we make sense of the world. But when enough people feel compelled to defend an identity at all costs, shared reality begins to fracture. Cultural moments become loyalty tests. Evidence feels threatening and disagreement feels personal.
America’s division, in that sense, is not only political. It is psychological.
Healing—in families and in countries—begins in the same place. Someone must tolerate the discomfort of uncertainty long enough to reconsider what they thought they knew. Someone must risk saying, “I may have been wrong,” without feeling destroyed by it.
Perhaps the underlying wound is not political at all. Maybe it is the fear of what happens to us if we admit we were incorrect—about people, about institutions, about ourselves.
Because once our identity feels at risk, protecting our story can feel safer than facing the truth. And systems built on that fear rarely change until the discomfort of seeing clearly becomes less painful than continuing not to.
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Elephant has been mindfully covering the Epstein Files and related topics. These articles might also be of interest to you from some of our talented writers:
>> The Epstein Files & the Truth We don’t Want to Face.
>> A Positive Reframe of the Epstein Files from the Perspective of a Trauma Therapist.
>> Waylon talks with dancer Marlo Fisken re: her experience with Jeffrey Epstein.
>> The Violence that Follows Silence.
>> The Epstein Files don’t just Reveal Criminality—they Teach Helplessness.
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