The Rose Garden Club: How Tech Oligarchs, Epstein’s Files, and Authoritarianism Betray Humanity

"The survivors are the files. Their voices are the evidence. What we lack is not proof, but the courage to hold predators and profiteers to account." — Mary Coughlin

Children are dying. That is where we must begin. Not with Silicon Valley’s next product launch or the self-congratulation of billionaires, but with the lives of teenagers lost to despair engineered into the very platforms that claim to connect us.

Mark Zuckerberg’s own company found Instagram was harming teenage girls: worsening depression, fueling eating disorders, driving some into suicidal thoughts. One internal slide admitted: “We make body image issues worse for one in three teen girls” (Facebook internal research, 2021). Instead of acting, he buried the data and doubled down. Because despair was good for business.

This is not innovation. It is depravity. It is betrayal. The teenage suicide epidemic is not a tragic side effect—it is the predictable outcome of systems designed to addict and extract.

And Zuckerberg is not alone. Tim Cook’s Apple markets itself as the guardian of privacy while building infrastructure for authoritarian surveillance (EFF, 2021). Satya Nadella’s Microsoft sells empowerment while supplying predictive policing systems that target communities of color (The Markup, 2020). Different faces, same story: technological sophistication masking moral barbarism.

And this sickness is not confined to Silicon Valley. Look at the Epstein files. Why do we cling to them as if the truth will only matter once written in ink, stamped with power’s signature? Survivors have been speaking for years. They have told their stories, relived their trauma, shouted the truth until their throats went raw.

But we didn’t listen. We demanded “proof.” We demanded documentation. We demanded the paper trail of the powerful before we would dare believe the powerless. That is the pattern: protect the elites, doubt the survivors, and sacrifice the vulnerable in service of the banquet.

It is the same logic that let Zuckerberg bury Facebook’s own research. The same logic that lets governments weaponize Silicon Valley’s surveillance. The same logic that fuels authoritarianism’s rise. We pretend that truth only counts when elites admit it. Until then, we look away.

But here’s the real truth: the survivors are the files. Their testimony is evidence. Their pain is evidence. Their courage is evidence. What we lack is not information, but the will to hold predators—whether they wear hoodies, suits, or crowns—accountable.

And yes—we are tired. We are stretched thin. We have been living in survival mode for too long, pulled between crisis and distraction, grief and numbness. That is not an accident. It is the design. Exhaustion is the perfect tool of authoritarianism. If we are too weary to fight, the oligarchs and their political allies win without resistance.

They say “woke is dead.” They want us to believe the struggle for justice, for dignity, for humanity has burned itself out. But I say this is only the beginning. The first awakening is always fatigue, grief, outrage. The second is action and the refusal to go back to sleep.

We cannot give in. Not now, not when children’s lives are at stake. Not when survivors are still silenced. Not when the garden of democracy itself is being paved over by greed and control.

We must hold these oligarchs and their political enablers accountable—with our voices, our wallets, our votes, our bodies in the public square. We must refuse to normalize cruelty. We must reclaim the soil of our humanity, together.

Because if the rose garden is to bloom again, it will not be because the butchers relented. It will be because we—the exhausted, grieving, furious people—chose to rise anyway. To plant again.

No more silence. No more surrender. Humanity is not for sale.