Silence, Complicity, and the Politics of Absence
In April 2011, Jeffrey Epstein wrote to Ghislaine Maxwell: “I want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is Trump. [Victim] spent hours at my house with him; he has never once been mentioned.” The metaphor, borrowed from Arthur Conan Doyle’s Silver Blaze, is telling. In that story, Sherlock Holmes solved a mystery by noticing what did not happen: the watchdog failed to bark at the intruder because it recognized him. Silence became the clue.