Within hours of the death of Jeffrey Epstein, one of the thought leaders of the media establishment rushed to print a demonization of suspicions about the shocking demise of a man whose death was advantageous to some of the most prominent and powerful figures in the world.  The Atlantic is owned by deep-pocketed Lauren Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, and functions as a guide to what other elite media are supposed to think.  It is edited for people who think of themselves as more sophisticated than New York Times readers.

McKay Coppins, a staff writer at the influential publication for which profit and loss are irrelevant, posted an article to the magazine's website titled, "Why Conspiracy Theorists Will Never Believe the 'Official' Epstein Story," instructing readers starting in the second paragraph that:

The reported cause of death was suicide—but the conspiracy-mongers were already springing into action.

Within hours, #EpsteinMurder was trending on Twitter, as was #TrumpBodyCount (where liberals speculated that the president had offed his former friend), and #ClintonCrimeFamily (where conservatives accused Bill and Hillary Clinton of orchestrating a murderous cover-up). But the speculation was not limited to the fringes — the president himself retweeted a video suggesting Epstein was now dead because he had information on the Clintons.

As the day went on, prominent commentators, journalists, and political figures used their platforms to broadcast conspiracy theories, implicate their ideological enemies, or simply engage in the Twitterwide guessing game about what really happened — all of them working with virtually no concrete information.

To be fair, Coppins acknowledges near the end of the article:

[E]very grotesque beat of Epstein's story — including, now, his untimely death — illustrates how America's culture of elite impunity, failure, and corruption has allowed conspiracy theorists to thrive.

But he concludes the article with this:

Their paranoia may have been disheartening to me, but at this moment in American life, it seemed almost inevitable.