Some generations get a nationally televised car chase featuring O. J. Simpson fleeing police in a white Bronco. Others get the communal adrenaline rush of frantically “CTRL-F”-ing a House Oversight Committee trove of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails.

Yesterday, lawmakers released more than 20,000 pages of documents related to Epstein, including thousands of emails between him and his powerful contacts in the government, Silicon Valley, and the British royalty. There is an obvious voyeuristic thrill to reading them, but these documents have a deeper relevance. They are a skeleton key for understanding the dynamics of Donald Trump’s America, one in which the wealthy and powerful appear not as master operators but as bumbling sycophants, eager to cozy up to influence no matter how villainous or depraved.

Like Epstein’s birthday book, published in September by the House Oversight Committee, many of the messages are enthusiastic, even fawning (unlike the birthday book, these messages were sent long after Epstein took a plea deal to reduce his sentence for sex-trafficking charges). His interlocutors ask for favors, seeking insight or dirt on Trump, or advice. In some instances, Epstein responds pompously (“Needs edit,” he wrote in one message, when asked to forward an invitation). When glimpses of his character come through in a message—“‘Girls?’,, careful i will renew an old habit,” he replied to an innocuous email that used the word girls—they seem to always be tolerated or ignored.

Read: You really need to see Epstein’s birthday book for yourself

But perhaps most striking is how unimpressive Epstein seems. He appears to have been a serial emailer, frequently pecking out barely legible, one-line messages in rapid succession to political advisers, journalist