Like almost everyone else, I have not watched the15 hours of footage of the interview by Steve Bannon, former Trump adviser, of Jeffrey Epstein; though there was a bit I read where Epstein compared himself to Socrates which was gruesome. But the exchange reported today, where Mr Bannon asks Epstein “Are you the devil himself?” was the point where I thought he was onto something. Epstein replied uncertainly that he had a good mirror – i.e. no horns and tail – but Bannon said, “seriously”.
And there is indeed a properly diabolical element to Epstein. Satan is, in essence, the tempter. What the torrent of evidence from the Epstein Files has revealed is that if you tempt powerful and influential men with the two versions of the apple in Eden – sex and money – an awful lot of them will fall. It really is that simple. Really rich men, even brainy ones, are susceptible to the oldest temptations. I turns out if you offer them an apparently enchanted island full of young girls – some of them minors – and no apparent police presence, a great many will think, get me on the helicopter. The names of the men alleged to have paid that island a visit is a baffling catalogue of the rich, the influential, the would-be influential and the actually powerful.
