"EVIL BEYOND BELIEF"
When Jeffrey Epstein — a man whose soul resembled a clogged hotel drain — calls you “evil beyond belief,” you’ve officially left the zip code of standard human depravity and wandered into a neighborhood where even the streetlights refuse to turn on.
Epstein did not traffic in ethics. He trafficked in everything but ethics. So when he looks at Trump and mutters that phrase, it’s not a judgment — it’s a field report from the Mariana Trench of humanity.
Epstein didn’t do guilt or shame. The man treated remorse like lactose — something he was biologically incapable of digesting. He was a meticulous engineer of moral corrosion. And then he met Trump, a man who wasn’t just missing the shame gene; he’d ripped it out like an appendix that was slowing him down. Trump wasn’t simply immoral. He was post-moral — a creature operating on an ego-physics model unknown to modern science.
If Charles Manson looked at Trump, he’d squint, tilt his head, and mutter, “That energy is a little intense.” If Satan looked at Trump, he’d gently pat his clipboard and say, “Okay, real talk: We’re not equipped for this. We need funding for infrastructure before onboarding this kind of talent.”
This isn’t melodrama — this is architecture. Trump’s evil isn’t the refined, strategic stuff that dictators cultivate like orchids. It’s not ideological. It’s not doctrinal. It’s not even intentional. It’s the byproduct of a man who has never once experienced shame, accountability, self-awareness, or the instinct to pause before plunging face-first into damage like a toddler sprinting toward a wall. His evil is physics, not philosophy. A natural disaster, not a moral dilemma.
Epstein understood every form of depravity money could buy. But he also understood leverage — and Trump was un-leverageable. You can’t blackmail a man who sees shame as a quaint little superstition, like vampires not crossing running water. Epstein built empires on secrets. Trump had none. Trump was his own public relations disaster machine, proudly displaying his depravity for all to see.
That terrified Epstein.
Because Trump’s evil wasn’t predictable. It wasn’t programmable. It wasn’t something Epstein could use. It was free-range chaos with a spray-tan, a teleprompter allergy, and the emotional stability of a grocery store rotisserie chicken left under the heat lamp too long.
Calling Trump “evil beyond belief” wasn’t Epstein waxing dramatic — it was self-preservation. It was the monster noticing a bigger, louder, more radioactive monster lumbering out of the fog and thinking, “Oh hell. That thing’s not housebroken.” Epstein’s entire enterprise depended on controlling powerful men. Trump wasn’t controllable. He was a malfunctioning theme park ride with no off switch, and he still is. His personality is a unique cocktail: equal parts ego, ignorance, and spiritual asbestos.
If Epstein is the abyss, then Trump is the subterranean cave system beneath the abyss. He’s the hidden chamber with a locked door that even Hell’s building inspector won’t open. He’s the thing that makes the nightmares look at each other and whisper, “Do you think we should tell somebody?”
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I am reading Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem – A Report on the Banality of Evil.
She attends Eichmann's trial, takes notes, deeply seeks to understand how Eichmann and his cohort could have done what they did.
And she learns that Eichmann was stupid, that he was a lifelong joiner, that he could not conceive of his life without having orders to follow, a group to which to belong. In short, he was an ordinary person, not an evil monster. He was the guy in the area under the bell curve. She wrote her conclusions – that ordinary people can commit evil without being malicious or monstrous, but rather through thoughtlessness, bureaucratic compliance, a failure to think for themselves, a need to belong, to advance in their careers, to please the strong man. Eichmann at his trial said he was “just following orders.” So long as there are no outside voices questioning his thinking, asking why he isn’t following the Ten Commandments, the Golden Rule, he can stay his course.
I thought of the GOP, of course. But I was smacked in the face by Eichmann’s testimony that he was living according to Kant’s categorical imperative.
Say what?
To the bookshelf, back to Kant.
Arendt writes that Eichmann had misunderstood Kant, that he had substituted Hitler for the internal moral authority. At his trial he testified that he was just following orders.
Thus is the GOP revealed. They are just following orders. They do not contain multitudes. They contain Trump.
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