“The horror. The horror.”
If you have read The Heart of Darkness or seen Apocalypse Now, you can partially understand what likely happened with Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Seeing the absolute depravity of those two, along with their billionaire and world leader pals get rehashed during Maxwell’s ongoing trial is a challenge to read about. Still, it is important that we try to understand what happened with the depraved duo and their associates.
What I think happened (based on years of reading/listening) is that they were set up by an intelligence agency to develop a honeypot operation (sexual blackmail) targeting world elites. They clearly did this extraordinarily successfully, and in the process became just as corrupt and corrupting as the supposed elites they targeted.
In Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, Kurtz was sent deep into the Congo’s jungle, following a serpentine like river (no accident in Conrad’s description), in order to acquire ivory, but chose to never leave. Instead, he became a God-like figure among the natives and even some other European and Eurasian traders.
Epstein and Maxwell were likely inserted into their position to blackmail others but were just as prone to sick behavior as those they targeted. By the time they might have theoretically been stopped by whoever set up their operation, they would have had enough dirt on enough powerful people to be untouchable (just read about Epstein’s absurdly accommodating pseudo prison sentence many years before his final arrest).
As with the Kurtz of Apocalypse Now, there were many leaders out there who would have wanted to terminate Epstein’s “command” with extreme prejudice. He and his command were terminated, though it remains unclear if it was by Epstein’s own hands or others (many aspects of the supposed suicide defy common sense). Epstein and Maxwell were evil not just for attempting to blackmail others (others who were evil themselves), but also for preying on and helping those subject to blackmail prey on innocent and vulnerable girls and young women.
It would be hard for even a modestly decent person to comprehend the full extent of Epstein and Maxwell’s monstrous operation and personal lifestyle. These were not people who appeared to be doing legal but questionable things behind closed doors. These are people accused of brazenly committing unbelievably heinous crimes, and as the ever-present smirk on Epstein’s face would suggest, they were doing so with an arrogant and sick sense of humor.
Kurtz, in Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, becomes not just consumed by the jungle’s darkness literally and figuratively, but becomes darkness himself. He shocks and disturbs, fascinates and inspires. Conrad’s Kurtz’s Russian assistant, reimagined as a mentally unstable war photographer played by Dennis Hopper speaks of Kurtz “expanding his mind”. However, Hopper’s character struggles to coherently describe or display how.
Epstein himself was often noted for his mathematical and financial genius, though when the fog lifted and journalists investigated his actual investment work, it did not appear to remotely coincide with the repeated claims of his alleged genius. He lived like a multi-billionaire but without any proof of him being personally wealthy enough to afford a private jet owner’s lifestyle. For example, he was effectively gifted his enormously valuable NYC home for by his ostensible financial backer Les Wexner (of L Brands fame and now infamy).
It remains unclear how evil Epstein and Maxwell were when they began their apparent intelligence backed sexual blackmail operation, but there appears to be no questions remaining about how evil they became. As with Kurtz, you must wonder: were they always prone to darkness or was their time living in darkness what overcame their souls? Though worth asking, questions like that may have no answers, and even clear answers would do nothing to repair the broken women and girls whose ruined lives lay among the apocalyptic wreckage left in their wake.
Maxwell, just like Epstein before her, appears entirely unrepentant. Despite this lack of guilt, I imagine, as with Apocalypse Now’s Kurtz, they simply grew bored with avoiding punishment or exhausted of living in the darkness.
Conrad refers to the deepness of the primal jungle where Kurtz died as the heart of darkness. This darkness that consumed Kurtz as well as Epstein and Maxwell could well be described as the darkness within the collective soul of humanity. Unlike Kurtz, however, it is us, the observing public, rather than Epstein and Maxwell left to speak Kurtz’s dying words uttered from deep within the heart of darkness, “The horror. The horror.”
**Reprinting allowed with writer's prior approval and acknowledgement
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