The Epstein Virus

Most of us find ourselves in Dante’s first circle of Hell, called Limbo and reserved for “unbaptized souls and virtuous pagans”. What we don’t want to do is fall into Dante’s second or third levels of Hell, Lust and Gluttony, where we would find ourselves in the unwholesome company of Cleopatra, Helen of Troy, and Achilles. Those are the levels of Hell where, in days to come, we will find President Trump, Jeffrey Epstein, and Ghislaine Maxwell.
I would not want to sit in judgment of them. It is very hard to pin down the actual level of seriousness of their crimes, but they were crimes, so some accounting must be carried out.
As a prosecutor, I’d start by framing the case on the highest and most serious level, which is that they rent a hole in the fabric of America! In America, we do not defraud people, we do not use people, and we do not cast people aside like used toys. In America, it’s We the People, not Us and Them.
They tricked young women by leading them to think they were somehow part of the “inner circle”. They weren’t, because there is no inner circle. There are just people, some with more power, money, and influence than others, and it only takes one of those to lead to abuse and corruption.
The victims went willingly, and they were, at first, treated well; and the harms they now feel are mostly emotional, which can often heal without a scar. In time, they can regain their sense of their natural place in the American World Order. It did them no good trying to pole vault into a different realm. Pole vaulters almost always land back in the sand pit under the bar.
Societal imbalance almost seems unavoidable, because we have struggled to overcome its pernicious side effects our entire lives, and not just here, in America. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, for instance, wrote The First Circle, which hearkens back to The Inferno, and describes Russian societal stratification, especially in the Russian Gulags.
Proposed: Let’s give people who catch the Epstein Virus a substantial slap on the wrist and get on with our lives.
Please keep in mind, the above was written based on my assumption that all the victims were close to 18. AI confirms that there is some evidence of much younger victims, and, if that is the case, much more severe punishment would be appropriate. I am thinking drawing and quartering.