The pedophiles are “everywhere, like vultures.” Ex-child actor Corey Feldman was referring to Hollywood when he uttered those words, but child sex abuse appears a problem across pseudo-elite spheres. And just published pictures of former president Bill Clinton living it up aboard deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s airplane — dubbed the “Lolita Express” — are reminding many that the late multi-millionaire was just the tip of a very steamy and sleazy iceberg.

American Thinker’s Monica Showalter wrote yesterday that much “of the fallout of the Jeffrey Epstein ‘pedophilia among the powerful’ scandal has fallen onto Prince Andrew of the U.K., an insignificant second son of Queen Elizabeth II.” Showalter suspects that the focus on the royal is a deflection designed to draw attention away from more significant figures in Epstein’s orbit.

Andrew is an ideal fall guy. Plausibly apolitical, his woes tarnish no political parties or ideologies. And beneficiary “number one remains Bill Clinton, whose associations with Epstein are pretty astonishing,” remarks Showalter. She continues:

He’s been listed on the flight logs of more than two dozen Epstein “Lolita Express” flights. He’s been a regular at Epstein’s “cowboy village“ in New Mexico with its group showers, which, based on the word of maintenance staff, seemed to be all about perversion out of the public eye. He’s been seen with all those candy-stripers.

Well, now the lid’s starting to bounce on that boiling pot, and maybe too soon for Bill’s taste. The Sun of the U.K.’s new U.S. edition now has an astonishing series of photos of Clinton livin’ it up on Epstein’s airplanes, Clinton posing with Epstein’s accused pimp, Ghislaine Maxwell, and Clinton whooping it up with underage staff, generally partying hearty on the pervert’s dime. Yet to this day, he claims to know nothing about what Epstein was about — never noticed a thing.

Of course, Clinton is a well-known womanizer and reprobate who has been credibly accused of rape.

But he’s not alone. Also writing yesterday, Showalter colleague Andrea Widburg mentioned that she had a conversation with a friend about QAnon. Q is “a person (or maybe a group of people) who puts up cryptic messages on online bulletin boards,” explains Widburg, and who some believe is a highly connected individual with “deep knowledge about worldwide trends.”

While Widburg emphasizes that she has no opinion on QAnon’s validity, she mentions that one thing she learned from her “conversation is that Q contends that a major connection linking the world’s power players is pedophilia.” Yet, she continues, one “doesn’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to notice from recent news stories that people in power often use that power to abuse children.” More on this in a moment.

Widburg mentioned QAnon because, when she got home, she learned of Paul Krugman’s curious January 8 tweet. Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and New York Times scribe who specializes in errant predictions, had written the following now-deleted message:

Well, I’m on the phone with my computer security service, and as I understand it someone compromised my IP address and is using it to download child pornography. I might just be a random target. But this could be an attempt to Qanon me. It’s an ugly world out there.

A second tweet stated, “The Times is now on the case.”

Wow, the Times? Not the FBI or at least local law enforcement? Would Krugman call the paper if he were mugged? If you were a victim of cyber-crime, would you call your employer?

Approximately six hours later, Krugman announced the tweet’s deletion, stating that the Times had determined the threat to be a scam.

Yet his behavior is curious. As Widburg wrote, implying what many Internet commenters have said explicitly, “It’s nice that the Times was able to clear Krugman of any connection to a vile, immoral practice. Still, it would have been interesting to see if a call to the FBI would have yielded the same result in the same time frame.” For sure. Why announce such a thing publicly and prematurely? Unless….

Whatever the case, Widburg’s point about widespread pseudo-elite “pedophilia” strikes a chord with me because I’ve been reporting on this topic for years.

(To be precise, rarely at issue is actual “pedophilia,” which is sexual attraction to and sometimes relations with prepubescent children. In question is activity usually involving adolescent girls or boys.)

Here’s a sampling of that reporting, illustrating the problem:

• On the child sex abuse in entertainment, there’s 2014’s “Hollywood Dearest: Seared Souls and the Silver Screen,” 2017’s “‘An Open Secret’: Must-watch Documentary on Hollywood’s Casting Couch for Kids,” and “Corey Feldman Names Molesters; Fears Hollywood ‘A-lister’ May Kill Him.”

• On child sex abuse in the British government, there’s 2015’s “The U.K. Government Pedophiles Who Got Away With Spiritual Murder.”

• On attempts by pseudo-elites in the media, entertainment, and elsewhere to normalize child sexualization, there’s 2013’s “The Slippery Slope to Pedophilia.”

• On the pseudo-science used to legitimize pedophilia, there’s 2009’s “According to Kinsey, Deviancy Is the New Normal.”

Of course, the “decadent rich” has long been a stereotype. Certain Roman emperors were known for their lasciviousness (though some claim that biased historians have exaggerated the stories). We get the word “sadism” from lewd and libertine, 18th-century French nobleman the Marquis de Sade, who died in a mental asylum. And late left-wing writer Gore Vidal, who hobnobbed with the rich and influential, admitted to being a pederast.

Why would these sins be more common among the pseudo-elite? Well, as the line goes, “The very rich are different from you and me…” — “they have more money.”

While it’s unlikely they’re innately any more corruptible, their resources allow them opportunities and dispensations eluding mere “deplorables.” Not everyone can have a private island like Epstein did, after all, or regularly travel to Bangkok, as was Vidal’s wont (you can put two and two together there — he wasn’t traveling on business).

Then there’s how an “idle mind is the Devil’s playground.” A bane of man is that his leisure time and licentiousness are too often directly proportional.

The reality is that the rich can generally take what they want — and those among them who want young playthings do often take them.

As for seeking justice, it’s not just that the wealthy can “buy protection.” It’s also that if enough of them across pseudo-elite circles have dirty hands, a conspiracy of silence can result with a common vested interest in keeping the matter hush-hush.

That is, unless and until one of them faces a long stretch in the big house, as was the case with the conveniently dead Jeffrey Epstein.

Image: MagMos via iStock / Getty Images Plus

Selwyn Duke (@SelwynDuke) has written for The New American for more than a decade. He has also written for The Hill, Observer, The American Conservative, WorldNetDaily, American Thinker, and many other print and online publications. In addition, he has contributed to college textbooks published by Gale-Cengage Learning, has appeared on television, and is a frequent guest on radio.