This Epstein-Bannon interview is just the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen. It is worse than that time Col. Sanders went on The 700 Club to wax soteriological. At one point, when Epstein first starts talking about Leibniz, Bannon says (I quote from memory): “Isaac Newton was a British professor of mathematics, chair of the Department of Mathematics at Oxford, I believe. What was Leibniz? A German professor?” Is Bannon actually measuring up the legacies of these two luminaries according to whether or not they were chairs of their respective departments? Like: “Sorry to bother you, Isaac, I was hoping you might sign off on my expense report… Yes, I was in London, to dissect a porpess at Gresham… Yes, no, I know that’s not mathematics in the pure sense… No, I only used my per diem on porridge… Well, yes ale too. That was all they had at the inn… I know, accounting is not going to like that.” And then Epstein replies with a giddy “Yeah but…” spirit and proceeds to characterize Leibniz, alternately, as both a radical materialist and a radical idealist, without the slightest awareness that these are incompatible positions. Honestly until this moment I did not fully appreciate how completely mediocre the Epstein school really was, how low its intellectual standards and paltry its range of references and leitmotifs holy shit.