Volkswagen’s US chief executive, Michael Horn, today admitted that he had known about the company’s manipulation of emissions test results as much as 18 months before the company informed regulators–let alone customers–about the issue. But he pointed out that he knew about a lot of bad things even before that. He said he knew that the grinding injustice of income inequality had been building for decades, and yet he had not stopped enjoying the fit of his $5,000 suits. He says he always knew that honesty was the best policy, yet said nothing condemnatory or even slightly negative when he learned that Vice President Joe Biden, back when he was Senator Joe Biden, had plagiarized a speech about the environment. Horn also related an anecdote about how he once noticed that his wife’s hair was sticking up in the back, making her look like she “was just doing something lying on her back,” and yet he let her walk into a cocktail party with all their friends. He admitted that he learned way back in grade school that Germany had played a part in wars that killed millions of people in the last century, and yet he had taken no action and, in fact, on several occasions had failed to correct his father when the elder Horn claimed that the Nazis had some good ideas. Horn also discussed how he believed that he was born into this world and had lived every hour of his life with a dim, possibly pre-verbal awareness of the fallen state of man and the creeping tendrils of evil that reach into every soul.