j.r. leonard

On top of everything else, Kraft, Epstein, Manafort, Derschowitz & of course Trump are object lessons in why we need the humanities—esp. aesthetics. Read a poem or two & it becomes hard to see Vegas, Miami clubs & the services of paid teen sexworkers as glamorous & not desperate.

If you’re not drawn to barstools made of the skins of endangered animals or gilded hideousness like Mar-a-Lago or the Ivanka Trump collection, you tend not to get into money-laundering and human trafficking.

Something attracted younger Dershowitz to Martha’s Vineyard, lefty, literary paradise that—old NE snobbery—frowns on pretense, flash, plastic surgery. But AD had a sweet-tooth for playing baller w/OJ & Epstein—& traded his integrity for flamingo-colored sofas & indentured teens.

It’s @craigunger who taught me about the oligarch aesthetic—the implied brutality & waste & sadism of using the skins of endangered animals on $500m yacht barstools.

The idea that others—animals, servants, women, workers—are suffering & even dying for your decadence is exactly what makes it ”beautiful.” The more you can display furs, blood diamonds, dead-eyed abused “loyal” women & children, the more “glamorous” it reads to fellow oligarchs.

.@adamdavidson described @realTrumpcast how at Trumpworld parties you’d find people w/regular haircuts & ties downstairs; upstairs were open shirts, gold chains, dye-jobs. If you saw that & thought “THAT’s who I wanna to do coke w/borrow $ from,” you’d become Cohen in short order