Letter From Plague Island, November 2025

Decadence reflected in its own ruin.

Dear friends,

November crept in while we were still trying to wash off the glitter from Trump’s Great Gatsby Halloween party - an event so grotesque it managed to make Eyes Wide Shut look like a PTA fundraiser.

We wrote about it here: The Great Gatsby in the Valley of Ashes. It disgusted and fascinated us in equal measure; like watching the American dream stumble out of its mansion, sequins dulling, makeup running, clutching a champagne flute half-filled with swamp water.

The image that lodged in our minds wasn’t just the chandeliers or the Champagne tower; it was the woman writhing in the oversized martini glass, and the endless parade of female dancers. We’re not pearl-clutchers; consenting adults are free to do as they please. But what struck us was the tone of it all. This leering spectacle of wealth and flesh, and a man with the stench of Epstein all over him presiding over a scene that felt like moral decomposition dressed up as celebration.

Trump, of course, was a close acquaintance of Epstein - the dirty in-jokes, the parties, the photographs. The Epstein Files remain sealed, yet he struts on as though he were untouchable. You would think, given the associations, that a man like that might keep a low profile, but not Trump. He doesn’t believe he answers to anyone. He is the law. In his mind, the king. With his mantra of “fake news,” he’s convinced that he alone gets to decide what reality is.

Naturally, he seems not to have read The Great Gatsby (this will shock absolutely no one). Fitzgerald wrote about the corruption beneath the glitter; Trump embodies the corruption, poured into a tuxedo and sprayed with nuclear fake tan.

Decadence has a way of eating itself, though, and this feels like its apex. The bubble always bursts, and when it does, it’s usually the people holding the glasses who go down first.

A Moment of Courage Amid the Horror

Between bouts of incredulity, we read Virginia Giuffre’s posthumous book.

It was relentlessly distressing. Her story - the abuse by her father, the stolen