I was assigned this book in high school. I read it and honestly didn't understand a word of it after the first page which tells us Jay Gatsby got his polo ponies in Lake Forest. I grew up in Lake Forest and as a very young child saw an actual polo match on grounds that now are home to one of the several excellent public schools. So far so good. But having turned that page, I was lost. I had no real exposure to New York City until the last half of my senior year of high school (and then only to a very small section of the Upper East Side) and had no idea Long Island or the Hamptons even existed until my mid-twenties (I thought the book was set in New Jersey. LOL.). The book was entirely opaque to me. I found the book's characters boring in the extreme. Daisy was a dreadful drip, a "glittering" tinsel and glass ornament, Gatsby's infatuation seemed woefully misplaced as Jordan seemed potentially much more interesting if she would just dare actually DO something, Nick and Jordan contented themselves being the kind of hangerson and social parasites who haunted the "guestrooms" and "guesthouses" of wealthy old money grandparents and wealthier friends, charged primarily with being interesting occasional entertainments to bored and boring rich people and relegated to making snippy, sardonic remarks about them when not "on call". Tom was a lout. A boor. A well-dressed, self-regarding, "handsome" creep of no noticeable accomplishment. (I knew plenty of those.) The only tragedy in the book was the deliberate murder of a sad, bewildered woman who presented not even the slightest threat to Daisy's ownership of Tom's dick. I thought Gatsby got off easy, being shot to death in error, before his financial house of cards could collapse in on him. I believe I got an F with three question marks and an exclamation point on my paper on that book. Donald is now what Tom would have become sixty years on, as his magnificent head of hair fell out, his once strapping body coarsened and thickened and sagged into the ruin of old age, and his face, once considered by some to be "good-looking", collapsed into a cruel bloated, wrinkled parody of its youthful self. He would have divorced Daisy once her bland stupidity became unbearably irksome, her alcoholism became increasingly inconvenient and she ceased to be fresh as one, replacing her with a series of younger and dumber models, rotting away in a mouldering mansion in Florida renting out rooms, playing after dinner DJ, and serving bland country club cuisine to "friends" paying for proximity to his pretentious, roped off "VIP" dining table and the fools gold of his gilded "lifestyle". No, Trump sadly will probably not end his days broke and in prison - as he so richly deserves - but only because his brain and body are in a race toward extinction - and his spawn may cling for a while to the tatters of the Trump "fortune" but their fates will likely resemble those limned in the Fall of the House of Usher (the original story and the recent excellent television limited series.) Now THERE is a story I understood.
In our ‘modern times’, it’s been the white humans who have been the most barbaric, genecidal and violent. It’s about time the playing field is leveled with peace and love stepping in to birth the new era!
The pricktator is the godking of the unreconstructed; he's not responsible for knowing ANYTHING except owning the libs. And everyone suffering from the cruelty (that millions of Americans wanted to happen) is considered a "lib." You'll see people like this throughout the comments on any news article; they bay for the blood of people they consider lesser. And many of those considered lesser live in cities.
Flaunting the wealth in the style of this party is just part and parcel with the audacity that comes from their fortunate position. Sadopopulism got them to the promised land, and therefore they're going to hold fast to that framework. Ensconced in the bosom of Murc's Law for protection, we only need to see what the next "in your face" extravagance would be. Maybe they might actually have a Scrooge party for Christmas. Perhaps at any other holiday, an Atlas Shrugged party.
Whether trump read "The Great Gatsby" or watched the movies doesn't matter. It's such a cultural icon that even he knows that it's about excessive wealth and flaunting it. Hence, the party, and at this moment in time, when so many Americans are hurting, makes it even better in his book.
BTW, if the white race is so superior, why are any white folks worried about people of color taking over? Wouldn't that be impossible?
Yes, Obama was president, and did well, in spite of all that the whites in Congress tried to do to make him a failure. That seems to have made the racists even more insecure than Tom Buchanan, especially the ones with all of the wealth and power. Maybe the root of white "supremacy" is the worry that their whiteness is inferior to people of color.
"Maybe the root of white "supremacy" is the worry that their whiteness is inferior to people of color."
That's not it. What they are is existentially, "wake up at night drenched in sweat and screaming"-ly, pants-shittingly terrified that they will be treated by all those inferior 'others' just as they have treated those 'others' over the centuries. That they will be engulfed by the same genocidal vengeance for the genocide they inflicted.
I feel like the carelessness is their entire point all the time now. It’s not that the people holding their noses and voting for Trump did or didn’t want what we’ve got, I leave that to their consciences. What they really wanted was to stop having to engage with the world as it is or morality as it is. They wanted to feel perpetually on vacation, turning the AC down to 62F in a hotel room in a 100F climate, ordering steak every day and be damned to their cardiologist, believing that they’ve found the magical way to keep doing whatever they’d like, believing their donations to charity or fundraising actions will counteract their great sin. These are the people who fueled the growth of indulgences in the Middle Ages. If something is good for business, it’s good for the country - no matter whether it was even good for the business and not just for them.
I’m so tired of them living in a fantasy world and making choices within that world that wreck the actual world.
I never, ever, dreamed when I was reading The Great Gatsby while I was in college in the late 1960's, that it would still so accurately describe the attitudes of the entitled wealthy half a century later.
It seemed to me at the time to describe a brief moment in history when society became unmoored from decency and a sense of shared respect. But in fact, it depicted a societal tribalism which cared nothing for democratic values, and valued only greed and self-perceived superiority over the less fortunate. I realize now that a significant part of the country carries the ability to descend into that exact same attitude, and carries the same heedless cruelty.
Depends on your definition of "all right", I guess. If it means not paying any kind of legal or economic price for his monstrous misdeeds, I think that's correct. His price will only be paid by the rest of us.
I was assigned this book in high school. I read it and honestly didn't understand a word of it after the first page which tells us Jay Gatsby got his polo ponies in Lake Forest. I grew up in Lake Forest and as a very young child saw an actual polo match on grounds that now are home to one of the several excellent public schools. So far so good. But having turned that page, I was lost. I had no real exposure to New York City until the last half of my senior year of high school (and then only to a very small section of the Upper East Side) and had no idea Long Island or the Hamptons even existed until my mid-twenties (I thought the book was set in New Jersey. LOL.). The book was entirely opaque to me. I found the book's characters boring in the extreme. Daisy was a dreadful drip, a "glittering" tinsel and glass ornament, Gatsby's infatuation seemed woefully misplaced as Jordan seemed potentially much more interesting if she would just dare actually DO something, Nick and Jordan contented themselves being the kind of hangerson and social parasites who haunted the "guestrooms" and "guesthouses" of wealthy old money grandparents and wealthier friends, charged primarily with being interesting occasional entertainments to bored and boring rich people and relegated to making snippy, sardonic remarks about them when not "on call". Tom was a lout. A boor. A well-dressed, self-regarding, "handsome" creep of no noticeable accomplishment. (I knew plenty of those.) The only tragedy in the book was the deliberate murder of a sad, bewildered woman who presented not even the slightest threat to Daisy's ownership of Tom's dick. I thought Gatsby got off easy, being shot to death in error, before his financial house of cards could collapse in on him. I believe I got an F with three question marks and an exclamation point on my paper on that book. Donald is now what Tom would have become sixty years on, as his magnificent head of hair fell out, his once strapping body coarsened and thickened and sagged into the ruin of old age, and his face, once considered by some to be "good-looking", collapsed into a cruel bloated, wrinkled parody of its youthful self. He would have divorced Daisy once her bland stupidity became unbearably irksome, her alcoholism became increasingly inconvenient and she ceased to be fresh as one, replacing her with a series of younger and dumber models, rotting away in a mouldering mansion in Florida renting out rooms, playing after dinner DJ, and serving bland country club cuisine to "friends" paying for proximity to his pretentious, roped off "VIP" dining table and the fools gold of his gilded "lifestyle". No, Trump sadly will probably not end his days broke and in prison - as he so richly deserves - but only because his brain and body are in a race toward extinction - and his spawn may cling for a while to the tatters of the Trump "fortune" but their fates will likely resemble those limned in the Fall of the House of Usher (the original story and the recent excellent television limited series.) Now THERE is a story I understood.
In our ‘modern times’, it’s been the white humans who have been the most barbaric, genecidal and violent. It’s about time the playing field is leveled with peace and love stepping in to birth the new era!
The pricktator is the godking of the unreconstructed; he's not responsible for knowing ANYTHING except owning the libs. And everyone suffering from the cruelty (that millions of Americans wanted to happen) is considered a "lib." You'll see people like this throughout the comments on any news article; they bay for the blood of people they consider lesser. And many of those considered lesser live in cities.
Flaunting the wealth in the style of this party is just part and parcel with the audacity that comes from their fortunate position. Sadopopulism got them to the promised land, and therefore they're going to hold fast to that framework. Ensconced in the bosom of Murc's Law for protection, we only need to see what the next "in your face" extravagance would be. Maybe they might actually have a Scrooge party for Christmas. Perhaps at any other holiday, an Atlas Shrugged party.
Whether trump read "The Great Gatsby" or watched the movies doesn't matter. It's such a cultural icon that even he knows that it's about excessive wealth and flaunting it. Hence, the party, and at this moment in time, when so many Americans are hurting, makes it even better in his book.
BTW, if the white race is so superior, why are any white folks worried about people of color taking over? Wouldn't that be impossible?
Yes, Obama was president, and did well, in spite of all that the whites in Congress tried to do to make him a failure. That seems to have made the racists even more insecure than Tom Buchanan, especially the ones with all of the wealth and power. Maybe the root of white "supremacy" is the worry that their whiteness is inferior to people of color.
"Maybe the root of white "supremacy" is the worry that their whiteness is inferior to people of color."
That's not it. What they are is existentially, "wake up at night drenched in sweat and screaming"-ly, pants-shittingly terrified that they will be treated by all those inferior 'others' just as they have treated those 'others' over the centuries. That they will be engulfed by the same genocidal vengeance for the genocide they inflicted.
I don't really think that's it.
*Marie Antoinette has entered the chat*
I feel like the carelessness is their entire point all the time now. It’s not that the people holding their noses and voting for Trump did or didn’t want what we’ve got, I leave that to their consciences. What they really wanted was to stop having to engage with the world as it is or morality as it is. They wanted to feel perpetually on vacation, turning the AC down to 62F in a hotel room in a 100F climate, ordering steak every day and be damned to their cardiologist, believing that they’ve found the magical way to keep doing whatever they’d like, believing their donations to charity or fundraising actions will counteract their great sin. These are the people who fueled the growth of indulgences in the Middle Ages. If something is good for business, it’s good for the country - no matter whether it was even good for the business and not just for them.
I’m so tired of them living in a fantasy world and making choices within that world that wreck the actual world.
I never, ever, dreamed when I was reading The Great Gatsby while I was in college in the late 1960's, that it would still so accurately describe the attitudes of the entitled wealthy half a century later.
It seemed to me at the time to describe a brief moment in history when society became unmoored from decency and a sense of shared respect. But in fact, it depicted a societal tribalism which cared nothing for democratic values, and valued only greed and self-perceived superiority over the less fortunate. I realize now that a significant part of the country carries the ability to descend into that exact same attitude, and carries the same heedless cruelty.
We can't let them win!
It really is remarkable that Trump is so devoid of any good quality that even when comparing him to fictional villains he comes out worse.
“At least Tom Buchanan has read a book and doesn’t feel the need to buy admiration with fancy parties.”
“At least Dracula paid his legal bills.”
“At least the clown from It could form complete sentences.”
Depends on your definition of "all right", I guess. If it means not paying any kind of legal or economic price for his monstrous misdeeds, I think that's correct. His price will only be paid by the rest of us.