Gatsby president with a tale of two income brackets
There is a terribleness to the spectacle of a man who inherited his fortune hosting a party inspired by F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.—perhaps the most searing indictment ever penned of America’s gilded rot—while millions of his fellow citizens face the real and immediate prospect of hunger. Donald Trump has no understanding of irony.
On the evening before Halloween, as 42 million Americans nervously eyed their calendars and their cupboards, the president threw himself a “Great Gatsby”-themed Halloween party. The choice of motif was not accidental, but revelatory. Fitzgerald’s 1925 masterpiece is not a celebration of wealth; it is a chronicle of moral bankruptcy dressed in evening wear, of empty souls partying through vast mansions built on deceit, greed and suffering of others. Jay Gatsby’s glittering soirées were monuments to an illusion of glamour standing over the suffering of all others with no real achievements and this party along with Trump’s actions hold no achievements only glitter thrown on suffering and lies.
While millions of Americans brace for the expiration of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits amid a prolonged government shutdown, the president and his guests were reenacting Fitzgerald’s fever dream—complete with women displayed in giant martini glasses, a spectacle more suited to a Roman orgy than a republic that once prided itself on civic virtue.
The timing could scarcely be more obscene. Congress remains mired in its own performative dysfunction, unable or unwilling to pass the modest Keep SNAP Funded Act, introduced by Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley. The bill, supported by every Senate Democrat and several Republicans, would ensure that Americans can continue to eat even as their government remains closed. Yet the Republican leadership refuses to allow a vote, and House Speaker Mike Johnson—who has seen fit to give his chamber yet another extended recess after working a mere 20 days this year—appears unconcerned.
Perhaps we should be grateful for the clarity. The Gatsby gala was, in its way, a refreshingly honest confession that is regime has zero moral values. It displayed, without the camouflage of populist rhetoric, what this administration truly reveres: wealth without purpose, luxury without conscience, and excess without shame.
It is worth recalling that Fitzgerald wrote The Great Gatsby as a failing of the American Dream and how its noble corpse is dressed in gold and sequins. In Trump’s America, the dream has not merely died; it has been taxidermied and displayed as a centerpiece at a billionaire’s costume ball displayed beside half naked girls in giant martini glasses.
The symbolism matters. It is the currency of public morality. A leader who celebrates the mythology of Gatsby while his citizens go hungry is not merely tone-deaf; he is morally bankrupt. The difference between Fitzgerald’s Gatsby and our present day Washington D.C. is only that Fitzgerald knew he was writing a tragedy about the morally bankrupt while Trump lives a morally bankrupt life.
I have written harshly of presidents of both parties—of Barack Obama’s hesitation and do nothingness in Syria, of Joe Biden’s equivocations about Iran—because criticism of power is not partisan but patriotic. To remain silent in the face of moral decay is to be complicit in it.
Trump’s Gatsby party was not merely tasteless; it was emblematic. It revealed a regime whose moral compass has not merely spun off course but been pawned for gold-plated décor. If the sight of billionaires toasting themselves as millions worry about their next meal does not trouble us, then the fault lies not only with the host but with the guests and with a citizenry that shrugs at such decadence.
In the final line of Fitzgerald’s novel, the narrator observes that “we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.” How fitting for in Trump’s America, the current of compassion has reversed, and we are indeed borne back—into an age of untrammeled excess and unrepentant greed.
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Editor’s note: Joseph McCain is the publisher of The Star-Herald. He has worked in the newspaper industry for over 30 years and may be reached at 662-803-5236 or 662-289-2251 or email news1@starherald.net.
