The Not So Great Gatsby

My American Studies students really liked F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, but that may have been because it was relatively short compared to Uncle Tom’s Cabin or The Grapes of Wrath, which we also read.  

I’m fairly certain Trump never took American Studies and never read The Great Gatsby, although he may have seen the movie.  The tone-deaf Trump threw a lavish Halloween “Gatsby” party, rumored to have cost over $3 million in taxpayer funds.  

The book was published 100 years ago in 1925 during the “Jazz Age.”  Wall Street was jumping.  Morals were in flux.  Jay Gatsby made some of his fortune working with the gambler who fixed the “Black Sox” World Series.  

Just today I heard that two major league pitchers have been accused of fixing games.  Gambling is rampant.  Morals are in decline.  We are in repeat mode.  As Karl Marx wrote:  “History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.”  We are in the farce stage.

Let me end the way the book ends.  Gatsby’s friend Nick Carraway, after finding Gatsby dead and floating in his pool, states:  “They were careless people, Tom and Daisy–they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money or their vast carelessness or whatever it was that kept them together and let other people clean up the mess they had made.”

Aliens could vote!

Here is an except from a chapter entitled "The Making of Americans" from an old textbook:

Persons of foreign birth who have not been naturalized are known as aliens.  There are several millions of aliens residing in our country.  They enjoy almost, although not quite, all the privileges of citizens.  They are entitled to full protection of their lives and property by our government; they may move freely about the country and engage in business; they are entitled to all the privileges of the state courts and to some privileges of the national courts; they have freedom of religious belief.  In some states there are restrictions against the holding of real estate by aliens ; but many states allow it and by the Homestead Act Congress has given millions of acres to them.  In some states aliens may even vote for state and national officers after having declared their intention of becoming citizens.

from Arthur William Dunn, The Community and the Citizen, rev. and enlarged.  Boston:  D. C. Heath & Co., 1914.   According to the stamp on the inside front cover it was used as a textbook in the Palmerton School District.

Into the election result weeds

The Pennsylvania election last Tuesday was an “off-year election.”  That means no members of congress or state legislative candidates were on the ballot.  We did have a statewide election for a Commonwealth Court Judge and a Superior Court judge and five “retention elections” for sitting justices at the state level.  

We also voted for school board members and borough and township officials and someCounty officials like the treasurer.

Off-year elections generally have a low turnout.  Only the 3rd Ward in Jim Thorpe had a turnout over 50%; it clocked in at 50.76%.  That is a bit misleading, however.  A group of volunteers had sent letters with mail-in ballot requests to Democrats in assisted living homes and housing for the aged.  We mailed to over 300 people, and approximately 30 were returned by the Post Office.  They would be counted as non-voters in the turnout figures.

I would also note is that Carbon County Democrats did much better than in the recent past.  The Democratic Party urged voters to retain the judges; the Republicans ran a well-funded campaign urging a no vote.  Last year Kamala Harris received a Carbon vote in the mid-thirties.  The vote to retain the judges was over 48%.  That was more than a 10% improvement.  

Back to bad news

Headline in today’s New York Times:  “U.N. Sees Slight Progress on Climate Action Partly Offset by the U.S.”

Aren’t you proud?

Let’s quickly build more data centers, burn more coal, discourage solar and wind, and make things even worse.  That, at any rate, seems to be the plan.

We were the windshield

A former student, now a professor of political science in Minnesota, occasionally sends me articles to keep me in the loop.  Today he sent me results I hadn’t heard before.  For example, I didn’t know that all five of the judges on the ballot (not just the top three) won retention.  Nor did I know that the Dems won the elections for the Superior and Commonwealth courts.  

I was so tired of seeing signs for Maria Bautista.  She lost.

Amazing results in PA.  For example, Lancaster County, a Republican stronghold, voted for retention.  As the article noted, sometimes in elections you are the bug, sometimes the windshield.  This time the Dems were the windshield.

Feeling good

Let’s review.  The New Jersey Governor’s face–D.  The Virginia Governor’s race–D.  The New York Mayor’s race–D.  The PA Supreme Court retention race–Yes.  

A.O.C. gave a great speech at the Mamdani victory party.  She said it wasn’t about Progressive or Liberal, it was about working together to oppose the threat to democracy.  I think that is the important thing to remember.  The Democratic Party doesn’t have to move to the left or to the right.  It has to move together in a unified front and represent the people of America.

We need a Front Populaire.  We need to join together.  This is no time to worry about petty differences.  If we stick together, we can turn this around.  You know the drill.  Big tent.  Solidarity.  Unity.  Brother and Sisterhood.  Remember the first cartoon by Ben Franklin?  The snake all cut up?  Remember the caption?  “Join or die.”

But tonight, let’s just celebrate.

Signs at polling places

Tonight Linda and I went around to 18 polling places to put up “Vote Yes on Judicial Retention” signs.  We covered the Palmerton and Lehighton areas.  Tomorrow night I will drive around and pick them up.  

Does this do any good?  The old cliche in campaign lore is: “1/2 of the money in any campaign is wasted.  The problem is–you don’t know which half.”  I think most people who come to the polling places to cast their votes already know how they plan to vote and ignore the signs.  On the other hand, this is a low information election.  Suppose you influence one out of a hundred voters.  In a close election, one percent can be the difference between victory and defeat.  So we put the signs up.