Let Them Eat Gatsby

While SNAP benefits are slashed, a recession looms, and farmers watch their crops fail, Trump hosted an obscene display of wealth.

Over the weekend, images of an obscenely wealthy Gatsby-themed Halloween party at Mar-a-Lago hit social media. Half naked dancers dressed in plumes of feathers and sparkles gyrated and wriggled around for the nation's richest and most powerful people. Girls danced around in oversized cocktail glasses while the men hobnobbed with the president.

That same day, SNAP benefits for the poorest people in the country, which represents 10% of all non-restaurant food revenue, expired. That means American families will go hungry. The party was a breathtaking display of greed without a hint of consideration for optics.

Now they're just rubbing our faces in their wealth. These people rule over us little folk with no care for our lives.

Many of us are begging online for donations just to pay the rent. That rent, by the way, was a median $1350/mo just 10 years ago in 2015, and now it is about $2100/mo. And for some reason we still put a fucking real estate developer in the White House last year.

It feels like everything is getting both  more expensive and worse every day. Inflation was up 2.9% in September this year compared to the same time last year. Turns out the political party that doesn't know shit about anything can't solve the biggest problem from the last election.

I'm not sure Republicans even want to stop inflation, to be honest. The party exists solely to make rich people feel more comfortable and ensure their bank accounts continue to go up and up and up. Now don't get me wrong, there are MANY Democrats who also exist to do this, but we all know they are much more likely to step in to protect the little guy than their opponents.

This Gatsby-inspired party came just a week after Trump redeveloped demolished the East Wing to make way for a gilded ballroom. It came just a few days after the White House revealed that the bathroom attached to the Lincoln bedroom got Trump's marble BathFitter treatment.

I shouldn't be so surprised that the man who shits in a golden toilet has no taste or sense for aesthetics, and I wasn't surprised that Trump's idea for Gatsby vibes are closer to 1950's Vegas, but we truly are living in another Gilded Age.

"2 Gild 2 Age", if you will, this time with even more rancid vibes.

Perhaps a Gatsby party is the perfect representation of where we're at right now. Jay Gatsby was a grifter who threw extravagant parties in an attempt to validate his place in a society full of other grifters. Does that not sound like Mar-a-Lago in 2025?

The wealthy in this country have an uncontrollable thirst for money and keeping up with the billionaire Joneses. They kill good, profitable companies simply because they can extract more wealth by laying people off and selling off the assets. They demand ever-increasing profits that have never been possible in the history of capitalism. They are investing billions in AI in the hopes that they won't have to hire employees anymore with no realization that it's employees who buy their products and services, and that by having no employees, no one will buy their shit.

They jack up our rent, and murder the American dream, and get mad when we have no respect for them. They don’t even hide their greed anymore, and it’s feeling very late 1920’s in the economy lately. In 1928, on the verge of the start of the Great Depression, Hoover-era Republicans ran a famous ad touting what Republicans had provided for the populace, saying the party had put "a chicken in every pot. And a car in every backyard". Hoover was re-elected, and a year later the stock market crashed and plunged the world into a decade long economic depression.

Famously, you cannot buy a grocery store rotisserie chicken with SNAP dollars, and now you can't even use SNAP. And cars have become dramatically unaffordable.The average car payment on a new car in 2025 is $749/mo, and a used car is $529/mo. These days Republicans can't give us a chicken or a car, nor do they care as long as their rich friends and donors keep getting richer.

But there's a reckoning coming. The US economy is dominated by AI spending and most economists have labeled the AI market a massive bubble waiting to burst. Personally I can't wait. It's going to suck, and it will be painful for me personally as someone who depends on my readers having disposable income, but these bastards will also hurt, and they have it coming.

Fuck these guys.

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-Katelyn