There’s a photo making the rounds — one of hundreds of performers hired for the so-called “Great Gatsby” party at Mar-a-Lago. A $4.3-million spectacle funded by public dollars while millions of Americans lost food benefits and federal employees went without pay.
I keep staring at that image and wondering: what does it say about a person who chooses to perform at such a party, knowing what it represents?
Is it any different from the overseers of the antebellum South — those who enforced the system but didn’t own it, who took their pay and proximity to power as proof they were safe?
Complicit feels like the right word. Because every empire needs its performers, its decorators, its stagehands willing to lend beauty to brutality. Maybe that’s what “The Gatsby” has always been: a masquerade of excess built on someone else’s hunger.
I think about resistance — how sometimes it’s as small as saying no when the invitation comes wrapped in gold.💎
If this piece made you pause, share it with someone who still believes performance can be neutral.
💬 What does resistance look like for you this week?
