As a professor at Harvard, I am disquieted by such tendencies. Unlike Elon Musk, I did not come to the United States intent on making a fortune. Wealth was not my American dream. But I did come here because I believed in American meritocracy, and I was pretty sure that I would be teaching fewer beneficiaries of inherited privilege than I had encountered at Oxford.
Now I am not so sure.
Notes
1. In mid-September 2012, during the presidential election campaign, a video surfaced of Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential candidate, speaking before a group of supporters in which he stated that 47 percent of the nation pays no income tax, are dependent on the federal government, see themselves as victims, and will support President Obama unconditionally. Romney went on to say: “And so my job is not to worry about those people. I'll never convince them that they should take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” After facing criticism about the tone and accuracy of these comments, he at first characterized them as “inelegantly stated”, then a couple of weeks later commented: “I said something that's just completely wrong.” Exit polls published following the election showed that voters never saw Romney as someone who cared about people like them.
2. Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald (September 24, 1896 — December 21, 1940) was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigmatic writings of the Jazz Age. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the “Lost Generation” of the 1920s.
3. The Great Gatsby is a 1925 novel written by American author F. Scott Fitzgerald that follows a cast of characters living in the fictional town of West Egg on prosperous Long Island in the summer of 1922. The story primarily concerns the young and mysterious millionaire Jay Gatsby and his quixotic passion and obsession for the beautiful former debutante Daisy Buchanan. Considered to be Fitzgerald's magnum opus, The Great Gatsby explores themes of decadence, idealism, resistance to change, social upheaval, and excess, creating a portrait of the Jazz Age
Unit II. US: from Democracy to Empire?
Unit II. US: from Democracy to Empire?
or the Roaring Twenties that has been described as a cautionary tale regarding the American Dream.
4. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010 is a 2012 book by political scientist and W.H. Brady Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Charles Murray. The book describes what the author sees as the economic divideand moral decline of white Americans that has occurred since 1960. The author focuses on white Americans in order to make it clear that the decline he describes was not being experienced solely by minorities, whom he brings into his argument in the last few chapters of the book.
