careless people, they
let other people clean up
the mess they have made

Adapted from the passage:

I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused.

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. . . .

From the book The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1925).

In the realm of life imitating art, the line; I couldn’t forgive him or like him, but I saw that what he had done was, to him, entirely justified. It was all very careless and confused., sends shivers down my spine.

As it goes on, the more I believe it has to be a hot house phenomena.

Like the Roading 20’s, the USA rose up and passed Prohibition.

I look for and feel a growing wave of resentment that will wash away the carelessness of this current era.

But for now, it’s all careless and confused.

They will smash up things and creatures and then retreat back into their money or their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that keeps them together.

And let us clean up the mess they have made.

*Thanks to good friend Bryan whose post reminded me of the passage.

permits outrageous
eventualities to
materialize

The Constitution establishes the electoral college system to govern the President’s selection, and provides further means ol choice when that system bogs down in inconclusive result. But it grants the federal government only limited authority over its most important election, that of the President: critically significant powers repose in the states. By express or implicit constitutional authority, federal statutes specify the date of election day, determine when the electors are to meet and cast their ballots, and establish the procedure for counting those ballots in Congress. But at the same lime, the Constitution authorizes the states to decide how the electors are to be chosen and their electoral vote cast. State laws also regulate the conduct of elections, including the presidential contest, and political activity carried on within their borders. This authority and autonomy invite wide variation from state to state in the method, honesty, and freedom of federal elections.

In sanctioning this division of powers, the Constitution leaves elementary and crucial questions of procedure unanswered and permits the most outrageous eventualities to materialize. If, let us say, two conflicting sets of electoral votes are returned by a given state, who shall decide which set is to prevail? The Constitution provides no solution.

Consider another likely untoward instance. A candidate who receives on election day a majority of the popular vote cast may not, under the Constitution, necessarily become President—it he fails to secure also a majority of the electoral vote. The utter contradiction of this state of affairs with the most elementary principles of democracy is self-evident: the majority popular will can be denied.

From The Election That Got Away by Louis W. Koenig (American Heritage, October 1960 – Volume 11 Issue 6).

I give the American Heritage Magazine a lot of credit for my interest in United States History.

Before I was born, my Dad started subscribing to American Heritage whose editions were published in thin hard cover books a little be bigger than a the size of an 8 1/2 x 11 inch piece of paper.

And they were just left in stacks, a few here, a few there, some on the shelf, all over the house so when I was born, they were part of my landscape.

The magazine usually had something interesting on the cover to catch your eye, Washington on a horse or the Wright Brothers or something and their articles were written in a style for the general public.

Nothing at all like the Journal of American History which I didn’t find out about until I got to college.

But there they were and I can’t remember a time I didn’t pick on up and at least thumb through the pages or read an article or part of an article that caught my eye.

Some of these stories had illustrations and some of the illustrations and magazine covers were pretty goofy.

They appealed to me and, and in a way, as a kid, I thought of American Heritage as the Mad Magazine of US History.

Today’s haiku is adapted from a story that ran in October of 1960 and the author smugly warns that the debacle of the election 1877, where the states levered electoral votes to swing the election away from the candidate who won the popular vote.

The author, a Louis W. Koenig, who has a long list of published works but not a wikipedia entry (you have to work out what that means) warned … it could happen again.

This was in October of 1960.

That fall would see the Nixon/Kennedy election with Kennedy being declared the winner after some late night calls to the Mayor Daly in Chicago … or maybe there weren’t any calls but a recount was considered (as Mike Royko wrote The Chicago Elections committee would throw the ballots at the ceiling and any ballot that stuck was declared a Republican vote) but nothing came of it.

Then came that Dallas afternoon and a new Presdident.

Than came Watergate and a new President.

Then came Bush/Gore.

And then came the folks who don’t even bother with the Constitution.

My point being this, the Constitution leaves elementary and crucial questions of procedure unanswered and permits the most outrageous eventualities to materialize.

And we are still here, 65 years after Mr. Koenig wrote those words.

There has to be a hope that in 2090, the Constitution will still leave elementary and crucial questions of procedure unanswered and permit the most outrageous eventualities to materialize.

And somehow those outrageous eventualities of the past, were overcome.