The ultra-rich don't even understand why people resent them or think they're detached from real-world problems.
The ultra-rich have used their wealth and political influence to promote policies which allow them to capture an ever-increasing share of our national income. That's an unjust but self-perpetuating spiral that endangers our democracy, our financial security, even the free exchange of news and information.
And yet, one of their defining characteristics is their deep and abiding rage at the rest of the country. They resent the resentment of others. This fury was exemplified by Mitt Romney's bitter but heartfelt "47 percent" rant, an outburst that echoed others from the group we've called "the radical rich."
Even a relatively benign billionaire like Sean Parker isn't immune to this affliction, as his angry rebuttals to the wedding criticism attest. Parker wrote of his wedding, "Our guests reached a beautiful gate in a clearing, just prior to entering the forest. Through that threshold, they left the ordinary world behind and entered an extraordinary world imagined as a kind of collaborative art project between me and my wife-to-be, Alexandra."
That's pretty much the problem in a nutshell: Billionaires increasingly control our world. But they don't live here. They dwell in a Hobbit-like fantasy, far from our worries and fears, where our nation is becoming "a collaborative art project," a media-made myth, a post-middle-class theme park -- call it "AmericaLand" -- complete with a make-believe middle class and an animatronic democracy.
But the rest of us are suffering the effects of growing wealth inequality: joblessness, soaring poverty rates, lack of access to education or municipal services. The ultra-wealthy may have passed through "a beautiful gate in clearing," but the rest of us stand on the "threshold" of an increasingly grim world.
Forgive us for not willingly joining in the make-believe, but we have a nation to rebuild.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
2
2
