Let's Get Out The Torches And The Pitchforks!

While I might wonder just who knows what a pitchfork is anymore, the sentiment is clear: It's time to hate the rich!

As usual, someone else says it better. Still, I want to go on record as being just as amazed at how much people envy the rich... while hating them.

There's an old Ten Years After song called "I'd Love To Change The World" that has these lines:

Everywhere is freaks and hairies
Dykes and fairies, tell me where is sanity
Tax the rich, feed the poor
'Til there are no rich no more

The sentiment struck me as odd. What would a world without the rich look like? And would we really want that? The song (and the band) is from the 60's (my formative years) and my mind wanders to it every time I see/hear people complain about the "1%." Never mind that the first two lines would stir up a {bleep}storm involving political correctness.

It reminds me of people who hate whatever minority is at the forefront of what passes for their minds. If there were no black people, for example, would the world be a better place? How about Hispanics? Or pick any group that you wish. Hitler chose the Jews and tried pretty hard to irradicate them. Didn't work, of course, just as his dream of world domination didn't work... but it cost a lot of lives to stop it. Still, there are people who forget the lessons learned of that era and have no problem hating this group or that.

And, I have to admit, it's pretty easy to hate the rich, isn't it? Envy and hate seem to go hand in hand. It's an odd combination when you think about it, envy/hate, but envy leads to resentment and resentment leads to hate and it all makes sense to those who do not look beyond emotion.

There are movie stars who have stirred up some controversy; Gwyneth Paltrow and Charlize Theron come to mind.

These are very rich people, famous people, who chose to put themselves out there in the public view and then whine about the attention they get. In the above cases, the negative attention. But they also complain about the lack of privacy they experience. Which has always amazed me. They want to be adored but they don't want to be adored too closely. And they tend to articulate this poorly. No wonder people can hate the rich while envying them. Many of the rich make it easy to do so. And the rest of us, the peons who helped make them rich and famous, think we would be different; we would be grateful for our fame and riches, share the money, do good works... yadda-yadda-yadda...

But we probably wouldn't. We'd follow the same pattern; get famous and rich and then resent the "demands" made on us. Because, after all, we are human... and so are celebrities... and so are the 1%.