Why is Being Rich Bad?

If the Republicans and their red meat were to be believed, you would think they would applaud Barack Obama's pledges to cut taxes for those making (what is it now?) less than $200,000 per year. After all, this is now the party of "Joe the Plumber", the little guy, and the "real America". They're looking out for YOU and intend to be a bulwark between you and everyone on the Socialist take. No, hard-scrabble, blue collar, American. No elitist, utopian, Pinko, fag-loving, Jew-liberals are gonna take YOUR money.

Meanwhile, Democrats are making their tired appeals to unions and spouting off their anti-corporate boilerplate language, making claims to end tax breaks for the big, bad, oil companies and unpatriotic companies who ship jobs overseas. Only the bourgeois pampered richies will have tax increases; the rest of you, you hardworking heroes, you, will have tax cuts. HUZZAH!

So, while both candidates have been racing to the bottom with their opportunistic populism to court the "Joes", rich people have either been demonized or swept under the rug. They are the perennial scapegoat for the Dems and the hot potato this year for the GOP. Such pariahs, they are, those people who work hard and make tons of money. How unAmerican! But, this is something that has been creeping into American culture for awhile, based on my observations, way before the financial meltdown or even this year's Presidential campaigns.

There is no denying it: my family is loaded. My great-grandfather, Nathan Gumenick, lived the American dream. He was the son of poor immigrants in Baltimore and, yada yada yada, worked his ass off and died a multimillionaire at 95 in sunny Miami Beach. I thought stories like this are celebrated and hallowed in American culture; with a lot of grit and determination, you can make your dreams come true. I thought it's everyone's dream to work hard, make money, and leave the next generation better off than yours was.

But throughout my life, I have always been made to feel guilty because of where, and more importantly who, I came from. I've always encountered people who have made snide comments about the car I was driving or the size of my parents' house. As a younger man, I got so guilted that I vowed that when I was out on my own, I would live more modestly than my parents because I wanted to be "real". If I could, I would go back in time and kick Younger-Me's ass. Not because it's so stupid that I was so concerned with being "real", or even that I thought I could be less "real" with a lot of money, but because this world is a rough place and a lot of money won't make all problems go away, but it certainly helps. Who in their right mind (besides a nun/monk who takes a vow of poverty) would want less than what they were brought up with? This is when I would back-hand Younger-Me.

But, the fact of the matter is that we are now conditioned to frown on prosperity. Even I have been browbeating "greedy" Wall Street. In this country, it used to be that we viewed someone who got rich as an example; someone we could learn from. Now, we view people who get rich with jealousy and resentment. Wealth is demonized because of our collective sense of entitlement and victim mentality born in the Great Society. Viewed through this lens, the wealth people acquire is not made through one's own hard work, but at someone else's expense.

The Presidential campaigns have appropriated this and are capitalizing on it. However, by doing so, they are stifling the ideal of "manifest destiny" and perpetuating the victim mentality. Case-in-point, look at Barack Obama's infomercial last night (which, I must say, was brilliant and has turned a new page in presidential politics). His "American stories" were not about successes, but about failures. Not one of them captured the American spirit as we know it. No one was celebrated for growing a small business or beatified for an innovation or creation. It focused on people who need help and that's all.

I guess that's the mood we're in this time round, but that type of pandering doesn't serve us well. The candidates should focus less on everything they're going to do to help, and more on how we can contribute to making ourselves whole again, by promoting and sustaining an environment that supports prosperity. Despite what the two parties think, neither of them have a monopoly on that objective. However, the two of them are as far from that sentiment as they ever have been. It's wrong for America.