Wanting To Be Among The Wealthy

Wanting to be among the wealthy is something both major American political parties seem eager to think is the true motivation for the opposing of the dominant groups.  At least publicly, many liberals and conservatives alike might pretend as if everyone of the opposite party is motivated by base greed and at least the most prominent members of their own philosophically asinine faction are not.  The desire for riches, to be among the wealthy, is often articulated by them in various ways that they do not necessarily fully recognize in themselves.  Not all conservatives and all liberals have the same motivations, of course, but it tends to be the case that, at least when pressed, most of them express a fixation on being rich with their somewhat unique philosophical incompetencies leading them to this.

Conservatives often seem to love wealth because they want to identify with the power and meaningless prestige of having a usually exaggerated, unearned high status in an arbitrary social hierarchy.  An attack on a rich person they subjectively respect, whether or not it is unjustly directed at the target just because they are wealthy or because they actually did something immoral to use or obtain their wealth, might be met with hostility by a conservative because they hope to one day be the person with immense financial resources, as well as the societal influence that comes fastened to it.  Pathetically mistaking money for a sign of moral character or intelligence, some conservatives hope to "prove" their goodness by becoming reach and others might wish to just be the ones who can impose their random wills on others and have the power to shield themselves from even legitimate criticism.

It is the assumption-based misconception that all or most of the wealthy have by necessity amassed a fortune because of deep rationality or hard work, the latter being something conservatives are emotionalistically enthralled by, that ensnares so many conservatives.  They assume that the rich have usually earned superior treatment and respect just by being rich, when this does not logically follow and is logically impossible (wealth can be just inherited, obtained by luck, or stolen, which contradicts the idea that the rich have all worked hard to morally earn their resources).  Similarly, liberals seem to almost always desperately wish they were the ones who are rich, just in different ways or with more overtly antagonistic motives.

Liberals often seem to resent the wealthy simply because not everyone has such vast amounts of money or other economically valuable assets.  In other words, it is not unusual to find liberals who hate the rich as a general group out of sheer envy, all while they openly rely on the wealthy to fund their political operations or to even become their political representatives, and all while openly expressing an interest in being rich.  They might want to be the very kind of person they hate in order to escape whatever minor or significant monetary problems they have.  Like conservatives who are consumed with greed even as they think they oppose financial immorality, such liberals are hypocrites, people who are the very kind of person they allegedly despise (irrationally at times) or who would be that kind of person if only given the chance.

As is often the case where money is concerned, conservatives and liberals are no less likely than the other kind of idiot to be slaves to greed and hypocrisy.  Both tend to want to be among the wealthy in violation of some of the ideas they supposedly hold to in other contexts.  Their respective general love or hatred of the wealthy really reduces down to wanting to be among them or to take their place.  Wanting to be wealthy is not automatically problematic, of course, so this is not the irrational or unjust part of how they approach wealth.  Both contribute to problems that involve money, look to money as solutions to problems where it is not relevant, or hope to be wealthy as they criticize the wealthy the other party claims as their own.  A key desire so very often seems to be shared by them even though the connected desires and ideologies differ between them.