A Culture Of Greed

The two main political parties of America are often quick to think that greed resides only in the hearts of the other party's members, overlooking, excusing, or idiotically misinterpreting their own greed.  That is a problem with other issues as well, with conservatives and liberals alike being sexist and racist while at least pretending to think that only the other party embraces or practices such things.  Sometimes their greed somewhat differs in its goals or ideological basis, but, of course, all greed is petty and selfish.  To clarify something up front, just wanting to have more possessions is not greed left to itself, as greed is a materialistic, shallow, egoistic desire to have physical belongings basically to just have them that comes at the expense of other things (not materialistic as in being an expression of naturalistic philosophy).

No one can fully want physical goods and comforts just to want them, though.  A person consumed with greed might be too irrational to realize that even wanting material possessions is fulfilling needs or satisfying emotional or general psychological desires.  Greed treats physical belongings as if they are the end instead of ultimately just a means to an end, with the end not necessarily being rational or morally legitimate.  To clarify another vital point, of course not every single human is full of greed.  This is a false assumption because nothing about being human actually requires that one also be greedy, and most people who believe otherwise likely just want to feel better about their own greed or are simply too stupid to recognize what does not logically follow from being human.

To go past linguistic definitions of this condition of the mind, conservatives and liberals do still tend to talk as if they harbor this kind of desire on one hand despite sounding subjectively persuaded (because they are not looking to logical proof) that the other party is the true party of greed.  The left is more prone to want other people's money to be given to them with no more effort on their part than a demand to have it, as if having wealth is inherently bad, and as if they do not regularly just want to be the rich person they despise instead of someone else.  The right is more prone to defend corporate abuses of employees, consumers, and even other corporate leaders in the name of greed, sometimes even the greed of others they also would like to become, all while hoping to fill their metaphorical pockets as they believe or claim that the right is the party of true charity, yet without genuinely doing much to help the poor.

At the heart of the motivations of at least enough conservatives and liberals to define their parties as a whole is mere greed.  It is ironic that both groups often want to be rich and not have to use their real or imagined eventual wealth for anything that does not sate their own petty desires.  Liberals will frequently, at least when pressed, talk about how they wish they had enough money to not have to work and how they would not even mind being much more wealthy than is necessary to survive American capitalism, and conservatives might even be eager to tell other people how they will hopefully become part of corporate leadership; that such conservatives say they want this as they trivialize workplace exploitation reveals that they are concerned first and foremost or perhaps only with satisfying their own greed.

There are many who actively participate in America's culture of greed--not in that they are forced to affiliate with jobs overseen by greed-obsessed people for survival, but in that they contribute to this aspect of the culture because they themselves are greedy and very similar to the people they hate out of economic envy or insecurity, just without the financial and social power to act on this as much.  For all their talk about how they champion charity and reject consumeristic materialism, political liberals and conservatives often fall into the same ultimate philosophical trap here, condemning the greed of others when it hurts them or when they subjectively find it unattractive but still privately or even openly reeking of greed themselves.  Stupidity, hypocrisy, introspective ignorance, and apathy are not unique to either party.  They are usually defining characteristics of members of each one.