The 1% as victims? That’s rich!
By Eugene Robinson, WashPost, Published: January 30
An ugly outbreak of whiny victimhood is ravaging some of America’s most exclusive Zip codes. It’s as if some 1 percenters suddenly fear that old warning: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
Not to worry. The hoi polloi would much rather have a Big Mac — and also a job that pays a living wage, with sick leave, health insurance, vacation time and retirement. There was a time when even rich people agreed that these were laudable ambitions. Now, working to put these goals within reach of more Americans amounts to persecution of the wealthy, according to besieged 1 percenters and their defenders.
Last week, in a now-infamous letter to the Wall Street Journal, legendary San Francisco venture capitalist Tom Perkins compared “the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich’ ” to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. He went so far as to warn that an anti-rich “Kristallnacht” may be coming, referring to the night in 1938 when Jewish-owned stores, homes, hospitals, schools and synagogues were smashed throughout Germany and Austria.
As evidence, Perkins cited the Occupy movement; the fact that some people resent how Silicon Valley tech workers have driven up real estate prices and how they ride to work in special buses; and the “demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle.” He cited the Chronicle’s having called novelist Danielle Steel a “snob” despite her charity work. He neglected to mention that Steel is his former wife.
(More here.)
An ugly outbreak of whiny victimhood is ravaging some of America’s most exclusive Zip codes. It’s as if some 1 percenters suddenly fear that old warning: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat, they will eat the rich.”
Not to worry. The hoi polloi would much rather have a Big Mac — and also a job that pays a living wage, with sick leave, health insurance, vacation time and retirement. There was a time when even rich people agreed that these were laudable ambitions. Now, working to put these goals within reach of more Americans amounts to persecution of the wealthy, according to besieged 1 percenters and their defenders.
Last week, in a now-infamous letter to the Wall Street Journal, legendary San Francisco venture capitalist Tom Perkins compared “the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the ‘rich’ ” to the persecution of Jews in Nazi Germany. He went so far as to warn that an anti-rich “Kristallnacht” may be coming, referring to the night in 1938 when Jewish-owned stores, homes, hospitals, schools and synagogues were smashed throughout Germany and Austria.
As evidence, Perkins cited the Occupy movement; the fact that some people resent how Silicon Valley tech workers have driven up real estate prices and how they ride to work in special buses; and the “demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle.” He cited the Chronicle’s having called novelist Danielle Steel a “snob” despite her charity work. He neglected to mention that Steel is his former wife.
(More here.)
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