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Rich =/= Right

Being wealthy isn't special.

By Conor MatthewsPublished about a year ago 4 min read
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Rich =/= Right
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash

I have a guilty pleasure. It’s looking up houses I’ll never afford. The million dollar homes, the five million pound manors, the thirty million euro estates. I’ve noticed a common thread between all of them; no taste. Often garishly ornate with gold this and crystal that, with simpering appeals to aristocracy, it’s what people think you’re supposed to like when you’re rich. New Money pretending it’s Old Money, hoping to impress someone. 

This image stands in contract with how the common man thinks the well-to-do are; beacons of refinement, intelligence, excellence, and rugged individualism. Recently there’s been something of a reckoning for this misconception.

Vladimir Putin, connected to a vast network of criminal wealth and politic power, has committed one of the most damning miscalculations in geopolitical history, assuring his damnation in the history books as a war criminal.

Liz Truss, one of many conservatives with wealthy ties to multinationals (in her case, Shell) is officially the shortest serving UK Prime Minister, leaving economic freefall in her wake after billing herself as the right choice after equally wealthy and equally inept Boris Johnson, Teresa May, Nigel Farage, and David Cameron ushered in the Brexit End Times, which continuously have proven to be an apocalyptic disaster.

Manic episode or not, Kanye West has literally lost billions due to threats, insults, and conspiracies touted against his ex-wife, their children, and his business partners (and that’s without mentioning anti-Semitism).

J.K. Rowling, the once beloved author who made billions through the Harry Potter series, as well as a vocal liberal online, has dug her heels in, insisting her allegiances with trans-exclusionist, anti-feminists, and fascist sympathisers does not make her a reactionary an alarmist, going against medical and psychological consensus, her fans, and the actors who brought her work to life.

Mark Zuckerberg, hailed as one of the gods of Silicon Valley along with Jobs, Dorsey, Page, has bet the farm (Facebook) on the metaverse, an idea as lacklustre and devoid of interest from his own employees as it is a rehash of ideas that have already been done for over 30 years just with a profiteering slant.

And now we’ve reached Elon Musk, once hailed as a real life Tony Stark, has been shitting the bed nonstop. His tunnels and cars have caused traffic jams, accidents, and just refuse to work outside of California. He’s been outed for fostering a work culture of casual racism and sexism, joining in the fun himself with horse bribes for sex (seriously, Google it). But now we have the “chief twit” butchering what little support he still had by showing how inept he is at running a social media company he stumbled into owning (or else face legal challenges).

Advertisers are leaving on mass (because of “activists”, according to Musk), his own staff (whoever is still there) are laughing at him as they print out code he can’t read, his pay-to-verify model has been met with scorn and mockery, and to top it off he’s already been involved in spreading debunked conspiracy theories about an ongoing assault and attempted assassination investigation.

Despite all this, there will still be sycophants who’ll not only support the wealthy in their forced feudalism of people’s thoughts, but will still see them as flawless.

Are there people who have earned success through talent and determination? Absolutely. But it is gullible to think those in a suit or who act with authority are inherently superior. It’s this same assumption that con-artists use to deceive their marks. And that’s what has happened. People have been deceived.

Putin has flooded the west with dirty money and energy dependency.

Liz Truss walks away with a golden parachute; a Prime Minister’s pension for two months of work, still a backbencher, and now with a promising speaking/book deal in her future.

Kanye is still worth millions. In case you forgot, worthless or not, he also now owns the biggest Far Right Friendly platform, Parler, as well as becoming the darling of the Right. To paraphrase him; “I can say anti-Semitic shit… Now what”.

J.K. Rowling, through sheer dumb luck and copyright laws, can never be dethroned from one of the biggest media franchises in the world. She can get away with fraud by, ironically, pretending to be a man and no one ever talks about that.

Mark Zuckerberg is hailed as a visionary just because he made his fortune with SFW Revenge Porn.

And Elon… Elon literally steals memes for shits and giggles, he gets away with market manipulation, he buys companies and declares himself a founder, and he does all this while acting like none of it was built on the corpses of miners.

None of this screams intelligence. None of this screams business savvy. It screams for help.

It’s understandably a comforting idea; that those who can shape your life know what they’re doing. The alternative doesn’t have to be despair. It may be a rude wake up call, but I am glad people, like myself with the houses I can’t afford, can see how money can blind people to their own tastelessness.

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About the Creator

Conor Matthews

Writer. Opinions are my own. https://ko-fi.com/conormatthews

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