Thoughts from the ammo line

Ammo Grrrll glimpses HOW THE OTHER HALF LIVES. She writes:

Okay, first of all, it isn’t nearly “half.” More like the top 1-2 percent. And let me say right from the git-go that I have no animus toward the quite rich, very rich, or even ridiculously rich, as long as they can’t use that money to destroy my life. But too many of those people, blessed with so much, seem to resent the middle and upper middle classes having ANYTHING at all. It’s not JUST that they don’t want us to be rich enough to pony up half a billion dollars to throw an election. And they DEFINITELY don’t want us to be rich or powerful enough to designate anything as “disinformation” which must be quashed (like they do, routinely).

They also don’t want us to be able to own vehicles which are polluting THEIR Gaia. They don’t want us to have guns to protect ourselves against the criminal thugs they cater to and stir up. They don’t want us to have meat. Or equal rights under the Law. They want us to rent small apartments with low-flow toilets and drizzly shower heads and THEY will control the thermostat, thank you.

Americans in general do not hate the rich. They aspire to BE rich or at least comfortable. Slightly less rich upwardly mobile strivers, like AOC, may prance around in ballgowns that SAY “Eat the Rich,” but we all know she’s not serious about that. In fact, I took it to be her Kamala-inspired career-enhancing offer of Bill Clinton’s favorite non-procreative sexual activity rather than a serious threat to any oligarchs she knows personally.

But this is not true of every culture.

Some friends of ours from the Former Soviet Union – specifically Ukrainian Jews – said that they were trained to hate anyone who had even a little bit more than they did. When they emigrated to America and eventually were able to put a down payment on a very modest home, they told us not to tell anyone at synagogue lest they be targets of jealousy and gossip.

They told us the following common Russian joke: A genie offers to grant a peasant, Yuri, any wish he wants. But the catch is that his neighbor, Ivan, would get double what he got. Yuri thinks a minute and says, “Just blind me in one eye.”

So, to be clear, I am all for people getting just as rich as they care to – legitimately, and not from criminal activity or from influence-peddling because your Big Guy daddy is the aptly-named Vice President. But I do question the sanity and taste of some of the superrich. Way back in the day, I attended two different Steve Martin concerts in which he kidded (paraphrasing from memory): “It’s nice to have so much money that you can buy whatever you want! I bought some $300 socks and a fur sink. And I bought some stupid stuff, too.” Sure, that was a joke, and a pretty funny one, but you’d be amazed at what some people squander money on.

The other day I read a sad story about Mariah Carey’s $5M Atlanta home being broken into and burglarized while she was on vacation somewhere fancy I forget — for sure not Branson or the Wisconsin Dells. Since it was an ongoing investigation, we do not know what was taken and I understand several alleged suspects are in alleged custody, allegedly. This was at least the second time one of her mansions has been burglarized. However, in the other one, in Los Angeles some time ago, she lost a reported “$50,000 worth of sunglasses and purses.” Quoi? Come again?

Before we bought our current home in Arizona, we lived for 30 years in a nice middle-class neighborhood in Maplewood, Minnesota, in a very modest 1800 sq ft HOUSE that cost right around $50,000. And she spent that on PURSES?? Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot about the sunglasses. My husband, the famous novelist Max Cossack, said that in order for my “purses” to total $50,000, my omnipresent fanny pack would have to be stuffed with $49,980.

The Carey story appeared on Breitbart. Let us imagine how a similar yet vastly-different story about me in the Maricopa Monitor might read:

There was a possible attempted burglary at the home of Power Line columnist “Ammo Grrrll” despite her having a sign near the front door that said, “Please believe me that nothing in here is worth dying for.”

It turned out that she had just run next door for a minute to borrow an avocado to shmear on toast to find out what all the fuss was about when an itinerant tree-trimmer noticed her leaving and tried the door and walked right into the dwelling.

Before AG got home, he had already gathered her $19.95 Fanny-Pack, and a $200 pair of Maui Jim sunglasses she has had for 20 years (amortizing the cost to just $10 a year).

“I always lose the cheapies, sometimes two a day, so I have found if I spend a couple hundred on designer sunglasses, I manage to hang onto them like grim death,” said Mrs. Vass. The would-be thief saw her second sign — “Protected by Rittenhouse Security” — and quickly abandoned the items by the door and left without incident. Just moments later he was tackled by portly HOA President Karen Karenina, who mistook him for a resident and noticed he wasn’t wearing a double mask. She also suspected he had set his garbage out at 3:40 p.m. instead of at 4:00 as the rules specify and proceeded to taze him…he is currently intubated at a local hospital but expected to recover.

I also remember reading that Cher, who had grown up in poverty, but at least could still afford a last name at that time, was so scared of being poor again that when she got a bit more comfortable, she bought backups to her backups. The article I read long ago said that she once bought four electric frying pans, storing three of them just in case.

How well I remember when my dear husband – then in his early 20’s — bought ME an electric frying pan for my birthday and the merciless criticism he endured from his female co-workers for doing so. “Hey, c’mon guys, that’s what she SAID she wanted. Ask her!” And – true story – inspired by the fear Cher had that all this “wealth” could disappear, I later went out and bought a second one. Good times, good times.

I believe that even if two individuals end up with more or less equal assets, there is a large and profound difference between being born rich and achieving a “comfortable” status through education, hard work, a little luck and a lot of grit. We have been poor and we have been well-off, and I much prefer well-off, if for no other reason than convenience. It’s no fun when your car battery on your 1968 Mercury gets stolen in January and you don’t have a spare $50 to get another one. To take just one hypothetical example.

For several years we lived in apartments so wretched that they didn’t even have laundry facilities. We had to use laundromats. A few of these were also – surprise! – in sketchy neighborhoods where you were forced to GUARD your laundry lest someone even less fortunate than you would steal your pathetic garments from the dryer. We even knew a woman who had her stuff stolen from the WASHER, soaking wet. Didn’t see THAT comin’.

The dryers were massive – in Chicago, mobsters were frequently found dead in them — and signs were posted saying that they could accommodate up to three washer-loads of laundry. However, the temperature of the dryers must have been a balmy 46 Degrees, because it took a ROLL of dimes to get the clothes even as far as “damp.” One dime lasted about three spins. How much better is my all-on-one-level laundry room complete with its own entertainment center in the form of a 90’s-era CD boom box that cost about the same as one of the Walmart issue Fanny-Packs.

The current Administration of diverse, rich lunatics thinks that we eighty-some million Ultra MAGA “Semi-Fascist” Deplorables do not deserve to be part of the “Ownership Society.” In the Fantastic Great New Reset, we are – as mentioned above – strongly encouraged to rent un-airconditioned apartments we can be kicked out of as easily as they throw us off Twitter and Facebook. They want to force us to ride electric buses, snacking on crickets, while they run around in private jets, hopping from one of their five mansions or international conferences to another, planning our lives in great detail, while enjoying Organic, Grass-Fed Wagyu Beef and Maine Lobster flown in to Davos. We’ll see how that works out.

Can you say “Sri Lanka,” boys and girls? I thought you could!

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