{"id":7045,"date":"2014-02-25T10:24:39","date_gmt":"2014-02-25T18:24:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/?p=7045"},"modified":"2014-02-25T10:24:39","modified_gmt":"2014-02-25T18:24:39","slug":"meet-the-richerals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/meet-the-richerals\/","title":{"rendered":"Meet the Richerals"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

The new millennium has also given us a new American profile \u2014 the hip richeral. Richerals are, of course, well off. But they are even more cool and liberal. The two facts are not so much incompatible, as \"Stack_of_money\"complementary.<\/p>\n

For some, big money allows three things: wealth\u2019s cocoon enables you to\u00a0dream safely about utopia<\/a>\u00a0rather than being laid off and broke; it exempts you from\u00a0worrying much about the high taxes<\/a>and\u00a0regulations<\/a>\u00a0needed to pay for your redistributionist fantasy agendas; and it gives you the influence, capital, and opportunities to flee from the messy ramifications of your own ideology.<\/p>\n

The other side of being liberal is just as important for the richerals. Guilt is a primordial human emotion \u2014 usually in civilization\u2019s history assuaged by religion and the accompanying fear of damnation in the hereafter.\u00a0But richerals are more likely than average to be either agnostic or atheistic. Yet that fact does not mean that they feel any less guilty about unfairness and inequality. So they do have deities of sorts \u2014 a hip Olympic pantheon of race, class, gender, and environmental gods. Their own privilege \u2014 be it the techie lifestyle of the Silicon Valley, the Ivy League quad, the Malibu gated estate, the Montana getaway, the Upper West Side ambiance \u2014 even under Obama just cannot yet be extended to everyone.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the rub, isn\u2019t it? How can a richeral be redistributionist and statist when such ideologies are targeted at one\u2019s own cherished lifestyle? So penance, medieval exemption,\u00a0and confessions<\/a>\u00a0step in as civilization\u2019s age-old remedies for the guilt of such a pious sinner.<\/p>\n

Wear jeans as you board your jet. Listen to rap as you review your stock options. Champion a baitfish. Hate Sarah Palin. Make Travyon into a symbol of resistance. Amnesty for your gardener and nannie alike. Being a richeral apparently means you never have to say you are sorry about the means you used to get your cash, why you mean to keep and expand it, and how you plan to pass it on to your richeral kids.<\/p>\n

Barack Obama came to Fresno last week to address the drought. He did not mention\u00a0the diversions over the last five years<\/a>\u00a0of precious irrigation water out to sea. Nor did he talk of any possible funding to build new mountain reservoirs. Instead, he talked mostly of climate change and some new federal loans to address it. We were to assume that both the record cold, ice, and snow back east (that the president fled from) and the record lack of rain here in the West were due to man-made global warming. In terms of \u201cclimate change\u201d reductionism, anything counts \u2014 a drought or a monsoon, ice or fire, the doldrums or hurricanes, occurring on average, below average, or above average.<\/p>\n

In other words, for Obama the drought was sort of like pushing radical new gun control laws in reaction to the Sandy Hook shooting tragedy: another occasion to demagogue a political agenda that most likely has nothing to do with addressing the problem at hand.<\/p>\n

After Obama talked of carbon footprints, the huge Air Force One jet flew down to Rancho Mirage \u2014 an oasis whose greenery hinges on two facts: it sits in a desert that even with recycled water would revert to its natural arid desolation without tapping a declining aquifer and Colorado River water; and a vast amount of energy is needed to pump water to scores of artificial golf courses. Exhausted after warning about droughts and global warming, the president then spent the three-day weekend on the Palm Springs regional links.<\/p>\n

What goes through the president\u2019s mind? Whether golfing at Rancho Mirage or vacationing at Martha\u2019s Vineyard, Obama rarely worries much about the ramifications of his own ideology, whose consequences always fall upon others. His idea of climate change is irrelevant to those in need of a job welding on the Keystone pipeline, or to those paying over $3.80 a gallon\u00a0to drive to the fields<\/a>, over vast untapped natural gas and petroleum beneath one\u2019s feet.<\/p>\n

What was John Kerry thinking when he lectured Indonesians about climate change? Might he have calculated the .001% lifestyle that he enjoys from the Heinz fortune twice removed, and all the carbon-spewing appurtenances \u2014 speedboats, SUVs, luxury cars, private jets \u2014 that he indulges in? Is the logic that Indonesians better watch their smoky footprints, but I, Mr. Kerry, need not, because those who care the most for others need \u201cdown time\u201d if they are to be effective? What would happen if every Indonesian had a speedboat like Kerry?<\/p>\n

What goes through the mind of an Al Gore? Does he ever wake up and muse, \u201cMy God, I just made millions through the con of selling a broke cable network to a dictatorship in the Middle East, desperate for entry into the U.S. TV market to spread its hate-filled Islamist and anti-Semitic propaganda\u201d? Or, in an afterthought, does Gore think, \u201cGreen God in Heaven, I almost beat the new capital gains tax-rate raise, but at least the buyer won\u2019t renege on the price, given that al Jazeera is funded by billions of petrodollars and a thriving business of hawking carbon fuels\u00a0that I hate<\/a>\u201c?<\/p>\n

Does Gore believe that he needs those tens of millions of dollars to fly on a private jet and to drive in a huge SUV to better spread the gospel that gas and oil are bad? Without such cash and appurtenances, such as his houses and boats, would he sulk, and therefore be less effective in helping us wean ourselves off fuel he uses to the nth degree?<\/p>\n

What does Hillary think<\/a>\u00a0when she takes up the cudgels of feminism against the reactionaries and their \u201cwar on women\u201d? After all, the sort of sexual banditry of Bill Clinton once fit every feminist rubric of exploitation:<\/p>\n

\u25cf Check Monica Lewinsky \u2014 the subordinate on the job, in a power disequilibrium, in which even consent to sexual play with her boss is considered inherently a form of exploitation. We are lectured by feminists that consenting sex between boss and employee, general and major, or professor and student is a form of coercion. Power imbalances, not mutually agreeable sex, is the key.<\/p>\n

\u25cf Check Paula Jones \u2014 class is also another powerful tool that the wealthy and influential use to subordinate their poorer female victims for \u201cconsensual\u201d sex that is hardly so \u2014 given the array of insidious machinations the exploiters use for gratification.<\/p>\n

\u25cf Check\u00a0Kathleen Willey<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 the single woman, bereft of husband, trying to fight the odds in a male-dominated world, is uniquely vulnerable to well-connected bosses, who habitually sniff out and exploit such exposure.<\/p>\n

\u25cf Check Juanita Broaddrick \u2014 the businesswoman trying to compete in a male-dominated world, who finds her sex, not her skills, piques the interests of the very powerful.<\/p>\n

In short, every feminist totem marks the career of a younger Bill Clinton. With the possible exception of Gennifer Flowers, most of Clinton\u2019s dalliances were predicated on what feminists would call coercion of some sort, given the imbalance in power and the empty, hormone-driven nature of the conquest.<\/p>\n

That Hillary and her enablers (do we remember James Carville: \u201cDrag a hundred-dollar bill through a trailer park, younever know what you\u2019ll find\u201d<\/a>?) engaged in classic \u201cwar against women\u201d defamations is, I agree, ancient history.<\/p>\n

But ancient history certainly becomes once more contemporary fact if Ms. Clinton runs a war against the \u201cwar on women\u201d that not long ago tarred Mitt Romney as a sexist for woodenly looking through biographies to find suitable female appointees. (As an after-thought: Is Al Gore also a warrior in the war against the \u201cwar on women\u201d? If so, how did he get himself into a similarly exploitive scenario with a masseuse that was Clintonian to the core?)<\/p>\n

What goes through the mind of the Bay Area biologist, Sierra Club activist, or naturalist lawyer who lobbies his legislators, who sues in federal and state court, and who galvanizes the powerful to divert millions of acre feet of irrigation water from farms to his delta to oxygenate a baitfish, or to introduce salmon in rivers that haven\u2019t seen them in eons? After all, that gambit requires manmade reservoirs to store irrigation water to divert it to keep the rivers running unnaturally all year, when they would otherwise go dry. Is that irony, or is it supposed to be \u201cpayback\u2019s a bitch\u201d?<\/p>\n

Distant Hetch Hetchy reservoir supplies most of the residential water of the otherwise quite unnatural and unsustainable arid Bay Area hills. Without Hetch Hetchy the barren expanse surrounding San Francisco, without adequate aquifers, would have no lawns, and indeed no majestic houses at all. The early explorers write movingly that the coastal corridor south of Napa is as beautiful as it is dry and without water \u2014 and thus mostly uninhabitable for large populations. Indeed, the usual villains of the current green religion are the early turn-of the-century\u00a0water buccaneers<\/a>,\u00a0the Mulhollands and Pinchots. In the case of the former, Owens Valley gymnastics allowed current greens in verdant Beverly Hills and Brentwood to deplore manmade dams and canals, and things, in the case of the latter, like Hetch Hetchy\u2019s Sierra water diversions from once salmon-rich rivers.<\/p>\n

So, perhaps the Bay Area richeral thinks: \u201cThe smelt and salmon need help. I don\u2019t need to wash my Audi. I can shower every other day. Presto! I will give the fish my Hetch Hetchy water. After all, I live a more unnatural existence, a more vulnerable existence, a more unsustainable existence than even the West Side almond grower. And while I can move to telecommute from Stockton or Modesto, the farmer cannot move his almond trees elsewhere. Do I really need that water-gulping Japanese maple or bougainvillea outside the library window? Therefore, I will back my convictions by returning to the river my own unnatural Sierra water, not someone else\u2019s.\u201d<\/p>\n

Or instead, perhaps the green richeral thinks: \u201cI am devoted to Mother Earth and if I live an unnatural existence based on vast water transfers and uses of electrical power to carve out a home in a naturally arid, barren landscape, I deserve exemption because I am on the right side, and I feel for nature. The crusaders of our green gods need earthly paradise time if they are going to free the polluted holy lands from the carbon infidels.\u201d<\/p>\n

From\u00a0the Google-only bus<\/a>\u00a0that bypasses the heralded \u201cpublic mass transit\u201d to pick up the richeral in his overpriced, Hetch Hetchy-fed San Francisco Victorian, to the tony private academies that richerals\u2019 kids attend, to the Mexican national help that cleans the floors and watches the toddlers before going home to the crammed garage in Redwood City, to the big money that always seems to find exemption from the redistributionist tentacles \u2014 such hypocrisy and self-righteousness sermonizing\u00a0have done more harm<\/a>\u00a0to the culture and social fabric of the U.S. than any ideology of the last half-century.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0PJ Media The new millennium has also given us a new American profile \u2014 the hip richeral. Richerals are, of course, well off. But they are even more cool and liberal. The two facts are not so much incompatible, as complementary. For some, big money allows three things: wealth\u2019s cocoon enables […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[1014,642,882,289,856,527,9],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-1PD","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":890,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/california-tuition-blues\/","url_meta":{"origin":7045,"position":0},"title":"California Tuition Blues","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 21, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In so-called March in March protests, thousands of students in California universities recently demonstrated in outrage over spiraling tuition costs. At both the California State University and University of California multi-campus systems, tuition hikes in recent years have far exceeded the national average.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "California"","block_context":{"text":"California","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/california\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":368,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/angry-reader-2\/","url_meta":{"origin":7045,"position":1},"title":"Angry Reader #2","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 5, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Private Papers Angry Reader #2\u00a0writes: Typical crank piece by the professor, full of crap that people who don\u2019t know California (but loathe it anyway) will eat up. Fact: \u201cLiberals\u201d did not let illegal aliens flood California. The federal government did, by not policing the border. Rich\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Angry Reader"","block_context":{"text":"Angry Reader","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/angry-reader\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8742,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/can-california-be-saved\/","url_meta":{"origin":7045,"position":2},"title":"Can California Be Saved?","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 22, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson\u00a0\/\/ National Review Online Crime is back up in California. Los Angeles reported a 20.6 percent increase in violent crimes over the first half of 2015 and nearly an 11 percent increase in property crimes. 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We are now in the midst of a fourth year of record low levels of snow and rain.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Popular Culture"","block_context":{"text":"Popular Culture","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/american-culture\/popular-culture\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"A warning buoy sits on the dry, cracked bed of Lake Mendocino near Ukiah, California. (AP Photo\/Rich Pedroncelli, File)","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/california_drought_3-16-1-500x293.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":12067,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/victor-davis-hanson-the-california-endangered-species-no-one-can-save-will-it-ever-return\/","url_meta":{"origin":7045,"position":5},"title":"Victor Davis Hanson: The California endangered species no one can save \u2013 Will it ever return?","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 20, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"Victor Davis Hanson \/\/ Fox News From 1967 to 2019, Republicans controlled the California governorship for 31 of 52 years. So why is there currently not a single statewide Republican\u00a0officeholder? California also has a Democratic governor and Democratic supermajorities in both houses of the state legislature. 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