I’ve been working on a piece on the misconception (and invisibility) of wealth — and how it connects to, well, a whole lot of things, but especially the anger over student loan cancellation. It’s one of those pieces that flows out of you when you sit down to write, and you realize just how much your brain has been working on it in the background — for days, for weeks, for years. I was frantically trying to get it ready for tomorrow, but I realized, today, that one of the benefits of running my own newsletter is that in moments like this, I can trust in reader patience. So I’m going to keep working on this week, making it less sprawling and more pointed, fact-checking stats and copy-editing and making sure all the links work, and it’ll come to you next week.
I am SO pumped for whatever you end up writing about re: misconceptions (and invisibility) or wealth. I am especially interested in the invisible stuff -- I've done a fair bit of moving (personally, geographically) around and between class strata, and I'm always struck by the ways in which wealthy folks don't really recognize the more sociological, structural, historical ways that wealth buoys them up.
I am looking forward to this article, Anne. I have to say, reading readers’ wealth stories on the previous thread brought up a fair amount of class envy in me. I saw a lot of stories about, to me, significant generational inheritance and help, with people doing a fair bit of justification or shoulder-shrugging around the structural privileges that engendered it AND the ways in which wealth for one family means in some way exploitation or injustice for other families. We are interconnected. The pension your grandad got or the increasing equity of your family home is due to structural forces and opportunities that were not available to others. I hope the “misconceptions and invisibility of wealth” you mention in your post include some of that.
Sometimes when I try to follow the weekly links they won't be fully readable. This week's Galaxy Brain article seems interesting but is also telling me I'm not an Atlantic subscriber (true, can't afford it unfortunately).
Asking here in case I'm wrong and just need to do something to fix it, because the community is awesome and likely to tell me what.
"If you want to be part of those conversations, even as a loyal lurker"
Gee, get a rehash of Covid and a bunch of fatigue for a couple of months and you're a lurker. Oh, the wages of 'reply in five seconds or this conversation never happened' culture. 🤫
"I’ve been working on a piece on the misconception (and invisibility) of wealth — and how it connects to, well, a whole lot of things, but especially the anger over student loan cancellation. "
The anger about student loans is very obviously the rage of the {cough} 'genetically' {cough cough cough hack} 'superior' {HACK hack hack hack} 'High SAT Scorer' {hack hack hack BLERCH} crowd that used to be (in the 80's and 90's) the 'proud MENSA member' crowd, and it turns out their success owes nothing to coming from an upper-class family who lived in a real nice neighbourhood and got their spratling into a good school and is entirely due to their uh, superior genes. (Bonus: Always nice to here loud and proud super-Christian guys who never seem to have heard the phrase 'pride goeth before fall' - funny that.) The uh, perfect, yeah, perfect example is one Donald John Trump who routinely likes to brag he's a Big Big Money Boy entirely dues to his superior genetics and nothing to do whatsoever to his daddy getting him into Wharton and also maybe giving him a billion or two cumulative. (Spoiler: which he then lost; also it's very noticeable that he seems to be a complete idiot.) Obviously that is not-so-invisible wealth. At any rate it turns out the 'genetically superior' are very unhappy at the prospect of the hoi polloi catching a break that's different from all the breaks they received - the less well-off aren't supposed to get breaks. Real inbred chinless wonder British aristocracy vibes going on there. Which is why they are working so very hard to talk about all their big gloppy faux tears about how horrible it all is for poor black people and how those folks will just have to vote Republican now to stick it the younger ladies with unusually-dyed hair.
And from your Friday thread, a late answer: "And, alternately, what has lack of familial wealth made really fucking difficult in your life?"
My grandmother committed a bunch of sins that would getting more-or-less cast out from the uber-wealthy family: first, sin #1, she fell in love with a Polish sailor when she was 16 (that would be the year 1940), so they sent her off to school (she graduated from college with a masters in BioChem), then she married my grandfather, a med student from Texas (sin #2), and then she moved back to Texas with him (sin #3) for his residency, and then my grandfather found the trophy nurse of his dreams (sin #4), and divorced her (sin #5), so she was single mother with 3 kids who uh, dated men (sin #6), and otherwise was quite poor (sin #6), and then she took to drinking way too much to cope (sin #7) and then we got to her worst sin which is she married a black man after Virginia v. Loving, and well, she might as well have jumped into hell right then and there. My mother and her sibling grew up quite poor, which certainly had an impact on my life. (On the other hand, Lord, what a bunch of assholes; best not to be associated with those sort of people, right?)
I could make a list of the difference between the experience of my various cousins, and the whole growing up poor experience but it's a quite a bummer actually.
I am SO pumped for whatever you end up writing about re: misconceptions (and invisibility) or wealth. I am especially interested in the invisible stuff -- I've done a fair bit of moving (personally, geographically) around and between class strata, and I'm always struck by the ways in which wealthy folks don't really recognize the more sociological, structural, historical ways that wealth buoys them up.
I am looking forward to this article, Anne. I have to say, reading readers’ wealth stories on the previous thread brought up a fair amount of class envy in me. I saw a lot of stories about, to me, significant generational inheritance and help, with people doing a fair bit of justification or shoulder-shrugging around the structural privileges that engendered it AND the ways in which wealth for one family means in some way exploitation or injustice for other families. We are interconnected. The pension your grandad got or the increasing equity of your family home is due to structural forces and opportunities that were not available to others. I hope the “misconceptions and invisibility of wealth” you mention in your post include some of that.
Sometimes when I try to follow the weekly links they won't be fully readable. This week's Galaxy Brain article seems interesting but is also telling me I'm not an Atlantic subscriber (true, can't afford it unfortunately).
Asking here in case I'm wrong and just need to do something to fix it, because the community is awesome and likely to tell me what.
"If you want to be part of those conversations, even as a loyal lurker"
Gee, get a rehash of Covid and a bunch of fatigue for a couple of months and you're a lurker. Oh, the wages of 'reply in five seconds or this conversation never happened' culture. 🤫
"I’ve been working on a piece on the misconception (and invisibility) of wealth — and how it connects to, well, a whole lot of things, but especially the anger over student loan cancellation. "
The anger about student loans is very obviously the rage of the {cough} 'genetically' {cough cough cough hack} 'superior' {HACK hack hack hack} 'High SAT Scorer' {hack hack hack BLERCH} crowd that used to be (in the 80's and 90's) the 'proud MENSA member' crowd, and it turns out their success owes nothing to coming from an upper-class family who lived in a real nice neighbourhood and got their spratling into a good school and is entirely due to their uh, superior genes. (Bonus: Always nice to here loud and proud super-Christian guys who never seem to have heard the phrase 'pride goeth before fall' - funny that.) The uh, perfect, yeah, perfect example is one Donald John Trump who routinely likes to brag he's a Big Big Money Boy entirely dues to his superior genetics and nothing to do whatsoever to his daddy getting him into Wharton and also maybe giving him a billion or two cumulative. (Spoiler: which he then lost; also it's very noticeable that he seems to be a complete idiot.) Obviously that is not-so-invisible wealth. At any rate it turns out the 'genetically superior' are very unhappy at the prospect of the hoi polloi catching a break that's different from all the breaks they received - the less well-off aren't supposed to get breaks. Real inbred chinless wonder British aristocracy vibes going on there. Which is why they are working so very hard to talk about all their big gloppy faux tears about how horrible it all is for poor black people and how those folks will just have to vote Republican now to stick it the younger ladies with unusually-dyed hair.
And from your Friday thread, a late answer: "And, alternately, what has lack of familial wealth made really fucking difficult in your life?"
My grandmother committed a bunch of sins that would getting more-or-less cast out from the uber-wealthy family: first, sin #1, she fell in love with a Polish sailor when she was 16 (that would be the year 1940), so they sent her off to school (she graduated from college with a masters in BioChem), then she married my grandfather, a med student from Texas (sin #2), and then she moved back to Texas with him (sin #3) for his residency, and then my grandfather found the trophy nurse of his dreams (sin #4), and divorced her (sin #5), so she was single mother with 3 kids who uh, dated men (sin #6), and otherwise was quite poor (sin #6), and then she took to drinking way too much to cope (sin #7) and then we got to her worst sin which is she married a black man after Virginia v. Loving, and well, she might as well have jumped into hell right then and there. My mother and her sibling grew up quite poor, which certainly had an impact on my life. (On the other hand, Lord, what a bunch of assholes; best not to be associated with those sort of people, right?)
I could make a list of the difference between the experience of my various cousins, and the whole growing up poor experience but it's a quite a bummer actually.
elm
clowns everywhere
Appreciate you being transparent and taking the time you need. Thanks Anne Helen!
“…when you sit down to right, and…”
Yes, ‘write’ away Anne and ‘right’ all our wrongs!
TY! Happy Sunday.
Is there a way to view links through the Substack app?