One of the weirdest things about the modern left isn’t how much the activist class despises people who succeed, it’s how many of those activists actually come from money themselves. Not that they want you to know it, they pretend it isn’t true while enjoying the freedoms that come from their family’s accomplishments.
The latest example of this comes from the New York Post, which exposed a guy named Carlos Maza as a hypocrite on Saturday.
Maza, who goes by the name “gay wonk,” is known for whining about people who’ve earned a lot of money and trying to “cancel” conservatives for making fun of him. The “wonk” part of his name must be used ironically since his resume exhibits nothing remotely close to an area of policy expertise.
After a stint at the fascistic Media Matters, Maza was hired by Vox to host a video series which amounted to not much more than him complaining about things he didn’t like. Unsurprisingly, it didn’t last and he struck out on his own.
How could an untalented person known for complaining and attacking people he disagrees with politically (and being a far-left nut, that’s almost everyone) afford to go it on their own? Family money, it seems.
The Post reported, “Through his clan, the millennial firebrand is connected to multiple Florida mega-mansions, a $7.1 million pad on the Upper West Side purchased under an LLC — and a yacht by luxury maker boat-maker Donzi.” Those damn rich people!
Maza’s mother, it turns out, is quite wealthy, worth millions, in fact.
According to the Post, Maza, once it became clear his secret was going to be reported by the paper, admitted his hypocrisy. “My mom and her fiance are very wealthy thanks to a software company they started together when I was a kid. As a result I’ve gotten to live a life of tremendous privilege,” Maza wrote.
Maybe this is why so many leftists rail against “privilege” all the time? If you work to pass the time rather than because you absolutely have to, I’d imagine that would eat at people inclined to feel guilty about such things. There’s a difference between walking a tightrope 100 feet in the air and a foot off the ground over a padded floor.
But Maza isn’t alone. Many of the so-called “leaders” of the millennial progressive movement are kids who come from money, everything from the child of a college professor, to a failed writer who comes from a family of successful writers, to one of the wealthiest families in the country. All of these “privileged children” advocate for the poor without any concept of what it’s like to be poor and no worry they’ll ever find themselves struggling to pay their bills.
Must be nice.
They’ve all made public fools of themselves, some more than others, but none seem bothered by it in the least. And none have unburdened themselves of their wealth or redistributed it in a “fair” way.
No, they prefer to advocate for the government to seize the earnings of others and do it for them (not to them since their income is nominal compared to their family’s wealth). Living by example, it seems, isn’t appealing.
How do so many rich kids end up making a career out of attacking the rich? You have to assume mommy and daddy issues, serious ones. But there’s more at play here than simply feeling neglected or not loved enough as a kid and it has to do with a four-letter word: earn.
People have no appreciation for things they don’t earn, and it has nothing to do with net worth.
Visit any public housing in the country and you’re likely to see dilapidated dumps with garbage laying around. When I was roofing in Detroit, there was an unmistakable difference between working on public housing buildings and privately-owned facilities or condos. It was pride, either in ownership or the sense of ownership carrying your own weight brings with it.
In public housing, it was not uncommon to see full trash bags tossed into the hallway, holes in the walls, rips in the carpet, you name it. Things people who owned their homes or earned the rent money to pay to live there did not do. There are exceptions to every rule, of course, and on both sides, but this general rule held for wherever we worked.
If you own or pay for your place, you will fix things right when they start to go bad – a burned out lightbulb or loose handrail are taken care of before they cause more problems. That’s not the case when no sense of having earned it is in play.
Rich kids don’t understand why everyone isn’t rich; why the government can’t just make everyone rich. That’s all they’ve ever known – a life insulated from many of the consequences of bad decisions. When your “plan B” in life is falling back on your family’s fortune you will never understand what it’s like to have no plan B.
That doesn’t stop these arrogant leftists from insisting they know how best to fix everyone else’s lives. But having read “Angela’s Ashes” doesn’t give you expertise on poverty, just as declaring yourself a wonk doesn’t make you one.
This is the new left: children of wealthy people riddled with guilt over that wealth but only willing to “share” the earnings of others who think they know how everyone else should live. If that sounds like they’re awful people that’s only because so many of them are.
Derek Hunter is the host of a free daily podcast (subscribe!), host of a daily radio show on WCBM in Maryland, and author of the book, Outrage, INC., which exposes how liberals use fear and hatred to manipulate the masses. Follow him on Twitter at @DerekAHunter