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Originally Posted by !@#$%!
yep. americans are like the waiters as described by orwell in "down and out in paris and london". he said that waiters were terrible prospects for the communist party because they didn't hate the rich, instead they looked at the fatcats they were feeding and thought "that could be me". so this is the reason why the rich aren't hated in america, they are even considered virtuous, and that's also why an unlicensed plumber can be a symbol of the self-appointed "middle class".
anyway... 1 month 16 days and 7+ hours until bush is gone!!!!
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It's an interesting issue that seems increasingly evident across a number of countries, not just the US. Britain went through it's own revolution in learning to love the wealthy in the 'that could be me' fashion you describe with Thatcher. And of course the dissolving of the Soviet Bloc at the end of the 80s hardly did the credibility of Socialism much good, at least in terms of mainstream popularity. And yet I do think there's a kind of grass-roots suspicion of wealth, and in particular the wealthy, that still remains within a broad - if declining - sweep of European society that appears far greater than what I've experienced within the US. I've yet to really work out why this is though.