The Rich Are Very Different

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different. ”

F. Scott Fitzgerald

Fitzgerald wrote this almost a century ago, and yet it is still true today. What I think has changed,though, is that the old money rich are more aware, more cognizant (although, admittedly, they are definitely not open to anyone in a class below them breaking into their echelon of society.) The new money, or "nouveau riche" try to emulate the old money rich, while those from old money just scoff.

And, yet, those of the new money class scoff at anyone from the middle class. This is what is currently a part of the current election (although the middle class refuse to see it; they refuse to see how they are just a vote to a current republican candidate, who will be long forgotten once he is elected.)

And me, from the middle class up bringing, with parents who wanted to upgrade our status? Well, it ain't so easy, I have learned, to date someone who is upper middle class and, who, as Fitzgerald notes, thinks he is better than me, because he wants more, as he is used to more. Because, unlike his last few wives (who, I am guessing, caught on to him) I do not have that six figure salary that he so desires, which could bring him so many shiny, pretty things. And reading back to emails from him from last week, I have realized that this was his focus all along.