How not to hate the rich

I said there are pitfalls in hating the rich, but I didn't talk much about them. Shame on me! I'm not the kind of person anyone cares to debate with, so now I will pretend to be my own ideological opponent...

First of all, Jesus was probably not an evil man. He was not a living God, not born of a virgin mother, didn't have twelve disciples (maybe more or less), didn't rise up from the dead, the pope is not his representative on Earth, et cetera. This stuff was made up by people who knew about the prevailing religious superstitions of neighboring Egypt. That place was full of Jews even after the Exodus (I guess they thought it was mission failed), including a famous classical philosopher called Philo. It is of course disturbing that none of them cared to say "Come on guys, that was Horus!", or maybe it's just that nobody listened to them, but that's quite a different story. It doesn't change the fact that Jesus was cool. He said quite a lot of great things which Horus seemed to forget.

The phrase most often attributed to Jesus's allegedly obsessive denial of violence - we are talking about that Jesus who was arrested after doing a rampage in a church - is "Love thy neighbour". Yes, that's what he said. You've got a neighbour, no matter where he comes from, you should approach him with a friendly attitude. Or it might just as well be a man on the street. Or a Slovak. This is what Jesus told us to do...

(Hungarians usually hate the Slovaks for extremely self-important reasons.)

But he didn't tell us not to hate the rich. If you find a rich man you don't know anything about, you must approach him with good faith, because he might actually hate his own class even more than you do. (There are many examples!) But it doesn't mean you can't hate all the other rich people which are not him. You can and you have to! That's what Jesus wants you to do. He wants you to hate the rich. He wants you to feel a general contempt and disdain towards rich people. If you don't feel that way, you're not a Christian.

I already told you about one way not to hate the rich: as isolated individuals. This is the most important way not to hate them. You must hate them as one big collective, because that's what they are. They are not nearly as different from each other as they claim to be! No, they are not. They are all too similar.

Jesus wants you to feel some kind of compassion with the rich, for it is "easier for a camel to cross the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven". This is what Jesus said. But this compassion must be a condescending one. You must condescend to the rich in the same way as the self-important rich guy condescends to the poor. You must pity him for being such a disgusting miserable asshole.

After all, you must not hate the rich as an enemy of yours. That kind of hate is a very respectful one. This is the second way not to hate the rich. You must not respect them, for they do not deserve the tiniest bit of respect from anyone. They are all hopeless, pathetically miserable pieces of shit. No exception. You must be deeply and viscerally disgusted of them, like you are disgusted of a binge-drinking homeless guy saturated with the smell of piss.

All right, here comes my ideological opponent: class war alone might not reach the betterment of the world. This might be the bitter truth I'm not so willing to face. There are many places with overt class warfare barely getting by. Rich people live in segregated and heavily guarded communities, and they only move out of these places with armored trucks and legions of bodyguards. They must live their whole lives in fear because everybody hates them. The police is not there to protect them, mostly because there is no police. Because of all the hate they receive, rich people also hate everyone back, so they are not that willing to pay any taxes.

Like I said, you must not hate the rich as an enemy of yours. You must always condescend to them. A rich person is the shittiest thing to be. It really sucks.

On the other hand, if rich people are totally respected and loved and idolized, like they are the US, is that any better? If you are American, chances are that you're totally in love with the rich, and the rich are also totally in love with you in return. Well, at least as long as you're not in the opposite camp of the political dogfight, but sometimes they love you even if you are. Ain't that just wonderful?

Well, errr... No! No, it's not wonderful! The United States have by far the highest degree of income inequality compared to their GDP per capita in the whole fucking world. The life expectancy of poor people is the same as that in Bangladesh. Illiteracy is widespread, and as long as you're not a member of the upper class, you can just forget about your dream of going to college. Of course you can apply for a student loan, but since you won't be able to pay it back, I would strongly discourage you from doing so. This is America! This is what the US are! Compared to their GDP, they are by lightyears the biggest shithole on the face of this lovely planet.

So much for their splendid class peace...