July 21, 2025

People of privilege will always risk their complete destruction rather than surrender any material part of their advantage.

John Kenneth Galbraith (1908–2006), Canadian-born American economist, The Affluent Society (1958), Seldes p.154

Where do you position yourself on the spectrum that runs from the highly-privileged to those not even getting by? Did you get where you are on your own, or did someone or some situation give you a leg up—or down?

Attacks on privilege generate heated opposition commensurate with the degree to which the privilege enjoyed defines the enjoyer. Take away the privilege, and, in some cases, you destroy all of the holder of some privilege any sense of self-worth. Opposition to the privileged is often decried as class warfare. But is it not ironic—and a tad unfair, that one side can make war on the other, and the others get called “communists!”