The franchise owner running the McDonald's near your house might be a millionaire. The prison warden making life miserable for unjustly incarcerated individuals might be a millionaire. Judges, lawyers, finance bros, hedge fund managers — millionaires.
Nancy Pelosi isn't a billionaire. Neither is Tucker Carlson. However both of them are millionaires who enable the transfer of wealth to oligarchs and robber barons through manipulating the public in their own ways.
Bernie Sanders is a millionaire. So is social media darling Dan Price. We love to show other people the words they use, like “Look at what the nice millionaire said today. What a swell guy.”
It's a group of millionaires throwing gold coins at one another, shouting “Ow! This hurts! Trust us, you don't want any of this! OUCH! The medical bills, which you cannot afford, will be tremendous! OW! This gold really hurts!” while praying we don't notice they've been throwing larger and larger coins over the years. Little golden coins turned into golden nuggets, then nuggets turned into rocks, rocks into boulders, boulders into mountains. They're throwing around continent sized masses of gold these days, wondering why the water's splashing up so high. “This is inconvenient,” they say, “must be all of the pedestrians and their plastic straws.” they finish, before beginning their daily transfusion of Little Boy Blood to help them thwart death an extra 45 minutes.
Showing other people what “mean” or even “kind” rich people have said is free advertising for their brand.
The more hoi polloi watching their antics, the more likelihood of there being a rube in the group willing to buy their merchandise and/or pay for tickets to see them speak in person. All you have to do is make a million dollars once, then you can coast the rest of your life by selling $250 tickets to your speaking event “How I Earned One Million Dollars”. Additionally hoping that people buy the 84-page book you wrote entitled “Gettin' It” which sells for $29.99 at these events. The book itself has nothing to do with money at all, but is plastic wrapped so you can't find that out until after you've made the purchase. (No refunds, by the way)
The news will earnestly broadcast messages like “Listen, millionaires aren't the problem here,” hoping we'll ignore that the person issuing the statement is, themselves, a millionaire, oftentimes employed by a billionaire. The most damaging part of these stupid messages is that they can communicate to all of us at once, but it takes a very concerted effort for us, the receiving audience, to form any semblance of a cohesive opinion of the material presented. We don't get to respond or chat amongst ourselves for even a brief moment before MORE NEWS is thrown in our faces like a fucking sneak attack. SURPRISE! Pandas are doing sex! SURPRISE! Russia is fighting someone! SURPRISE! Mother's Day is right around the corner!!
Information is pushed out rapidly and with precise diversity in tempo, timbre, and topic that it becomes nearly impossible to remember all of the issues you wanted to question or weren't certain about. You'll remember bullshit tangential “facts” about the news, like: Russia was chilly in the morning because some white lady with blonde hair was calmly and casually chatting about The President of Russia, then in the afternoon it started to get heated up because a bloated older white guy seemed kind of frustrated at Volodomir Putainovich (intentional on their end because if the weather cools down again they don't want you to point out they called Vlad Putin a jerk), and later (shortly after dinner, when you're starting to feel sleepy) you'll know that it's time to go to war with Russia because someone's yelling at the camera about PUTIN this and PUTIN that. You don't remember what anyone was talking about or why they were talking in the first place. The news these days gets transferred into our smoothened brains as if it's a weather forecast.
[have you ever woken someone with bi-polar disorder up, with an exciting offer they weren't expecting? they will be at 100mph in 2 seconds and ready to beat you out the door to begin the adventure. the news preys on these people because they are the Paul Reveres of social media. free advertising by those of us who can't control our impulses and don't think of social ramifications until after we face consequences.]
Millionaires are temporarily embarrassed billionaires. That's all. They're not our friends. I'm not saying they're enemies, but they are not our friends.
Edit: The post goes a little off-topic from my initial point