Well now that I have concluded a 10 day meander through the films nominated for the Best Picture, it is time to meander back to the issue I was dealing with. That was the startling fact that very wealthy people have been buying up condo units in an old Titam missile silo near Salina Kansas which Chris and drove near to on our trip to Arizona. I have been more than puzzled by this extraordinary phenomenon. I have mused that I thought the fears of the wealthy had a connection to guilt.  Guilt breeds paranoia. Evan Onos wrote a fascinating article about this phenomenon in the New Yorker magazine which I have been drawing on.

While most captains of industry are unable to see anything that is not in their own immediate advantage, a few, a rare few, do recognize that there are vulnerable people out there who have been screwed by the system and many of them may seeks “solutions” to their problems that may involve insurrection, as far-fetched as that may sound to some of us. As Robert H. Dugger, a lobbyist for the financial industry told Evan Osnos, “Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution.”  When you hear that you must conclude the guilt is oozing out of control.

Many of the über  rich think, as the aristocracy of France did before the French Revolution that the poor can eat grass. Others fear revolution that might upset their privileges. Dugger said,  “People know the only real answer is, fix the problem,” he said. “It’s a reason most of them give a lot of money to good causes.” At the same time, though, they invest in the mechanics of escape.” Investing in justice is just something that does not come naturally to the super-rich. It is the last thing they think of. Escape is something that leaps to mind.

Elite fantasies of escape are often exactly that–fantasies. There are all kinds of logistical problems. Many of the wealthy cannot see these problems. They assume there must be a way for them to escape. Can’t money solve all problems? After all they deserve that escape. They have earned that right to escape. So at least they think. Why do they have all this money if they can’t use it to escape. That is the only form of justice many of them understand.

Dugger told Osnos about a lavish dinner in New York City after 9/11 and the bursting of the dot-com bubble, “A group of centi-millionaires and a couple of billionaires were working through end-of-America scenarios and talking about what they’d do. Most said they’ll fire up their planes and take their families to Western ranches or homes in other countries.” One of the guests was skeptical, Dugger said. “He leaned forward and asked, ‘Are you taking your pilot’s family, too? And what about the maintenance guys? If revolutionaries are kicking in doors, how many of the people in your life will you have to take with you?’ The questioning continued. In the end, most agreed they couldn’t run.” You can run, but you can’t hide.

It is also interesting how the privileged classes have selected things to worry about.  As Osnos reported,

“Élite anxiety cuts across political lines. Even financiers who supported Trump for President, hoping that he would cut taxes and regulations, have been unnerved at the ways his insurgent campaign seems to have hastened a collapse of respect for established institutions. Dugger said, “The media is under attack now. They wonder, Is the court system next? Do we go from ‘fake news’ to ‘fake evidence’? For people whose existence depends on enforceable contracts, this is life or death.”

All of this shows that guilt can lead to paranoia.  If you fear that the tables will turn, no ideas are too far out there.