A Walk in the Hamptons

 August 2020

It’s almost a cliché to note that inequality has risen to an obscene level in this country, but that remains a somewhat abstract concept to the many of us who rarely mix outside of our own caste. Of course, we all know about the gap between the rich and the poor, but if you’re somewhere in the middle, like me, you may not have a visceral feeling of just how obscene. I could give you statistics about the millions of people who fly first class from one vacation home to the next, or the millions more who can’t come up with the money to keep the heat on, but it wouldn’t have the impact that a few afternoons of strolling along the mansion-lined streets of eastern Long Island (which I recently did) or any number of the other haunts of the pampered class, can have in clarifying what American inequality really means.

I’m a middle class guy – richer than some, poorer that others – and in the Hamptons I’m still a middle class guy, but it feels different. In the city I’m part of a continuum, but out there there is no continuum. There are the barons and the peasants, and a middle class observer feels like a 5’8” outsider in the Swiftian world of the Lilliputians and Brobdingnagians.

On the back roads of East Hampton, enormous, and enormously elegant, leisure homes, hide behind high hedges, affording just enough of a peek to passers-by to allow for the desired sighs of admiration and envy. Hundreds of them – thousands of them. They are the playthings of people who are so far above me in wealth (and maybe of you too) that I can’t even fantasize about ever joining them. But there’s another caste of people in the Hamptons – people who are absolutely essential in making it what it is. I’m talking about the legions of laborers and gardeners, who work tirelessly to plant and maintain the flower beds and lawns and pristine landscaping that create an atmosphere of understated prosperity, and who are the people you mostly see on the roads and lawns, especially in this time of covid-induced timidity. Most of these guys toiling in the hot sun look like impoverished immigrants to me, and seem as far below my station as their employers are above it. The whole scene paints a stark picture of the feudal economy that our country is fast approaching. But what comes first to my mind is not so much England in the 13^th century, as the land of the Eloi and Morlocks in H.G. Well’s Time Machine, absent the unfortunate cannibalism. In that allegory, countless scurrying workers create a world of leisure and luxury for a population of sweet but ignorant layabouts. Of course, in that story the Morlocks are the bad guys, and the Eloi don’t understand the situation. In our world, it’s the opposite.

Which brings me to my theme - resentment. My father taught me not to count other people’s money, but it’s hard not to feel just a little jealous of all this wealth; and that jealousy slides over into resentment if I allow myself to contemplate the merit, or lack of it, in the American economic hierarchy. What did that 25 year old kid driving the Mercedes convertible do to deserve his status that the 4’11’ Guatemalan standing on a ladder to trim the 4 meter hedges neglected to do? Choose the right parents, most likely. But my resentment, however justified, is mild compared to the resentment felt by working class white people who, we are told, voted for Donald Trump and the Republicans en mass, and don’t feel the least bit sheepish about it, even now, as we enter a new depression. The received explanation is resentment – not of the upper crust; but of the blacks and immigrants who they see as their competition for their rightful place in the hierarchy, however low. Of course, in supporting the Republicans, they are supporting the worst of the baronial elitists – the very people who are unabashedly hastening our descent into feudalism. But we are naive if we think they have simply been bamboozled into thinking the Republicans are going to help them. They seem more than willing to accept their peasant fate in exchange for indulging their resentment of those they see as encroaching on their rightful status, and they are perfectly entitled to feel that way, but I maintain that their resentment is misplaced, and seriously so. If they insist on nurturing their resentments above all other concerns, then they should at least get it right. Resent the rich, who have effectively stolen the country, and who add to their booty daily by dominating the political system, rather than people who are marginally worse off, and whom you fear will become marginally better off.

I speculate that their failure to do so is attributable, at least in part, to their unfamiliarity with the gaping inequality that separates them from the true owners of the country - an unfamiliarity that applied equally to me, and probably to most of us, who haven’t had the chance to experience it on a personal level. I suspect that those undernourished hedge trimmers have a better feel for the wealth gap than I ever did. Those of us who want a more equitable economy have to recognize that these working class conservatives are our political enemies, and that their misplaced resentments stand in the way of our political goals. Maybe those resentments have been influenced by those who benefit from them; maybe not. But in any case, we shouldn’t be shy about trying to influence them ourselves, in the service of good, as we see it. So, in the spirit of the aforementioned Mr Swift, I have a modest proposal. Let’s encourage white, working class Trump voters to visit the Hamptons, or their nearest playground of the rich. Let them take in the whole width and breadth of these Shangri-Las. I’m guessing that walking among the miles and miles of beautiful estates will be more effective in stoking their resentment of the rich than simply knowing that people like the Koch brothers have 80 billion dollars, while they had to scrounge for the bus fare out to Riverhead. And I’m hoping that they will be affected the same way I was, and come away with a little more understanding of who their economic enemies are, and where they should be focusing their anger.