By your own standardsyou are threatened by liberalism and have to use words like "commie". Please explain why you are thretened by liberals and then maybe I'll try to ignore your insults and actually answer your question.
If you define personal success as the "John Paulson" way---earning billions of dollars by helping Goldman design shoddy financial products, then betting against them, and ultimately reaping the GDP of a small country by making sure that Goldman peddled this crap designed to fail (in effect, the equivalent of selling cars primed to explode on contact, and then taking life insurance on the drivers), then it's not so hard to see where that attitude comes from.
You disappoint me. While I normally completely disagree with you I have almost always enjoyed reading your posts for your point of view. I'm sorry that you do not have enough confidence in yourself to be able to achieve the American Dream and have to insult people who have. Your personal attack shows that you have almost no rational thoughts on the subject and must degrade yourself into the lowest form of conflict. As for the penis waving that you have now implemented for the size of your personal income, I congratulate you on your earnings. You may, in fact, earn more than I do. If so, I hope to work as hard as you have to get into that 1%.
It is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists’ aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State. Ayn Rand “Screen Guide for Americans,” Plain Talk, Nov. 1947, 39
Dude, wake up an smell the '60's, the commie scare is over. (sorry Thad , didn't see you googled the quote .... I figured McCarthy)
Oh please, lambchop, you're the one going on about how you drive a Dodge Stratus and thus have realized the American dream - if you didn't intend for yourself to be used as a measuring stick, you probably should have left that part out. You have very obviously missed the point however (detection of subtext will help you cross that magical 300k per year goal, remember that one..) - when you do make it to those lofty heights, you can sit around and pretend like you're at the top of the heap and have attained THE AMERICAN DREAM, much like former pro wrestling legend Dusty Rhodes....but unfortuantley, you'll discover that being an upper-middle class schlub doesn't buy you too much else other than an extra few cable channels.
Extra channels, steak on Saturday night, grassy yard... WTF you want out of life? That's all anybody wants Donald. It'd be nice not to have to eat cat food and die in the State ward later on, maybe have some nice pearly choppers.