Class Warfare?

I keep hearing all this "class warfare" stuff, that the President and Democrats are pitting the very rich against the not-so-rich for political purposes.  (It certainly can't be ideological, looking at the lavish lifestyles of the President and many Democrats, can it?  It's the other "very rich" guys....)  I've thought this was a dubious charge, but am not so sure now.

I find quite a few people who have very, very comfortable lives--they have the nicest homes, the biggest televisions, several cars, vacations several times a year, etc.--complaining about "the rich don't pay their fair share."  That strikes me as odd that people who have these very, very comfortable lives (Hey, they have more than I do and I can't see my way to complain about my financial status.)can complain about someone who has more.  Is it envy?  If so, isn't that "greed?"  Have they bought into the "class warfare" garbage?  Inevitably, their arguments against the wealthy are, "But they have more than I do."  Yeah, so what?

If so, I recall the fall of the Roman Republic, not the Empire, but the Republic.  This was the time of Julius Caesar, who was involved in the middle of three civil wars fought in a little over a century just before Christ.  The Roman Republic was a remarkable place, with Romans and even noncitizens enjoying a greater degree of freedom and government participation than any other people before and quite a few later, at least until the 19th Century.  Rome was not a direct democracy and had flaws.  Sure, the wealthy (aristocrats) wielded more influence than the plebeians (lower classes).  But do you think I have the same pull that, say, George Soros has??????  But compared to other peoples of that time and later, the Romans of the Republic had it pretty good, financially and politically.  What brought all this good stuff down, leading to the Empire?  It was, as much as anything, class warfare.  The not-so-wealthy, although they had pretty darn good lives, were convinced they were getting short-changed by the wealthy.  The parallels with today are pretty remarkable.  Demagogues then and now were and are convincing people of that.  I'm not sure if the Roman trouble-makers convinced the masses that they "deserved" more, but the rabble-rousers of today seem to be making a great deal of headway in that direction.  "Deserve."  Now there's a word worthy of discussion, especially within the context of "earn."  But, there are things to do and books to read (The Boxcar Children with the Codester).