Honestly it took me a long time to turn 'anger' into 'acceptance' and then into 'context' regarding this subject. I was raised in a very frugal home that spent good money on "good" things (ex: education, learning experiences, an Encyclopedia Set for Christmas one year), avoided really buying in to materialism (ex: driving older, paid off cars) and I appreciate how different this was from apparently a great deal of my peers. It's unfortunate. If I could go back and tell my parents to cool it with the "success is earned here in the US more often than not" line of motivation and be a little more realistic about power dynamics, I wouldn't have spent as much time trying to figure it out, to see things as they kind of sort of work. I'm not angry anymore, per se, just becoming a grumpy old man, as one is wont to do.