The Internet is My Religion
by Jim Gilliam
Gilliam gets, vividly, that none of us can pull ourselves up by our bootstraps. He doesn't quite make the connection that, close as he and his family came to disaster over and over, the padding that caught him wasn't just altruism but also wealth, whiteness, maleness, and heterosexuality.
The story about his sister being victimized by a bail scam was particularly sickening. Gilliam somehow misses that people without a wealthy sibling willing to swoop in and save them would be trapped forever. He just gets them out of town as quickly as money can buy, he doesn't try to fight the scammer or look into the other victims. (To be fair, he still identified as a conservative at the time---it was probably already a shock to his system.) And then his sister quit cold turkey, unlike other unworthy addicts... no, Gilliam hasn't quite let go of the fantasy of deserved success. It's hard to do, especially if it has worked so well for you.