For Sam Bankman-Fried

Stuart Monk hated family gatherings. Mostly because he couldn’t stand having to visit his brother.

Stuart’s younger brother, Sam, had gotten rich. Dirty, rotten, filthy stinking rich.

Not that Stuart was a slouch. He’d gone to Yale, had gone on to become a prominent figure at a conservative think tank. He’d even appeared on Fox News and wrote an op-ed piece for the Washington Times. But all that was dwarfed by his little brother, Sam, who, like their parents, was way on the other end of the political spectrum.

Of course part of Stuart was proud of his brother. How could he not be? Aside from politics, he rooted for his family.

In all honesty, however, it’d shocked him to see his brother become so wealthy. His little brother had been something of a loser, had mostly stayed ensconced in their parents’ basement, sometimes working part-time, menial jobs but otherwise just playing video games, smoking pot and doing the stereotypical stoner thing.

But then Sam got lucky. Astronomically lucky. Lottery winner lucky. He’d been in a gaming chatroom and a buddy he’d met online had suggested Sam buy “Bitcoin,” promising that the fledgling online currency was going to be huge.

Sam, admittedly high as the clouds in the sky, logged into his PayPal, bought $1000 worth of Bitcoin.

That $1000 initial investment eventually ballooned into 10 million dollars.

While money changes many for the worse, and heart-wrenching stories abound about lottery winners who lost everything, this dramatic shift in fortune actually changed Sam for the better. Radically so.

Suddenly Sam had confidence. He bought nice clothes and met new people. He reinvested and started a small private equity company quickly acquired by a larger private equity firm.

He got out of his parents’ basement and bought a series of luxury condos, all of which he flipped at a profit. Then Sam bought his 16-bedroom estate overlooking the sea.

For the first time in his young life, too, Sam was dating regularly. Very regularly. He had striking beauties, aspiring models and actresses throwing themselves at him. His sprawling estate often looking like a modern-day Playboy mansion.

However, despite throwing parties to rival Puff Daddy’s, and shocking to anyone who’d known him as a teen, Sam had gone sober. And not “California” sober, either, but real sober. Stone-cold sober. Marc Maron sober ... Wouldn’t even have a puff off a spliff or a sip of wine.

Money had become Sam’s new drug. And he’d become a prolific investor, too, maintaining his leadership role at his private equity firm and profiting immensely in green tech and progressive, civic-minded start-ups.

Stuart, after overcoming his initial shock and disbelief of his brother’s radical transformation, was eventually elated that he might have a potential ally. And a big potential donor.

Many liberals discovered themselves swinging far to the other end of the political spectrum once they got rich- once they saw how much lower their taxes could be under Republican administrations.

But not Sam. To Stuart’s utter shock and consternation, Sam had gone the activist investor route and became more liberal, donated exclusively to leftist charities, and sent sardonic replies filled with goofy emojis to Stuart’s requests for donations to his conservative think tank and causes.

The situation had Stuart increasingly annoyed. Here were free market, laissez-faire, Milton Friedman-esque economics making his brother a multi-millionaire, and yet his brother was shoveling buckets of cash to these socialist, communist causes. Causes that would only cause taxes to increase, all the while grabbing away guns and infringing upon personal freedoms.

Stuart just couldn’t understand it, couldn’t understand how Sam, with all that newly acquired wealth, could stay a liberal.

Stuart, for the life of him, sincerely couldn’t understand why anyone (aside from those seeking welfare handouts) would ever want to be liberal. Particularly anyone rich.

Why? Just why? It’d keep Stuart up at night, twisting and turning...

Why would his brother throw money at crybaby, crybully leftist foundations, like charities set up to feed the homeless? As if the homeless couldn’t feed themselves? Stuart figured the homeless were just lazy and that they wanted to be homeless. Why hand those lazy, stinky slobs free money? Why reward them for being blights upon society, pissing and shitting in the streets like stray dogs?