My parents were raised during the Great Depression. My mother was the daughter of Pennsylvania subsistence farmers, my father the only child of a Maine motorcycle cop and his wife. They tried to instill in me and my brothers a strong belief in education, hard work and fulfilling one’s obligations — to family, an employer and one’s country. Oh, and there was at least one other trait they passed along. They were deeply suspicious of rich people. They wanted their sons to get a quality education and then pursue their dreams and, hopefully, make a positive impact on the world, not to worship the almighty dollar.

What would Mom and Dad make of this year’s presidential race? Well, it’s a given that they’d be horrified. Aren’t we all? They grew up listening to Franklin Delano Roosevelt on the radio telling Americans that “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Young people today can turn on the TV and watch the Republican nominee for president proclaim that his opponents are “radical left” and “heavy into the transgender world,” whatever that means. Donald Trump said those things and more at his unhinged news conference last Thursday at his Florida resort. Sure, FDR was rich, too, but at least his chats were sane and fireside, not at an opulent Palm Beach resort with a club boasting a $200,000 initiation fee.

I fear I’ve inherited a bit of my parents’ sensibility. At least that explains why I was so glad to read that the newest member of the Democratic ticket, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, is decidedly not a member of the 1%. Indeed, financial disclosure forms show he and his wife, Gwen, earn only about $166,000 a year with the bulk coming from the governor’s rather modest salary of $115,485. In much of the country that would make them upper middle class. They don’t own any stocks. They currently don’t own a home. Compare that to his GOP counterpart, U.S. Sen. J.D. Vance who, despite humble origins, is estimated to have financial assets in the eight-figure vicinity, including six-figure residuals from his bestselling book and movie, “Hillbilly Elegy.” His $174,000 annual salary as a senator alone puts him ahead of the Walz family.

And look at the top of the tickets. Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff have reported assets of $8 million, including a home in Brentwood worth $4.4 million. Now, that’s pretty good, but California real estate prices run high. Your idea of a $4.4 million home is probably grander than one in the Golden State. In any event, Donald and Melania Trump are the ones sitting highest on the hog. While Trump’s wealth has often been in dispute, we would simply fall back on Bloomberg’s estimate (if only because we think a billionaire media type should be the one passing judgment on a billionaire real estate type): $6.5 billion. I can just hear Mom and Dad rolling over in their graves. Or perhaps that’s just the sound of “tut-tutting.”

My parents weren’t communists, they were just suspicious of excess. They certainly believed in capitalism. They worked long and hard for what they earned, much of it in civil service which is not highly paid. They volunteered for community and charitable work in their free time (including as election judges). But one thing they never did, even in their more financially comfortable years, was spend wastefully or to excess. No fancy clothes or jewelry, no lavish furnishings or artwork. Their biggest indulgence was a one-bedroom condo they bought near the beach. Tim and Gwen Walz could have been neighbors had they lived in Maryland.

As F. Scott Fitzgerald once observed, the rich are different from you and me: “They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different.” As much as I hear about Vance being from humble origins or Trump being connected to the blue collar, I see men who went to Wharton and Yale, who fly private, who buy bitcoin and wear tailored suits. They feed us what they think we want to hear — about immigrants taking our jobs, about the LGBTQ+ taking our identities, about the poor taking advantage of us.

Mom and Dad would not have approved.

Peter Jensen is an editorial writer at The Baltimore Sun; he can be reached at pejensen@baltsun.com.