Introduction
“There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class,
that’s making war, and we’re winning.”
Billionaire Robber, Warren Buffet.
“I call you my base: the Haves and the Have Mores” George W. Bush
Since this country was founded, it has been governed, or controlled by the Robber Class. Some people call our “Lords,” the Ruling Class, the Oligarchy, the Kleptocracy, or Plutocracy. Some call our system Cronyism, a Democratic Tyranny, Soft-core Fascist State, or if you are a member of the Robber Class or Blinded Robbed Class, you call it a Democracy, or Republic.
Let me define the terms Robber Class and Robbed Class for the purposes of this Internet Booklet: The Robber Class consists of The Wealthy Ones (not all wealthy people are robbers!) of our society who have earned this wealth off the hard labor of others: not by doing an honest days work or being fair and just with their talents or employees, but by stealing the fruits of our labor through outright theft or economic or violent exploitation.
Almost everyone who is in one of the Three Branches (that are being usurped into one powerful Executive Branch) of our government, AND most people who call Finance, his/her business belongs in the Robber Class. Most definitely the Captains of the War Machine have top spots in the Robber Class: they even rob lives from us to gain their wealth!
Now, the rest of us (more or less) belong in the Robbed Class. We are the ones who send our children to die in the Robber Class Wars. We are the ones who lose our jobs and homes when the economic plans of the Robber Class go awry (or exactly as they have planned).
Our children join the military because, for we in the Robbed Class, Education is not a Right…it is prohibitively expensive and only a Privilege to the children of the Robber Class. Not only is Education a Privilege, but so are jobs that pay a living wage, not a minimum wage for We the Robbed!
You know who you are! If you have ever had to choose between medicine for a child or paying a bill, you belong in the Robbed Class. If you’ve ever born the ire of an employer because you’ve had to miss work because a child was ill, not because Nanny had the day off, then you are in the Robbed Class.
If you are living paycheck to skimpy paycheck while Wall Street Billionaires are getting more of your hard earned money to pay for their mistakes (get it? you are getting Robbed by the Robber Classes in the Government to bailout the Robbers in the banks), then you are part of the Robbed Class.
AIG, a Robber Class company, has been deemed “too big to fail” by a Congress whose members have been the recipients of AIG lobbying largesse to the tune of
9.7 million dollars last year alone. Many influential Congresspersons even own, or owned stock in AIG like Senator John Kerry and House Speaker, Nancy Pelosi. Is it any wonder that so far, the Federal Reserve has bailed out AIG to the tune of about 180 billion dollars?
Now the AIG executives who ran their company into the ground and are responsible for many failing mortgages, are receiving bonuses with the Federal bailout money! This is a Robber Class obscenity while many members of our class are losing their homes and jobs. Robbers rarely pay any penalty for their crimes! (Unless you fleece members of your own class as in Bernie Madoff, phew, talk about swift justice! The speed of his trial made my head spin!) And as a matter of fact, the Obama regime made certain that the execs would get their bonuses.
The sadness of the Robber Class control over our perceptions hit home to me during my campaign against Nancy Pelosi. We commissioned a poll and one of the questions we asked was, "If you knew your Congressional Representative was invested in, or took money from AIG, and then voted for AIG to receive 80 billion dollars in governmental bailouts, would that affect your vote for him/her?" Only 17% said "yes," and the interesting thing about that statistic is that's about the percentage of votes I received.
If you have to work (if you are lucky enough to have a job) many hours to pay Robber Baron, Uncle Sam, and get few benefits, then you are a Robbed One.
They are winning, my friend, only because we in the Robbed Class are co-conspirators in the Crimes of the Robber Class. At the very least, we are co-dependent.
Today I was listening to Thom Hartmann on Air America Radio. I love Thom Hartmann, he even wrote a forward to one of my books. I have read many of his books and have learned a lot from him. Many people listen to his show and feel the same way about him that I do. I love him even though he DID NOT support my run for Congress against Nancy Pelosi, or my leaving the Democratic Party.
However, today, Thom was talking about how he has a few complaints about the Obama regime so far, but he is going to support him no matter what, because in the words of Benjamin Franklin: “We all hang together, or we hang separately.” This is Robber Class hypocrisy as far as I am concerned. Thom did not have the same policy under the Bush administration. I guess he was willing to “hang separately” in those days. I'm glad Thom did not support the Bush administration, but in my opinion, he should not support the Obama administration “no matter what," either.
The Robber Class loves to divide us along arbitrary lines: Male/female; Republican/Democrat; White/Black/Brown; Protestant/Catholic/Jew/Muslim; North/South; but these divisions are malleable, even our skin color can be changed a la Michael Jackson! But seriously, skin color is only a surface issue; inside we are all the same!
The Robber Class knows that there really only exists one division in the world: Robber Class and Robbed Class. We in the Robbed Class have way more in common with each other than we do that separates us, or that we do with any member of The Robbers.
It’s time to break the sick relationship that we have with the Robber Class and do something about it! They can only rob us, if we allow them to. The first step, though, is recognizing that we are Robbed and acknowledge that this is not our collective fault, but the way the system is set up.
We the Many of the Robbed Class, do have a sick-symbiotic relationship with They the Few who make up the Robber Class. It doesn’t have to be that way if we organize to break free of this co-dependant relationship.
The Robber Class needs us way more than we need them and they know it, so they will use all of the tools at their disposal: the media, the military, the banking system, the “education system” and patriotic vitriol to keep the Robbed Class cowering, complacently obedient, but most of all, conveniently ignorant.
I am a member and now a warrior for the Robbed Class after having spent most of my life believing (not wholeheartedly, or even half-heartedly, but only semi-heartedly) in Robber Class myths.
My jolt of reality came on April 4, 2004, when my son, Casey, was killed in the Robber Class occupation of Iraq. After I fell to the floor screaming “no, no, no” in agony, I got up and began my gradual awakening to the truth, but an even more rapid rejection of the myths.
It will take nothing less than a Revolution to knock these bastards (I mean no disrespect to people whose parents were not married at conception) off of their perches and take back what belongs to us: the resources and wealth of this nation.
We can do it…read this Internet booklet to find out why we need to and how we can accomplish the boldest People’s Revolution ever!
This book is a short Pamphlet that is not designed to be comprehensive in scope, but a primer to the Myths. Each chapter could be volumes of books and indeed volumes are written about each subject without exposing them, however, as Myths of the Robber Class.
As an Internet Booklet, it is also designed to be a tool to organize grass-roots community around the solutions to the believing in, and being co-opted by, the Myths of the Robber Class. Again, it's one thing to reject the Myths, but an absolute different thing to start living in a system outside of those inherently crooked paradigms.
I want this book to be added to and amended and spread around so we can begin or enlarge the National conversations that needed to start many years ago, but even though time is growing short, it is still not too late to remake the Scarcity of Capitalism into the Plenty of Humanism.”
© Cindy Sheehan 2009
This article may be copied and shared with attribution to the author.
Myth America: 10 Greatest Myths of the Robber Class and the Case for Revolution 
March 15th
