I’m not at all surprised that Trump is being sued for fraud in NYS. He is textbook example of an entitled wealthy asshole with the morality of a drunk frat boy. If central casting called looking for a rich douchebag his face would pop into your mind every time.

I have always hated that there was a separate way to describe crime, as if white collar crime is meant to somehow be less damaging to society because the perpetrators wear fancy Italian suits.  During the press conference with Leticia James today, someone asked, “What about the companies that accepted these lies? Do they not have measures put in place to prevent fraud?”  GREAT FUCKING QUESTION SIR.  What about them? Hmmm…let’s discuss that shall we.

I imagine the best part of being wealthy is being able to separate yourself from the general peasantry of society; gated homes, yachts in the middle of the ocean, separate planes, private cars etc. Wealthy people can separate themselves from society by taking advantage of things we peasants cannot. They get access to money at interest rates that aren’t available to the likes of us. When they fuck up and suffer a business loss, they don’t have to worry about losing their home, they aren’t put into a robo-call system to collect that debt or sit in the dark because they couldn’t afford the lights or have their phone shut off.  They aren’t being charged to highway robbery percentage rates we are that just rack up as we struggle to make the bare minimum payment and make decisions like food/utilities or creditors.

If a wealthy CEO makes bad decisions and gets invited to leave (aka fired to the rest us) they get golden parachutes with shit tons of money and can easily walk into another position no problem, while we get 10 minutes to pack our shit with Security looking over our shoulder. Even when their behavior is criminal, they don’t suffer the same consequences we do.  Hell, politicians can’t be bothered during their campaign with pesky legal issues like a Federal fraud case because it might sway voters. WTF?! Why don’t you tell a potential employer that you are under Federal investigation for fraud and see how fast they shut down that interview process. Yet, we let them carry on wooing the public for a job that will give them a front row seat to unimaginable wealth and access to power. The wealthy class and their companies do cause great harm in society, and their protection of the wealthy status greatly hurts those of us closer to earth.

The reason it’s been hard to bring Trump to account is because it exposes an entire basically criminal enterprise of the wealthy. In many cases they do stuff that walks right up to the line of criminality but the true crime is against humanity by taking, so much more than everyone else. That and they also often don’t suffer the same harshness we do when facing similar charges. They continue to protect each other, so that they can keep their lifestyles and secrets, but when huge companies like Walmart have hundreds of employees who have to apply for government benefits just to have the basics in life like food, you have to wonder where the fuck our moral compass is and where was it thrown out of the car. In America’s case, we threw out about mile marker 1619.

How about the people who lost their homes from the reckless behavior of those in the financial services system who pushed people to buy buy buy, and although they might have lost some money they never had to live in their car or in a tent under the freeway.  And during Covid when the government announced the Paycheck Protection Program was going forward but we all had to go through our banks, that was done so the banks could hand out those dollars to their favorite wealthy people first, who should have been at the back of that line.

Many of these people come from money and can keep that money by manipulating the system in ways that we cannot. They get jobs we’d never be able to get because we’ll never hear about them with great benefits. They own companies that can throw sick money at lobbyists, instead of their employees, to go to Washington, D.C. and pay off politicians to continue to create laws and regulations that work for them. And trust me, they expect a return on investment (ROI) for that money. Wealthy people don’t just piss money away. Those regulations keep them from paying their fair share in society, yet they take so much.  Like being able to manipulate the bank by over inflating your home’s value to get a big fat loan with sweet rates.

And if you think white collar crime doesn’t kill, well, I’m sure there have been many people who committed suicide because they couldn’t get the funds or job, they needed to get a leg up or had to work themselves to death with 2 jobs and were being bombarded by credit companies to PAY PAY PAY!  I remember the stories from the collapse of 2008 of people killing themselves.

I’m sure there have been millions of people who died from illness because they couldn’t afford to take time off to go to the doctor because their shit wage job barely covered their health insurance if at all or they can’t afford the co-pays. Millions of Americans have died from the opioid crisis while the Sackler family and others became even more disgustingly wealthy.  I’m sure there have been many Americans who haven’t been able to take a better job because it was in an area that they couldn’t get to easily because they couldn’t afford a better car.  Their behavior has consequences, the difference is, we are the ones paying those consequences of their shit behavior.

We must stop seeing white collar crime as a victimless or less harmful because it doesn’t involve an immediate violent act. It’s their very privilege that allows them to call the crime they do by a different name.  Their behavior is abhorrent and violent and anti-democratic and inhumane. They condemn us to live lives that they wouldn’t allow their pets to be exposed to. Any one of us would gladly trade places with one of their pampered pets and for many, that would be a step up. How sick is that?!

Yet they sit in their Italian marbled towers and look down on us and give us lectures about how we need to “Buck up and work hard or pull ourselves up by our bootstraps.”  They spend millions to funnel hate and misinformation to fan the flames of the culture wars because they want us to fight each other. Why? Because if we are fighting each other, we aren’t fighting them! We don’t notice what they do to fuck us every day. They want us to continue “wanting things” and believe that one day maybe we could sit at their table, we might win that American dream and have money. And if that happened, they say, “You wouldn’t want someone else to take that away, would you?” 

Well anytime I’ve had a conversation with a regular Joe Blow on the street about winning the lottery, after they fantasize about the big ass house or fly car they’d buy to they sort themselves out, they always talk about who else they’d help and that list includes people outside of their immediate family to other family and friends to charities. However, that isn’t the sentiment the wealthy stoke when talking about money to us. They talk about working hard, paying dues, saving our money and spending wisely and doing without to get ahead to enjoy a little bit of luxury someday. They gin up our anger and distort our sense of fair play, so we’ll go along with laws that protect their wealth in the here and now, just so we don’t get taxed on the imaginary fortune we’ll never have; and in our real here and now, we are paying our fucking taxes!

This is the heart of the problem in America and the world honestly. If you look at most crimes or ills in society, our super-sized greed, the need for MORE is always at the center of it. The only thing that’s different is what we use to fill that greed: sex, money, power, religion, drugs, food, or shopping. The list is endless. We need to truly come together and battle the forces above, the wealthy, who hold us hostage and continue to enslave us.  Think about this when you go vote next time and don’t let people fool you with their fear mongering or culture war bullshit.

Now, what I’m waiting to see is if Trump and his family will suffer any consequences for their behavior or is this just the ones at the very top giving him a little slap for bringing too much attention to their criminal enterprise. To them, his crime is being boastful and attention seeking and if he isn’t important enough to them they will find a dark hole and put him there. If he thought being kicked off Twitter was a horror he will be stunned into absolute silence at the pain they could deal to him. This is all meant to fly under the radar and not shake things up too much. Will they let him and his family go down to keep their place? We shall see. Honestly, I think he worked with Epstein to keep dirt on people of power so they could get away with whatever they wanted. I hope that we the people, will eventually get to see his tax returns, which honestly, if they were a book would be filled under Fiction.

Sometimes I feel like we are at a tipping point and these kinds of stories will FINALLY inspire everyone in the world who is sick of this gross inequality to rise up collectively and shake those brutal lords from their fancy towers so we can create a better world that gaining wealth isn’t the center of our very existence. Then I see how many people would still vote for Trump or see another politician hanging out at the water cooler of Trump’s asshole with the other sycophants talking turns tickling his balls and waxing his nob, and I loss all hope.

Come on people! Breath some hope into me! I need it, I’m hanging on by a thread. Stop voting for assholes. Stop voting against your best interests.