There’s an old saying, “If you don’t know you’re in a war, you’ve already lost.”

Americans seem to know that corporations and the wealthy are accumulating the power and wealth of this nation for themselves. They seem to be aware that politicians are bought off and serve their corporate backers’ wishes, doing all they can to pass laws that enrich the wealthy and blocking legislation that doesn’t (ie, benefit 99.5% of Americans).

And yet, this awareness seems totally disconnected for many Americans from the concept of class warfare. Somehow, through the onslaught of conditioning we’ve been subjected to since childhood, hyping materialism, capitalism, the American Dream and “You too will be a millionaire one day!”, many Americans still seem to stop short of recognizing that they are in the midst of a war that they are losing. Yet, it is the case and the proof is in the news every single day.

It is not difficult to understand for some who are living in crisis and have to be most concerned with the immediate, trying to cope with paying their rent or mortgage this month, finding a job, buying food for the week, paying for health care they can’t afford, or scraping up enough to send their children to a local college. They don’t necessarily have the luxury of time to reflect on and recognize the systematic assault over the last 30 years and see that the most recent events are actually a part of a long term battle plan to rob and subjugate the American People.

And to be frank, many people just take life as it comes, taking each incident on it’s own and not looking for patterns of behavior or how the latest incident fits in with past ones. The problem with that is that when powerful and wealthy entities want something, they create an overall strategy. They work with and pay professionals to design and develop “war plans” that identify the desired goals, the projected obstacles and how to overcome those obstacles. They recognize the power of media and public opinion and have over the years bought up the media and put a facade of “personal responsibility” and “freedom for all Americans” over their true motivations of greed and dominance.

They have sown social conflict and discontent among Americans, both to profit off of it financially and polarize Americans. As long as people are lured into playing their game of division, the “peasants” can be fooled into going at each others’ throats while the wealthy quietly steal their homes, jobs and futures right out from under them. Divide and conquer, especially when the armies are 306 million vs. 1 million. As long as The American people continue to see the enemy as other Americans, who do not have a great share of wealth or power in this nation, the wealthy who do have that wealth and power (and are increasing that) remain safe.

The only fear that the wealthy and corporations have…is of Americans acting in their own best interests.  The one vulnerability they have is that they are less than half of a percent of America’s population and we still hold elections where majority rules. It only takes 51% of Americans in 51% of districts to say, “We will only elect someone who will tax the wealthy their fair share and prevent laws from passing that only benefit the wealthy!” and things could change dramatically. That is the power of a democracy, that is the power of a united people.

We don’t have to live with diminished expectations, we don’t have to give up on handing our children a better standard of living than we had. We don’t have to give up on good schools, unpolluted air and water,  peace, equality for all or economic justice. We can have all of these things but only if we are willing to throw off our Snuggies and open the door and get into the streets to stand up for The American People.

As I said at the outset, Step One in winning this war is to say loud and clear and accept in your heart, “There is class warfare going on right now against us.”  The advancing armies of the wealthy have invaded and annexed our Media, our Politics, our economy and they are marching on our public services and safety nets now. They can’t be appeased, they live only to conquer and pillage. We have the numbers, we muct join together and go to the streets to defend our democracy and nation.

One aspect of this class war is so Orwellian. As the wealthy conduct their assaults on the American People, anyone who stands up to complain is pilloried by them and their MSM cronies as “calling for class warfare”. They have redefined the term “class warfare” as applying only to those who try to defend themselves from the class warfare being marshaled by the wealthy against 99.5% of Americans. And to their discredit, politicians and talking heads are often cowed by this label, quickly backpedaling from taking on the wealthy’s war on America and retrenching to say, “I just want fairness.”

That’s bullshit and needs to stop. IMO, the correct response, when asserting that the wealthy are at war with Americans and being asked by an MSM drone, “Are you advocating class warfare?” , is, “Hell no, I’m trying to fight against it as all Americans should! The wealthy have been conducting class warfare against The American People for 30 years and that’s long enough! Americans have to come together to win this war because we are indeed in the midst of class warfare and if we don’t unite and fight back, we’ll lose!”

War was officially declared on 99.5% of Americans when Trickle Down/Supply Side economics was promoted and implemented under Ronald Reagan. One need not be an economist to understand the basic theory here: Wealthy people should get money from the rest of us because they are more powerful and wiser and will spend it in a way that will bring a fraction of it back to us after they have taken a share for themselves. From there, the destruction of our infrastructure and the middle class and class warfare was intentionally begun by the wealthy and Republicans.

As an example, let’s consider tax cuts for the wealthy. It is a simple see-saw. Sitting on one side are the social services and commitments of the federal government that benefit nearly all Americans. On the other side are tax revenues. When a huge chunk of tax revenues are removed from one side of the see saw, the other side comes crashing down unless one of two things happen, more tax revenue is placed down or services are removed.

What needs to be understood is that the wealthy’s goal is different than 99.5% of Americans. They do not want the see-saw balanced, their goal is to get rid of it, removing every penny of theirs from the tax revenue side and fuck everything else. They don’t need public schools, they don’t need aid for the poor, they don’t need Medicare of Social Security. If it all collapses, so what? More opportunity for private industry to pretend to be the answer and suck even more money out of Americans’ pockets while delivering worse and corrupt services.

They profited from the destruction of our economy. They will profit from the destruction of our standard of living. They want to see effective government that benefits the majority destroyed. This has been a long term strategy, demonizing government and unions which stand in the way of their plutocratic utopia. Each crisis that results from a previous crisis they created, they use to carve off rights, freedom and finances from the majority that they then shove in their own pocket.

What’s happening in WI makes this crystal clear. The same people who profited from and caused the economic collapse, are now saying that because the economy is troubled for some unknown reason, the solution is giving them more tax money and taking it from working Americans (from whom they’ve already robbed of home equity and retirement money).

Meanwhile, most Americans can’t afford not to have government and a fully funded social system, public schools, Medicare, SS, etc.

There is not a morally  acceptable argument for Exxon and Bank of America to take advantage of this nation’s infrastructure and all of its citizens (i.e., heavy Exxon tanker trucks use and destroy our federally funded highways) while paying $o in taxes but there is a rational one. Greed, camouflaged as “capitalism”.

So, using the issue of taxes just to illustrate, we are in a mercenary war with the wealthy. They want to horde and build greater piles of money for themselves and have planned to accommodate that by crushing social funding such as education. Meanwhile, they want to bleed “the peasants” by making them pay a greater and greater share of total tax revenues to fund everything while also forcing them to subsidize their wealth and that of their corporations through tax cuts just for them.

And consider the outsourcing of jobs to foreign countries. This works two-fold in their war against Americans.  First, the wealthy slash their expense of manufacturing and greatly increase their profit margin, then have all of this subsidized by the workers they’ve fired because on unemployment income, they can only afford to buy cheaper things made in China and sold at Walmart. Secondly, the exporting of jobs has created a huge pool of available workers which allows the wealthy to offer lower wages and worse or no benefits for jobs that can require twice the work as before (“Hey, if you don’t want this job, there are plenty of people out there who would.”)

So, in this aspect of the Class War the wealthy are engaged in, they have weakened unions, made their workers more compliant and desperate to work at lower wages for providing more labor. Shrinking wages have also forced people to bury themselves in debt so by buying things on credit cards, they end up giving more and more of what pay they do get back to the wealthy in the form of interest and fees. And the kicker is that by becoming buried in debt, they become even more willing to be treated and paid poorly to keep their job and pay their ever-growing bills. A vicious cycle indeed, created by some very vicious people.

This is a war and we have been losing it. Now, it has reached a new and more dangerous phase. The wealthy now have control in many states and in the House. They are now totally free to spend unlimited billions to fight and win this war and though some Americans are stepping up, the American People by and large are just looking around bewildered as their wealth and power in this democracy are being annexed by the wealthy.

The attacks on our society by the wealthy can’t be stopped by individuals acting alone, the wealthy have too many resources as well as the whole commercial and much of the political infrastructure to use against Americans. We MUST come together to push them back, on the internet through this site and others, through social networking like Facebook and Twitter but ultimately as we witnessed, Egypt only overthrew their domination by taking physical action and getting in the streets. We need to do it all.

Our fellow citizens in WI, OH and elsewhere are fighting this war with limited resources, they need us to join their ranks because they ARE us. This same attack on working Americans is coming to your state soon and if the wealthy get momentum from crushing The American People in WI and OH, they will come to your state with even more confidence, energy and force.

Previous generations had their moments to put aside what divided them and come together to fight for this nation and it’s future. Now is our time to make the decision and make the commitment, to accept our duty to past generations of Americans who fought for the freedoms and the benefits we stand to lose now. It’s time for us to do the same as they did for our future generations, to invest our time and energy in protecting what America is, spending a day joining a protest here and there, reaching out in person or over the internet to others to inform them and encourage them to become involved, communicating with our elected officials about what we expect of them if they want to continue representing us and much more.

Though it was not of our choosing, we are in a war with a force that seeks to destroy the America that has been and that we believe in. This war is real and being fought each and every day. If we choose at this moment in history to step up and confront this threat together as fellow Americans, there is no question that we will prevail and so will all the aspirations and values we all share.