Don't be afraid to say it: 'We are the 1 percent'

It is time to stand up and be counted.

I am the 1 percent.

Let’s be plain about this. Though I have a good job and a good paycheck, I have virtually no wealth, no savings and no need for tax shelters. I have substantial debt. My family owns three vehicles, the newest of which is a 1999 Ford Windstar worth about $2,000. That’s our “good” car. If it breaks down, we would have to go further into debt to fix it or replace it. I cannot afford to put my three children — the oldest of whom is in high school, the youngest in diapers — through college. We vacation 20 miles away in Whitefish because we can’t afford airfare or gas for a long trip. We live in a hundred-year-old house without central heating and we are happy to have it. Sometimes we do look with envy at a our neighbors’ houses that have modern plumbing and electric systems that don’t short out when you run the pancake griddle and the space heater at the same time, and sometimes we do wonder why we can’t own a brand-new SUV like so many other families do. But envy is cheap; SUVs are not.

So what we do is get by. We are fortunate that I make enough money to support a family of five with food, clothes and a roof over our heads. That’s for now, but I’m 56 years old. In six years when my middle child graduates high school, I will be eligible to collect Social Security, but I won’t be qualified to retire — not with the paltry sum that I’ve been able to set aside in my 401(k). If I am lucky, I’ll still be working here at the newspaper. But if not, they say that Wal-Mart likes to hire the elderly. My wife, who attended school in China and speaks Mandarin as her primary language, intends to enter the work force by then to support me and our youngest child, but even if that is possible, it’s unlikely we would ever have a chance to raise our standard of living substantially.

Times are tough. And it’s not just us. It’s families across this country, from coast to coast. We scrimp and scrape and we get by. We don’t have stocks. We don’t have safes. We don’t have dividends or trust funds. But we’ve got something more important. We’ve got our honor. We’ve got our integrity. We’ve got our decency. And we’ve got our common sense.

Which is why I say, now and forever, I am the 1 percent. I won’t turn my back on my fellow Americans who have succeeded. I won’t let the mob take away my honor by turning me against those who have a better material existence than I do.

As Emerson explained succinctly, “Envy is ignorance.” Material success only matters to those who have lost their way spiritually. The 1 percent and the 99 percent are the same people with different clothes. And if I try to take the clothes off my brother’s back, just what kind of neighbor am I? What kind of human am I?

Wealth is not the issue; justice is. There will always be a 99 percent and a 1 percent, but that is not unjust. It is simply a fact of life. Injustice occurs when the 99 percent threaten the 1 percent because they outnumber them. Injustice occurs when the 99 percent use their majority status to commandeer the wealth of the 1 percent.

And if I stand by and let that happen, then I am unjust. So I will stand with the 1 percent. Even though I don’t have much money of my own, I cannot stand by and watch the wealth of my brethren be stolen. That is not the American way; it is the communist way. In America, what is mine is mine and what is yours is yours. So even though I have no money, I will proudly proclaim that I am a capitalist.

I will proudly proclaim that I am Dolores Broderson.

Do you know her? You should. She is the 78-year-old woman knocked down a flight of cement stairs in Washington, D.C., by a mob of “Occupy D.C.” protesters earlier this month. Her crime? Nothing. She was just collateral damage. She’s not rich. Not by a mile. In fact, she is a retired special-education teacher from Detroit. She lives on a pension, and she paid $350 to ride a bus for 11 hours to attend a dinner sponsored by the Koch brothers and Americans for Prosperity. Yeah, those Koch brothers — the billionaires who think they should have a right to use their own money to support the causes they believe in — such as prosperity.

And notice it is not Prosperous Americans for this or that. The Koch brothers don’t need an organization to brag about their wealth, or to get more wealth. Trust me, they could sit back and enjoy life without lifting a finger. It is not a group FOR Prosperous Americans; it is Americans FOR Prosperity. It is about the Koch brothers and thousands of others celebrating success and fighting for the principles they think will lead to the most wealth for the most people. In other words, it is about the American Dream — start with nothing and end up with something big like Bill Gates, or maybe just end up with enough to get by and be happy like me.

Or like Dolores Broderson. She doesn’t have a lot of money, but she has principles and a belief in an America where everyone has a chance to succeed. So what was her crime that led the mob from Occupy D.C. to go after her and other people attending the Americans for Prosperity dinner?

“I think they thought we were all rich or something,” she said.

In other words, they thought she was part of “the 1 percent.”

That’s scary, isn’t it? But it gets to the root of why Occupy Wall Street is a fundamentally anti-American movement. Targeting and dehumanizing a small group of people in order to motivate revolution is the stuff of Russia or Germany, not the United States of America. It usually starts small, like the attack in Washington, but eventually — if it is encouraged by those in power — it reaches the level of a pogrom or a mob attack on an entire population of people who are seen as dangerous to the interests of the majority. That mentality is fueled by anti-Semitic and incendiary rhetoric such as “Jewish bankers,” “Humanity vs. the Rothschilds,” “It’s Yom Kippur: Banks should atone!” and “One day the poor will have nothing left to eat but the rich.”

The sad news is that all of those slogans were found not at a 19th century pogrom and not in Nazi Germany, but at Occupy Wall Street events. One particularly vicious display of anger had a man dressed as Christ (complete with a crown of thorns) carrying a sign that read, “I threw out the moneylenders for a reason.” This is the original blood libel — combining the myth that the Jews had killed Jesus with the claim that Jewish bankers are evil, dangerous overlords.

So if you want to make a difference in this country, do yourself a favor. Step away from the 99 percent, and join the 1 percent. Stand with those who are being maligned. Stand with the Jews. Stand with Dolores Broderson. Stand up and be counted.

We are the 1 percent.

Frank Miele is the managing editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Montana. He can be reached by email at edit@dailyinterlake.com