A guide for straight white dudes who still believe in trickle-down economics.

“If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.” ― President Lyndon B. Johnson

Bros: 

I open this post with some bad news: the top 1% of income earners in America wish you didn’t exist. 

Now, bros, the good news:

The top 1% wish that women, blacks, Asians, Latinx, Jews, Muslims, LGBTQ, free thinkers, disabled people, big dreamers, reporters, artists, educators, educated people, and people from other countries didn’t exist—in fact, compared to these people, the rich see the average white bro as a wealth-free, obedient version of their own selves.

And some bros LOVE being thought of that way.

Feels great, doesn’t it, learning that you’re not-as-hated? (What am I saying? Some white dudes feel so elated by this news that, if asked, they would bury bodies for rich people as their way of showing gratitude for those tiny crumbs of respect.) 

Also, bros: don’t feel threatened by the 1%’s slobbering over our nation’s white military men in uniform. As much as they drool over America’s caucasian servicemen, remember that they foam at the mouth thinking not of soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen, but instead the financial performance of defense contractors. In their eyes, you and white dudes in uniform are interchangeable.

As true believers in Reaganomics and the Laffer Curve, you sit a half-step above the rest of us garbage-people. 

What role do you play in their world? You, bro, are a brick in that wall of meat that stands between the 1% and the masses that they truly fear. They don’t allow you to ogle their bank accounts and third wives out of the goodness of their hearts, fellas. They dangle their shininess because they got some bullshit to sell you. 

I write this post on the same day that Donald Trump, Junior compared his family’s business struggles to the struggles our nation’s veterans have faced.

I love Don Jr’s quote, his thoughts while visiting Arlington Cemetery: “In that moment, I also thought of all the attacks we’d already suffered as a family, and about all the sacrifices we’d have to make to help my father succeed—voluntarily giving up a huge chunk of our business and all international deals to avoid the appearance that we were ‘profiting off the office.’”

The Trumps are not alone. The 1% is full of white men who think this way. And this sense of entitlement only grew during the last decade—a decade that began in a recession that rich financial speculators created. But the thing is, these days financially-stressed white guys read Don Jr’s words and marvel at how brave and selfless the Trump family is. The same white dudes truly do believe that corporate CEOs are worth what they get paid.

(On a side note, America’s educational system, ranked sixth in the world in 1990, will finish this decade ranked twenty-seventh.)

Bros. That proud group who chooses to look the other way when reports surface that the Republican tax cuts aren’t benefiting the masses like the GOP said they would. 

Whenever bros hear about increasing rates of income inequality, bros know what the real issue is: fake news and political correctness. And Hillary. Besides, they know that the rich guys will buy giant-ass yachts and post lots of pictures on the internet, allowing bros to live vicariously through it all. 

No one can tell a bro what to think. Except the 1%, that is. 1% aside, no one puts bro in the corner. 

We find ourselves at the end of one decade and the beginning of another. And if the past can inform us about the future, I’m guessing that the 1% will only continue to take more money from the average bro and the average bro will only continue to thank the 1% for doing so. Just make sure there are pictures of giant-ass yachts.

As long as the 1% gives bros a group of people to hate based on something meaningless, like a difference in skin color or religion, the bros will stay on board with the program. 

These days, when the average bro gets taken advantage of by the 1%, he thanks the heavens above that rich white men own him instead of some other group. 

“At least that’s a hedge funder grabbing my wife by her pussy. If a Mexican grabbed my wife by her pussy—I WOULD SO HAUL OFF AND KICK THAT GUY’S ASS!!!” 

Think: these bros are the group who have spent the past few years begging the rest of us for a civil war. 

My #scifi book is finally available in paperback. Only took my lazy ass like 5 months to get the file together and get it going.