REAL AMERICA

 From Daily Kos:

Ohio bank steals woman's possessions by 'mistake,' then refuses to pay up

An Ohio woman returned from vacation to find that all of her belongings had been stolen, taken right out of her house. She knows who did it, but the local police aren't helping her. That's because Katie Barnett's stuff was stolen not by a burglar who slipped in under cover of darkness or a family member who felt it rightly belonged to them, but by a bank.

First National Bank got the wrong house, changing the locks and removing everything from Barnett's home rather than the house across the street. And no one is trying to make things right. When Barnett gave the bank president an estimate of $18,000 for her lost possessions:

“He got very firm with me and said, ‘We’re not paying you retail here, that’s just the way it is,’” Barnett said. “I did not tell them to come in my house and make me an offer. They took my stuff and I want it back.”

More here.

This is how America actually works.  This is the real America.  If your interests come up against the people who own and operate our nation, you know, the fabulously wealthy and corporations, generally, especially these days, you lose.  It doesn't matter who's in the right, who's in the wrong.  What matters is that you're weak and they're strong, and fuck you.  Millions of African-Americans already know this simply because their very existence is a thorn in the side of the plutocracy, but, increasingly, white people are figuring it out, too.

I wonder how much more it will take to rouse the sleeping giant.  We continue to have the formal structures of democracy, which have, admittedly, been heavily subverted by the very wealthy for their own ends, but rule by the people continues to be a real possibility.  It's just that the people have to work together as one.  And the plutocracy has spent a lot of money trying to make sure that doesn't happen.

We'll need to have a VERY pissed off population if we're ever going to put an end to this kind of shit.

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