The Real Heist

A Personal Story

The hum of the fluorescent lights in a convenience store is the sound of a life going nowhere. That’s been my life. 29 years old, a Bachelor’s degree in Communications, and I’m slinging lottery tickets and overpriced energy drinks. After a few shitty sales jobs pushing crap people didn’t need, this was the end of the line.

I know I’m lucky. I live with my parents. They don’t charge rent. That’s the only reason I’m not homeless. My coworkers aren't so lucky. Most of them refuse to even talk about politics. They’re too tired, too beaten down. It’s all just “noise” to them, another distraction from trying to figure out how to pay their bills. The few who do care are completely sacked into the right-wing propaganda machine. They repeat the same lines they hear on their podcasts, never questioning a thing.

So there I was, surrounded by people who had either given up on politics entirely or were cheering for the other team. Even my manager, a Trump supporter, was in that camp. And in that bubble of isolation, my own political identity was my shield. I was a Democrat. It was simple. I thought I was the only one in that whole damn store who had a clue. I thought I knew exactly who the enemy was.

Then January 6th happened. I watched it on TV, and that simple story exploded. I realized I didn't know a damn thing about how our country actually worked. So I started digging. I started with the fake elector scheme, trying to prove how evil the other side was.

But the deeper I went, the more the path twisted. I started reading about campaign finance laws. And I saw it. The money. The firehose of corporate cash wasn’t just going to one party. It was flooding the whole damn system. Wall Street, big pharma, the defense contractors—they own both teams. The politicians we see on TV are just the hired actors. The real power is the money that buys them. My hunt for one party’s crime led me to a bigger truth: the whole thing is a goddamn racket.

And while I was having my mind blown by this research, my life was falling apart. My grandfather was dying. I watched my parents pour every last drop of their energy and money into making sure he could die with some dignity. And I couldn’t help. I was broke. Useless.

But I refused to blame myself. My powerlessness wasn't a personal failure; it was a systemic outcome. So I fought back with the only weapon I had: the truth. As my parents watched the news, I’d go off. Ranting like a lunatic about how the whole system was designed to bleed us dry. My mom couldn’t take it. My dad, he’d try to listen, but you could see it weighing on him. He didn’t want to hear about a problem he couldn’t fix. So he’d just shut me down with the same line, every time: “You just need to make more money.”

He was telling me to fix the scratch on the car. I was telling him the whole engine was shot and the car was on fire.

Then grandpa died. The next day, I saw the headline: “No Epstein files.” The grief in my chest turned into something else. Something hot and hard. They look out for their own. The monsters get protected, and the rest of us get bled dry for the privilege of a decent death for our parents. That was it. I was done being sad. I was ready to fight.

Yesterday, I went to work. I was two hours late. I walked in and just started crying right there by the counter. My manager—the same Trump-supporting manager who’s been squeezing our hours—she just hugged me. She thought it was about my grandpa. She had no idea it was about him, and my parents, and the Epstein news, and her, and this whole goddamn broken country. She let me work my shift, and then she gave me today off.

So I’m writing this on my day off. That hug is the only thing that makes sense anymore. That’s what they’re trying to kill. That little piece of humanity that survives inside the machine.

They want us at each other’s throats. They want us to blame the coworker who’s too tired to care, or the one who listens to right-wing radio. But they’re not the enemy. My manager isn't the enemy. They are all trapped in the same colosseum with me, just in different cheering sections.

The real enemy is the one who built the colosseum. The one who profits from our division and our exhaustion. The people who tell my dad the solution is for his son to “make more money” while they rig the game so he can’t. The real heist isn't just the money they take from our paychecks. It's the humanity they try to steal from us.

This is my declaration. This is my rebellion. I’m going to spend every spare minute I have exposing these bastards. I’m lucky enough to have the time to figure this stuff out. But I don’t have the resources to do it alone. I’m asking you to fund this fight. Not for me. For every person who’s too damn tired and too damn scared to do it themselves. Let’s build something for them. Let’s turn our anger into their weapon.