What the Term "99%" Actually Means

There appears to be some inexplicable confusion  concerning the term "We are the 99%" among its detractors.  Smugly re-posting web-camera'd signs about those 3 jobs someone worked through college  as a way to hate on "the so-called 99%" makes about as much sense as saying "Oh, you got mugged down a dark alley-way?  Well, I had to save my tips at Denny's to get my degree!"  Look, good on you if you really did graduate debt free (though the cowardly way you hide behind your signs in those web-shots makes me question), but your go-getter-attitude is utterly irrelevant to what these protestors are actually protesting.

Simply put, the current Great Recession was caused by major banks illegally and fraudulently tying sub-prime mortgages into AAA rated mortgage bonds and then selling them to investors under false pretenses.  When the house of cards collapsed in '08 and investors lost their savings, these executives, rather than being carted off to prison a la Bernie Madoff, instead received multi-million dollar bonuses with tax-payer money. 

By contrast, if a member of the lower 99% of wage-earners were to perpetrate such fraud, he or she would be imprisoned and stripped of their assets, and justly so.  But those in the top 1% of wage-earners go free.

That is, these "We are the 99%" sign-wavers want criminals brought to justice, for the law to apply equally to everyone, and to prevent these crimes from being committed again.  They feel as enraged as black people were to see a white-person go free for the same thing a black-person is jailed for.  It has nothing to do with how many jobs you worked in college.

Seriously, law and order, crime and punishment, deterrence and no leniency--aren't these supposed to be conservative chest-nuts?!  Shouldn't Republicans be swarming the streets demanding that these criminals be brought to justice?!  But no, we have been as brainwashed as the serfs of Feudalism to honor and worship and defend the rich that rob us at all costs.  Maybe the counter-protestors are right, we really aren't the 99%--no, we are what Joyce termed "the gratefully oppressed."