Reverse Robin Hood: When Your Neighbors Vote to Kill You
By Janet Lessin
ElephantsInOurRooms.com
In America today, survival has become a political battlefield—and many of us are losing. As food stamps disappear, housing becomes unattainable, and healthcare is slashed for the sick and elderly, it’s no longer abstract. These aren’t policy debates. These are life-and-death decisions—and people we know are pulling the trigger at the ballot box.
This isn’t just political theory. This is personal.
Many of us are asking: How do we forgive friends, neighbors, even family members who vote to strip us of the very things that keep us alive? Why do they support policies that devastate us? Do they want us gone?
The answer is complicated, but increasingly urgent.
The Robin Hood Reversal
We are living in a country where the myth of Robin Hood has been grotesquely flipped on its head. Instead of stealing from the rich to feed the poor, America now steals from the poor to feed the rich.
Tax cuts for billionaires. Corporate subsidies. Private jets and luxury write-offs. Meanwhile, working-class families lose Medicaid. Veterans are left homeless. The elderly are forced to choose between insulin and rent.
If this were simply economic neglect, it would be bad enough. But what we’re seeing now is something colder—a targeted, ideological cruelty. A movement determined to dismantle every safety net and call it freedom.
And people are voting for it.
Why Do They Vote Against Us?
There are three general types of voters who support these destructive policies. Each reflects a different failure—of education, of empathy, or of conscience.
1. The Misinformed
Many voters are simply misled. Decades of propaganda—from talk radio to Fox News to weaponized memes—have painted the poor, disabled, and marginalized as freeloaders, criminals, or worse. They believe social programs are “handouts” that reward laziness. They’ve been taught to see government help as theft, not as lifelines.
The irony? Many of them are recipients of those same programs—Social Security, Medicare, public schooling. But the propaganda runs deep.
2. The Indifferent
Some voters aren’t malicious—they’re just detached. They live in bubbles. They don’t see people like us. We’re not in their social circles, churches, or neighborhoods. Our pain is abstract, distant. It doesn’t enter their decision-making process.
They don’t wish us harm. But they don’t care enough to prevent it, either.
3. The Cruel
Then there are those who do know—and don’t care. For them, voting to cut aid or dismantle civil rights is not collateral damage—it’s the point.
A growing faction in American life revels in domination and punishment. They call it “tough love” or “personal responsibility,” but they mean this: if you’re weak, you deserve to suffer.
They mask this under religion, patriotism, or economic theory. But at its core, it’s about power—keeping it, flaunting it, and ensuring others never rise too far.
Do They Want Us Dead?
It’s a heavy question. But let’s not shy away from it.
Do the policies they vote for result in death? Yes.
Lack of healthcare kills. Homelessness kills. Hunger kills.
Do they know? Increasingly, yes.
Do they care? Many do not.
It’s not always active malice. Sometimes, it’s a slow, numbing erosion of empathy. Other times, it’s rooted in theological fatalism, where suffering is viewed as deserved or redemptive.
However, whether from ignorance or ideology, the outcome is the same: people like us are being erased. And too many are cheering it on.
What Will They Gain When We’re Gone?
That’s the most haunting question of all.
Do they believe a world without the poor, disabled, sick, or different will be easier? Cleaner? More righteous?
They might.
But they’re building a colder, lonelier world, a place where cruelty replaces community and hierarchy replaces humanity.
They think they’re securing freedom. They’re building a dystopia. And they will suffer in it too, eventually.
Can We Forgive?
Not yet. Not without accountability.
Forgiveness, if it comes, must flow from a place of truth, not denial. It must come after justice, not as a substitute for it.
Some wounds need to be seen before they can be healed. Some anger must be heard before it softens. And some betrayals must be called out before they can be forgiven.
For now, it’s enough to name the hurt. To speak the truth. To link arms with those who still care. To survive—not just out of spite, but because our lives matter.
This is the Fight of Our Lives
They call us burdens. But we carry the soul of this nation.
They call us takers. But we’ve given all we had.
They try to erase us. But we’re still here—hurting, raging, organizing, hoping.
We will not go quietly.
We are not done.
Tags: Reverse Robin Hood, political betrayal, Project 2025, MAGA cruelty, economic justice, austerity, disabled rights, America’s soul, survival politics, compassion, moral collapse
