No Class. No War.

America is a great country. It’s our home, for all three hundred million or so of us. While we’re a disparate group (age, location, religion, culture, race, gender, education, jobs, and perhaps especially, political viewpoints), the one trait I’ve found that unites us, above all else, is our love for this country, our country. Other than for a few miscreants around here, we’re all patriots. We’re proud and honored, and thankful, to call ourselves American.

So now what? What does it mean to be American? Rights? Yes, certainly. We have unalienable rights, guaranteed to each of us under our American constitution. But certainly being an American means more than that.  It does. Along with our rights we have responsibilities; individual responsibilities to ourselves and to each other. This country doesn’t run itself. We all play a part. We all live here, as Americans, seeking to make our too short lives as good as possible (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness). But nobody, and I mean nobody, can do it alone. Like it or not, admit it or not, we need each other. To use the old cliché, united we stand, divided we fall. And that, dear reader, is a point too many of us seem to reject these days.

America today is stratified in a manner unlike any other period in America’s brief history. Obviously, people in this country have always had their differences (Civil War anyone?) but today’s America is no longer so much a melting pot as it is a boiling pot. We need to take stock, and take action, before things boil over. Because while America is the world’s premier country in so many ways, our continued greatness is not guaranteed and signs of trouble are all around us.

So let’s ask ourselves a basic question. What are we doing here? Look around. Really, look. We have people in this country who are unable to care for themselves, whether due to individual problems (infirmity, age, etc.) or situational circumstances.  These people don’t deserve our scorn, and they don’t deserve to be left to themselves. They need, and they deserve, our help.

The vast bulk of us, though, get up every day and go to work. We do our work as best we can. And in our country, our land of opportunity, some of us have done better than others, which is fine. Americans strive for, and applaud, success. The late Steve Jobs was the great American dream writ large. Yet over the past thirty years, we’ve seen that for too many of us, the American dream has become not so much a nightmare but a mirage. Too many Americans have worked hard, worked honestly, played by “the rules” only to find that the pot at the end of the rainbow slips further and further away. Why is that?

Listen to those voices on the radical right. If you’re not rich, if you’re not successful, it’s your fault. Or, if it isn’t exactly your fault, it’s definitely the fault of trade unions, especially public unions. Those on the right tell us that “costs” are too high, by which they mean people who work are being paid too much, more than they deserve. Taxes are too high. Government is too “intrusive” and spends too much.

And the answer, of course, is as it has always been for those on the right. Reduce taxes on those already wealthy individuals, the “rich.” Ah, but don’t call these people rich. They’re “job creators.” Yep, job creators. So tell me, how many jobs does Paris Hilton create? Charlie Sheen stands to be paid a whopping one hundred million dollars from the syndication of Two and a Half Men. How much of a “job creator” is good ‘ol Charlie going to be with that money? Hookers? Even that quintessential American company, Coka Cola, has created more jobs outside America then here at home.

Those on the right like their slogans and they love their euphemistic labels. Facts and an honest view of history? Uh, not so much. But the inconvenient truth (there, I said it) is that wealth disparity and income disparity in America today is as great as it has ever been. All the wealth that has been created in America over the past several decades has gone to those in the top five percent, mostly to those in the top one percent. None (as in zero) has gone to the vast middle class. The rich have grown vastly more rich. The poor have become poorer. The middle class has shrunk, and their standard of living has gone nowhere but down.

This is not the natural order of things. The past thirty years didn’t just happen. As much as the radical right rails against “government,” it has been government policies that have allowed the fruits of American progress to go to those at the very top, leaving those in the middle and at the bottom to whither.   Lately, though, hardworking Americans are speaking up. We’re tired of good paying jobs being shipped overseas. We’re tired of tax policies that favor those who are already wealthy. We’re especially tired of right wing policies that punish the poor and squeeze the middle class more and more. We’re speaking out against decades of government and social policies that have brought us to where we are.

Remember the question, what are we doing here? Aren’t we supposed to be making this country work for all of us, not just the privileged top one percent? And now those at the very top and their right wing, Republican, enablers and sycophants, cry “class war!!” Those in the middle class and below are engaging in war? Well, even if it is war, the middle class is doing nothing but shooting back, seeking to defend themselves against an onslaught of policies that hurt us and ultimately hurt our beloved country. But this isn’t war. Those on the right doth protest too much.

Americans of all income classes are capitalists. We all support private enterprise and we all appreciate those who work hard and find success. Do you know anyone who begrudges the wealth that Steve Jobs accumulated through his own hard work? I don’t.

No, this isn’t war, and those who spit out such vile ideas have no class. No class, and no understanding of economics or history. Today’s income and wealth disparity is not good for our country and is patently unfair.  The rules need to change, not to stifle capitalism but to allow it to flourish, and as it does so to allow everyone to reap their fair, and hard earned, share.  Fairness in the distribution of wealth and income is all that the vast majority of Americans want. Not war. Peace.