America's Race Towards A Banana Republic Social Divide

America is hurtling towards a income level divide that is both disturbing and a threat to the economy as more and more members of the middle class find their standard of living eroded if not in sharp decline. Except for the very wealthy, most incomes are stagnant or falling. Worse yet, the social safety net is being dismantled by Republicans and the GOP's conservative Christian allies who seem to have utterly forgotten the Gospel message of tending the sick, feeding the hungry, clothing the naked and providing shelter for the homeless. Instead, these elements of the right focus on how they can hoard more for themselves and damn everyone else to misery. Combined with this trend is a growing mindset among this element that unless someone looks just like them and believes just as they do, then people are somehow not even human. It's a frightening and disgusting phenomenon which shows the shallow hollowness of the supposed "Christian faith" of these self-congratulatory and self-centered hypocrites. Bob Herbert has a piece in the New York Times that addresses this situation. Here are highlights:
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The Ronald Reagan crowd loved to talk about morning in America. For millions of individuals and families, perhaps the majority, it’s more like twilight — with nighttime coming on fast. Look out the window. More and more Americans are being left behind in an economy that is being divided ever more starkly between the haves and the have-nots.
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[M]ore and more of the so-called fringe benefits and public services that help make life livable, or even bearable, in a modern society are being put to the torch. Employer-based pensions, paid vacations, health benefits and the like are going the way of phone booths and VCRs. As poverty increases and reliable employment becomes less and less the norm, the dwindling number of workers with any sort of job security or guaranteed pensions (think teachers and other modestly compensated public employees) are being viewed with increasing contempt.
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We have not faced up to the scale of the economic crisis that still confronts the United States. Standards of living for the people on the wrong side of the economic divide are being ratcheted lower and will remain that way for many years to come. Forget the fairy tales being spun by politicians in both parties — that somehow they can impose service cuts that are drastic enough to bring federal and local budgets into balance while at the same time developing economic growth strong enough to support a robust middle class.
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The U.S. cannot cut its way out of this crisis. Instead of trying to figure out how to keep 4-year-olds out of pre-kindergarten classes, or how to withhold life-saving treatments from Medicaid recipients, or how to cheat the elderly out of their Social Security, the nation’s leaders should be trying seriously to figure out what to do about the future of the American work force.
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The United States can’t thrive with so many of its citizens condemned to shrunken standards of living because they can’t find adequate employment. Long-term joblessness is a recipe for societal destabilization. It should not be tolerated in a country with as much wealth as the United States. It’s destructive, and it’s wrong.