Corporate coffers are stuffed full. Their piggy banks runneth over. And, as the chart below shows, since the mid-70s all real income growth has happened in the top 10% of earners – top managers, owners and CEOs. Businesses, however, continue to lay off workers. Then they demand more from those 'lucky' enough to keep their jobs (even though US workers already work more and get less time off than the workers of all the other industrialized nations).  

Us? We complain. We post on Facebook and Tweet our anger and dissatisfaction out in 140 character bursts. Some try to organize, but the numbers never materialize in a way that has real impact.

All the while, the fat cats not only get fatter and continue to over stuff their piggy banks, but they use the money they make at our expense to buy off D.C. in order to not only keep the loopholes which allow them to hold on to more of their money than the people who work for them, but to pass laws which make it easier to step on their workers, make themselves richer, and eliminate the very government assistance that would help the people they lay off or massively underpay.

Us? We bask in our staycations and try to forget for a few days that the future is bleak at the hands of our wealthy overlords.  

For me, as a minister, one of the worst parts is that the wealthy do all of this, including stepping on the “least of these,” so they can have even more U.S. currency which ironically proclaims "In God we trust." Then the salt in the wound from my ministerial perspective is how these fat cats convince people who understand themselves to be Christian to support the politicians and policies that will insure the rich get richer and that the “least of these” remain the “least of these”... only more so.  In God we trust?

Us? We argue with our neighbors about which political party is more to blame, completely missing the fact that it is just as much about who suffers as it is about who's to blame. Who suffers? All of us - including the people with which we are arguing on a daily bases.

We are a divide nation, but it isn't as simple as John Edward's “Two Americas.” We are divided in at least four ways. The richest of the rich are in charge. They aren't Republican, they aren't Libertarians... they are Privileged Plutocrats. That's group one. Group two are the poorest of the poor. They aren't Democrats, they aren't Blue-collar Republicans... they are Survivalist. Then there's the rest of us: Democrats, Republican, Independents, and a whole hoard of political movement wanna-bes from The Tea Party to The Green Party.  Ultimately though, all those groups are really just two groups. We've all bought into the narrative the Plutocrats and their hired political henchmen have been selling us. When it comes right down to it we are well divided down the middle, those who like what the current President (Bush, Obama) is doing and those who don't. 

A true governing class: Plutocrats. A class struggling for basic needs: Survivalist. And the divided middle: Us versus Them. Four Americas. Only one group benefits from that structure and not only do they like it that way, they designed it that way.

Us? We need to learn to see it for what it really is. Despite his deplorable morals, Edwards was right; there are “Two Americas.” He just drew the dividing line in the wrong place. There are “Two Americas”: the Plutocrat Overloards and The Rest of Us.

I'm afraid the Two Americas of which Edwards spoke are so divided against each other that we might never see the real divide. It is not political, religious, philosophical, or even ideological... it is economical.

The result of it all is that we've not only substituted real vacations for staycations but we've substituted protesting in the streets  for protesting in 140 character posts. (Ouch. I'm sure that really hits the Plutocrats where it hurts). Worst of all, we've substituted the convenient enemy (those who don't agree with us about the job the President is doing) for the actual enemy, the wealthiest Americans whose lives are more and more so a constant vacation.

It's time to focus our genuine and understandable disdain solely on the real enemy, the wealthy Plutocrats and their political henchmen, and stop taking it out on each other. If we want to actually hit them where it hurts we have to support movements like The Peoples Boycott and stick to our guns even when it means we have to pay a little extra for our bananas and paper plates. We must take to the streets in ever increasing numbers; we must stand for each other even when the issue doesn't effect us personally. When we vote, there must be only one issue that influences our vote: where the candidate's voting record stands on supporting the continued wealth grab by those who already have plenty of it.

It is time to take a stand - to do otherwise is to concede defeat... and that's what they are counting on.