I�ve always understood their was a distinct, inherent bond between racism, sexism and classism, that being exploitation, pimping thoseamong us with the least. It has always seemed evident to me that I lived in a nation, the US of A, which proudly proclaims itself to have the most advanced form of modernized civilization ever constructed - humans with our �Sunday best� on, always at our best - while nonetheless in America ... the land of freedom, liberty, equality and justice ... in this land, our God is still money, and money is still God.

America holds sacred the morals, values and standards which are most conducive to Corporate America�s creed: God is money, money is God. Greed is good. �I got mine; you get yours.� �Everybody for themselves.� �Only the strong (wealthy) can survive.� Rich people are considered to be better than poor folks. And you can take the word �better� and stretch it to encompass all you wish, because in all meaningful and relevant aspects of life in this country, financially wealthy people are weighed, measured and pounded out to be better then poor people.

Better, as in they put their pants on differently then you and I.

See, that�s what�s always perplexed me, how this masquerade could carry on, decade after decade, unless we, the everyday little people, accepted these transparent thoughts lock, stock n� barrel. It is we, the masses, who believe all that glitters is chocolate diamonds - our �awe,� our infatuation with materialism and wealth is what fuels the rat-race.

Our deep-seated burning desire to keep up with the Jones� - as my mother explained it - is how we enable this age-old tragedy to continue. Lusting for a bigger SUV, larger micro-mansion, more bling n� more blang then your neighbor, so much so you don�t set monies aside for your child�s college years - investing in your kids, and your kids� kids - but rather investing it in a heap-of-steel which depreciates the moment you drive it off the lot ... being economically ignorant.

Nonetheless, I thought Mitt Romney�s little �slip� of his aristocratic titanium dipped n� platinum tipped tongue was interesting, challenging �Tricky� Rick Perry to a $10,000 bet during last Saturday night�s Republican TEA Party debate after the Texas governor accused Romney of once advocating for using Massachusetts� health care mandate as a national model. This was a highly reveling snapshot of the Ray-Gun era inequalities that have been forged into US society, where the yearly salary of a American working for minimum wages is the amount an American aristocrat like Romney would just toss out as a figure he�s willing to bet/loose in a spur-of-the moment dispute.

It�s a meaningless amount of dead presidents to Mitt, and it�s an irrelevant number to his fat-cat peers who apparently view ten grand as merely walking around pocket money. This is a vivid example of the stark differences between the top-tier and the other 95% of us little people, the real peasant/serf class.

Romney and the rank n� file rich folks who had no alarm sound in their little heads when they heard him toss out such an outrageous sum of money, are blind to and dismissive of the America�s Misery Index. Waiting for them to condemn Romney is a waste of time. It�ll happen when chickens have lips and snakes have hips.

Most Americans are no more then two, perhaps three, paychecks away from homeless, car-less, and damn near starving. We have no savings in our bank accounts or under our beds. Our homes are upside down, and of course in a nation where cutthroat capitalism has gone buck wild, the elitists, those who�ve inherited and passed down wealth, the Investor Class, wants us all to accept that it�s merely, and solely, our own individual, personal fault. If we�d just try harder ...

Ain�t that a bitch?

There�s never a mention of �power,� absolute, audacious power being accumulated under neanderthal-like apartheid laws ... an empire built on stolen land, with others� blood, sweat n� tears, an empire assembled by folks who weren�t permitted to accumulate wealth, couldn�t work here, buy property there, go to school over there ... which unquestionably created a nation where there remains a �privileged class,� i.e., White folks.

Note: neither Newt, Romney, nor their followers will confirm basic US History 101, for they�ve developed an acute case of selective Amnesia...

Herman Cain, the one-time darling Uncle Tom of Angry White folks was attempting to advance this timeless tacky theory before he self-destructed. It�s one that is oblivious to history: the abandonment by corporate America of the American people, dating back to the 1970�s, when the foundation of the ever-elusive American Dream, Bread-Winner gigs were strategically exported to the four corners of the globe, in order to maximize profits for the few here.

In a society like ours, where the social stratification is clearly evident within our on color/class and gender caste system, it�s obvious the brother/sister-hood workers� need to organize and combat the class warfare being waged upon all classes by the �Landlords,� the �haves�, the �Investor class� is a distant dream. Worker solidarity is pipe-dream based on the delusions main-stream Americans maintain - this myth that they�re but one promotion, one big deal from a Bel-Air California zip-code, and this prohibits the unity needed to combat fat-cats.

That�s one of the reasons why so many people, especially on the political �Right,� can play the Lifeboat Game with impunity. You know the lifeboat game: 12 people, afloat in a tattered, beat-up lifeboat, with limited supplies, must thin-the-already-thinned-herd in order to survive, and of course, there�s a TEA Party member aboard ... and he has no difficulty nor reservations about assigning worth and value to people, determining who will live, and who will die.

Playing God.

That�s what the GOP is so good at, that�s what White America has been so-good at, determining who�ll get to live, live the American Dream ... and who�ll have to serve, who�ll have to do the heavy lifting and who�ll have to wipe other folks behinds to make a buck.

Romney�s vast wealth is no secret - his $12 million San Diego home and his New Hampshire lake-house, valued at more than $10 million, have been the focus of media reports. According to some bean counters, he�s worth a quarter of a billion dollars, and much of it amassed via the dismissal of thousands of worker ants n� bees

Rich people are better then poor people ...

Mitt�s bet illustrates the lack of awareness his kind have; he�s so above-it-all it�s enough to make you vomit. Recall when the elder Lady Bush, Barbra made her cold and disconnected comments about the folks stuck in the Houston Astrodome after the Katrina disaster: �What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them.�

Let them eat cake ...

That�s precisely who and exactly what we�re confronted with ladies n� gents, a Hobbit�s handful of self-anointed nobles, like Mitt Romney, who believe the ole� USA is an empire, where freedom, equality, democracy and economic stability / mobility is the pre-determined, set-aside entitlement of but a pre-chosen handful ... while wide-spread economic enslavement, a form of 21st bondage is also the predestined innate fate of the multitudes.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist, Desi Cortez, was hatched in the heart of Dixie, circa 1961, at the dawning of the age of Aquarius, the by-product of four dynamic individuals, Raised in South-Central LA, the 213, at age 14 transplanted to the base of the Rockies, Denver. Still a Mile-Hi. Sat at the feet of scholars for many, many moons, emerging with a desire and direction� if not a sheep-skin. Meandered thru life; gone a-lot places, done a-lot of things, raised a man-cub into a good, strong man, produced a beautiful baby-girl with my lover/woman/soul-mate� aired my mind on the airwaves and wrote some stuff along the way. Click here to contact Desi.