I watch enough 24 hour cable news and read enough Internet news to get a general feel for how the US political winds shift and blow and there is one annoying trend that has been standing above all others: the outright pandering to and fellating of "middle class America."

You know the drill. A politician or politician-wannabe gets up and delivers his or her stump speech and blasts any and all who, in their opinion, are undermining Middle Class America. Typically these diatribes are connected with rantings on "special interests" who aren't looking out for Middle Class America's interests and only want to profit off their backs. The politicians, of course, are here to fix that.

Welcome to class warfare in America, 2004.

No one defines what Middle Class American actually means, but the implication is right up against your nose. MCA is you and me and your pastor and your mailman and your buddies and your parents and your children's teachers and everyone who isn't living in a ghetto or a mansion. It's perceived to be the roughly 55% of "normal America" that is middle-of-the-road politically even if they lean one way or the other. MCA votes for family values and government efficiency and decency and wholesome things. MCA doesn't want the boat rocked, it wants things to just slowly get better.

Lower Class America, on the other hand, gets no such glowing levels of national attention. Whomever they are, they have their own 24/7 advocates talking loudly about the unemployment rate (though this issue has migrated to MCA recently) and low minimum wages and crappy urban housing and all that. Anti-poverty activists get plenty of spotlight for their cause, but their constituencies still don't get the attention that MCA does.

Upper Class America gets the worst treatment politically. Often lumped in with "the rich" with as much care as Bush speaking extemporaneously, the upper class seems to be the whipping boy for society's ills. They have the most disposable income so they should be taxed more. They have more connections to the political system so their access to it in the form of donations should be restricted. They are seen as being the parasites of society, living off the work others do.

I hear and see all this going back and forth and it pisses me off. Since the US is based on democratic principles, politicians must be elected to office and they must get more votes than their opponents. The incentive, therefore, to bend over for the largest constituencies is great and pervasive. This, to me, explains a great deal why most major politicians talk up the majority - the middle class - so much. It is believed they make up the greatest persuadable voting block. And the first step to getting people to vote for you is to tell them they, the noble and hard-working peoples of Middle America, need your help.

It's all slimy and disgusting. But it's also dangerous because for all the positive changes politicians want to make for MCA, they want to make up for the costs by hammering everyone else with tariffs, taxes, paperwork, and regulations. Public education needs more money, jobs need protecting, unemployment benefits should be extended for months, roads need resurfacing, etc. People forget or ignore or dismiss that those services are not free and must ultimately be paid for out of someone's pocket. Whether the costs are immediately obvious or take a generation to materialize, they are real and they make a difference.

When someone elevates the desires of one class over the others, while those classes are then denigrated or pushed out of the spotlight, I consider that a workable definition of class warfare. It's the active preference for a particular part of social strata - defined primarily by their wealth - over others. And don't get sidetracked by protestations that someone really wants prosperity and happiness for all.

If that was the case, then they wouldn't be advocating statist responses to social and economic problems.

Screw the middle class, the lower class, and the upper class. It's individuals that matter. In order for someone to prove they care about individuals, they have to first demonstrate the understanding that the system as it stands now is fundamentally anti-individual. Get past that first mental roadblock and real progress can be made in this country.