A FUNNY THING HAPPENED ON THE WAY TO BECOMING AMERICA

Long before curious Europeans began settling what they called the New World, their old world had traditionally been marked by uncrossable class lines. From royalty to aristocracy to the recent middle class to the peasants. You know, humanity's usual arrangement between the winners and losers (think "Upstairs, Downstairs")

However, here in America these distinctions began to blur right from the start. Oh sure, we still had winners (rich merchants, bankers, plantation owners, the usual suspects). But in order to keep the losers from rising up and killing them in their bed at night, the winners fashioned this glittering promise known as the American Dream (think, by-gosh-anyone-can-make it). Because the dream did come true in some spectacular cases (think Abraham Lincoln, Andrew Carnegie, Thomas Edison), the bloody European habit of class revolution was fairly well tamed.

But ever since WWII, the number of dream-catchers has grown so quickly, America has become increasingly more classless-looking. More and more of us could start buying Cadillacs, swimming pools, designer-knock-offs, and world cruises (think credit cards)). Soon-- except for one's mastery of the King's English -- it was harder to tell one class from another. Lately the pace has reached warp (and warped) speed with our glut of reality shows in which anyone -- the more primitive and less classy the better -- can become some kind of folk hero (think all those Jerry Springer Cretans, break-the-bank screamers, strutting bachelor studs, and naked island-survivors).

America's nouveau rich, when traveling in older class-conscious societies, stick out as The Ugly American. Back home, however, ugly sometimes looks beautiful (think the mystic of a Jesse James to an Al Capone, a Mr Smith Goes to Washington to a Joe the Plumber, a Will Rogers to a Chris Rock). There isn't a politician in sight who won't eagerly pose with the ugliest citizen they can find in the shabbiest coffee shop in the land. Listen, brother, this is Big-A-America, and if you don't like it you can leave it...!

But here's Big-A-America's dirty little secret. Regardless of how giddily class-less we become, the classes with the really big bucks and big clout still take for granted that they stand on the very top of Darwin's survival-of-the-fittest mountain climb. Meanwhile, the credit-card classes still strut the smugness that comes out in their put-down jokes at the local barber shops and beauty salons.

So long as each class continues to believe THEY are the real winner...well, everything's OK. But if this delicate balance of belief ever shifts...well, then who's to say?