As high-minded and concerned about the wealth and prosperity of its citizens as the United States likes to think it is, there's plenty of evidence that those divides are just getting deeper and deeper.

The whole fiscal cliff showdown – continuing to unfold before our eyes – is just part of that continued cycle of fighting between the haves and the sort-of-haves, that miserable, needy, good-for-nothing middle class that one of this year's presidential candidates entirely dismissed (until they entirely failed to elect him).

I had a discussion about the whole mysterious system with a friend who's a foreign diplomat in D.C. a month ago and he concluded that despite America's insistence on equality and a lack of regimented class structure like other societies past and present, the reality is that class in the U.S. is very much alive and well.