In the
melting pot, everyone is out to get whatever they can from everyone else. I can
understand why people who suscribe to that view want to have and use guns--its the
vision of all those
peasants coming over the hill to steal the few acres of land that I cleared from the forest myself.
In the vertical mosaic we can see that there are not only individuals, but also groups, classes, that have interests that sometimes overlap, sometimes conflict.
But even in a melting pot, those who come out on top don't do it in the manner that the American mythology would have us believe. As Kevin Phillips in The Politics of Rich and Poor shows so clearly, the central narrative of our time, is the absolute impoverishment of the lower classes by the upper: 'the triumph of upper America'.
The structure of the society is determined by economic decisions, though this is not believed in economics, though it is by political economy. It is this structure that benefits some, and impoverishes others.
Capitalism, or Hyper Capitalism, is a dialectic that generates great wealth at one end--for some--and great misery at the other--for most. The benefit that some receive from the society, is the direct result of the impoverishment that most receive.
It is the strategy of those who have much to deny this connection. But it is there to see. Always.