That is a big bite to swallow. America has always, since England landed and we then raided the land from the east coast to west, been born, built and maintained by immigrants.
You focus a lot on the middle class, but that is not a bad thing. The middle class here is something that many strive for and are happy to achieve. There is something commendable in trying to provide a better life for yourself and those of your children. I have no power to comment on your "small country" of which you speak.
You mentioned "apartheid neighborhoods" several times in your post. Here they are, as they have been in our past less than 300 years, neighborhoods of fellow immigrants...Polish, Italian, Irish, German, Indian, Israeli, and most recently Mexican human beings trying their best to make the best of what America has to offer.
Some end up taking advantage of the system, but so many others provide such a positive impact to our culture and the success of our economy that I find it hard to see things the way that you do about life where you live.
As much is said about America, we are the land of the free and the home of the brave, and everyone has an equal opportunity to achieve whatever level of success they are willing to work for to achieve. I believe this and I am proud to be an American. I hope you have the same pride in your country even if you disagree with its politics.
Firstly I think working and middle class might have different translations in the US and England. A fireman or policeman wouldn't ever be thought of as middle class in England for example. When I say 'liberal middle class' I'm talking from a London perspective, so I'm actually referring to the types of liberal middle class people who live in London and work mainly in the media and arts (or at least would like to as they view themselves as very cultured). In gentrified areas there are many, many of these people, and their attitudes are very hypocritical to say the least - which is something that interests me as they basically form the voice of all media in England.
England has been (since the second world war) quite a fair and socialist(ish) country. A lot of poverty was eradicated when they created the safety net of council housing, welfare and the free National Health Service. Then Thatcher came along in the 80s and began to break all this down and adopt a more American policy of
individualism i.e work hard and climb the ladder and if you don't make it to the top it's your own fault. This can work for many people if the right structures are in place. But what happened in the UK from '97 onwards with Tony Blair and New Labour was the breaking down of these structures, and since then the rich have got massively richer and everyone else has got poorer. Anything close to equal opportunity is now a far off dream. (Young people can't afford to move out, can't afford mortgages, services are stretched, wages are crap, people are having less kids because they don't want them brought up in worse conditions than when they were brought up etc.)
What Tony Blair also did was open the floodgates for third world immigration at a level previously unknown in the UK. This was a clever trick, as a surplus labour pool naturally means wages in working class jobs can be kept at a minimum - but immigrants will be submissive and won't complain (and they certainly won't almost topple the government as the working class unions almost did in Britain in the 70s). For example Blair advertised nursing jobs abroad knowing the recipients would be grateful and pleased working for a terrible wage, that he would now not have to increase. This goes for much more than nursing.
Companies love immigrants because of this. They berate the English for 'not accepting low paid work' as if there is something wrong with this. Why should anyone work for peanuts? Nobody should, it's exploitation. But an immigrant from the third world will be more than happy, and they know that.
Yes, America is a nation of immigrants. Most people in England would consider the US a very capitalist right-wing conservative country (under either Rep or Dem). But look at the downside of what a dog-eat-dog
make-it-to-the-top-or-perish society creates. For example, how would I be treated in a US prison as a white person? I think we all know the answer to that. A lot of jealousy and rabid racial hatred bubbles beneath the surface.
Ultimately I think America and the UK are very different places. But I like countries being different. I enjoy different cultures. When in Italy I like to enjoy Italian culture, or when in France, French culture. But with Europe nowadays they want all these local cultures washed into one or destroyed completely, not with the natural evolution of time but enforced social engineering on a scale never before known. That's my bugbear - not hating people, or hating different cultures, but having a good bullshit detector for when elite forces are working behind the scenes pulling strings that are in nobody's interest but their own. This is what is happening in the UK and right across Europe.
