Systems of values reward behaviors and states of being that those who hold those values think are good or in line with those values and punish behavior they do not like or do not think uphold those values. In America, this means that the system of values rewards wealth and privilege and punishes poverty and disconnection. The greatest predictor of being wealthy in America is having grown up wealthy; the greatest predictor of poverty is having grown up poor. But our system is ambiguous: it also exists within a system of stated values that posits that equality and individual initiative are good, that they reward and should be rewarded. Over time, a few from the lower classes have used these countervailing values to rise to the top—or close to it. They are able to purchase a certain type of acceptance, though that acceptance is never total (see Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby for a detailed discussion of this phenomenon).

Those few have made those on the bottom and in the middle believe in the myth that they, too, can make it to the top with hard work and perseverance. Ironically, by allowing a few to reach near their ranks, those on top have successfully placated the masses below by letting reality reinforce their mythology—a mythology now more strongly adhered to by the lower classes than the upper. Revolution is therefore unlikely in the United States; the nation most likely to be able to do revolution effectively and without bloodshed and through constitutional means is the least likely to do it at all.

Tocqueville was perhaps the first to see that the nation's character is more or less what kept it from flying apart: the U.S. Constitution is nothing compared to the U.S. constitution. What keeps that frail document in place is that it has become something of a tradition, a bit of sport for us. This is, incidentally, why the vice-president's abuse of presidential power is so dangerous. But thus our make-up sometimes makes a mockery of our ideals. It also explains why we tolerate, on a social level if not a legal one—the kind of hate and ignorance that we do: despite free and compulsory education, we believe that it is a person's right to be ineducable, to “get there” by other means, not knowing where “there,” in fact, is, and settling for a reasonable facsimile of 4,000 square feet on a suburban cul-de-sac. This should not surprise us: we're being rewarded for staying put by accepting the lie that we're upwardly mobile. We're being punished for our ignorance and disconnection by living it as a positive consumer boon—on credit, of course.

This isn't much different in effect than the feudalist values system when it incorporated the power of the cross to conquer and divide. Humbleness was preached to those who needed humbling in order for the kings and princes to retain power; meekness was taught to the otherwise collectively powerful masses freeing it up to be distributed from God to country and King. Those who had no wealth to work miracles for them hoped for miracles, salvation, from above. In order for Jesus's message, which is inherently antithetical to power, to be used effectively by those who wished to wield power, a situation of temporal dominance had to be established so that liberation could be shunted safely into the afterlife where it could do no harm to the worldly aristocracy.

This process was so effective that even a contemporary Supreme Court Justice, Antonin Scalia, genuinely believes it, even though the simple facts of history and decent translations of scripture give heavy evidence to the contrary.

Perhaps culture can be seen as a way of managing systems of power, of establishing countervailing values when the existing ones begin to fail or are abused. Perhaps our arts and letters, our activism, our speeches, must be brought to bear to make this happen.