How much worse can it get? More data, more research, more cold hard fact proving that our middle class is hollowing out all over the country.

A new study from the Pew Research Center shows that the shrinking of the middle class is not jus a phenomenon that affects troubled regions like Appalachia or the Rust Belt. It also plagues almost every city and metropolitan area in the country.

“The American middle class is losing ground in metropolitan areas across the country, affecting communities from Boston to Seattle and from Dallas to Milwaukee,” a report synopsis reads.

“From 2000 to 2014 the share of adults living in middle-income households fell in 203 of the 229 U.S. metropolitan areas examined in a new Pew Research Center analysis of government data. The decrease in the middle-class share was often substantial, measuring 6 percentage points or more in 53 metropolitan areas, compared with a 4-point drop nationally.”

According to the report, the middle class displacement is about equal  in metropolitan areas — there are just about as many people getting richer as there are people getting poorer.

An earlier report from Pew showed that the middle class is no longer America’s economic majority and that “fully 49% of U.S. aggregate income went to upper-income households in 2014, up from 29% in 1970.”

In other words, inequality is on the rise. A chasm is developing between the rich and poor.

How much longer can we continue to act like any of this is normal? We know that it is orchestrated. It is precisely the goal of so many in big business and Wall Street to make this immoral reality seem “normal.”

But we can no longer afford to believe their lie.

The picture that Pew has painted is not only the product of globalization. It is the product of decades on end of special interest lobbying, bought-and-paid for policy and modern-day political corruption intentionally designed to create ever-increasing wealth for the already wealthy.

It is about America’s upper echelon, from its high vantage point, seeing the world changing and selling everyone out instead of playing Paul Revere. It is about reduced rather than increased freedom, and that is about as un-patriotic as it gets.