About Self-Evident LLC

Increasingly since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and more transparently since the Citizens United decision of 2010, special interest groups, large corporations and wealthy individuals have been trading private campaign contributions for supply-side, or ‘trickle-down’ economic policy — through which trillions of dollars have instead trickled up.

Between 1980 and 2015 the share of the total income of Americans realized by the poorest 50% declined by nearly half while the share realized by the wealthiest 1% more than doubled.

Our government has yet to respond effectively to the vast and widening gap in the quality of the lives of Americans that has resulted, and which — together with political polarization and government stalemate — define life in the United States as we approach the 250th anniversary of our independence.

A majority of Americans have been left behind economically, educationally and socially because our election campaign finance system has devolved into bribery.

Vastly more wealth is under the control of fewer and fewer Americans, and diminished opportunities to earn a living wage — much less to engage in fulfilling work — along with access to child care, health care, affordable housing, quality education and family and leisure time are an increasing source of anxiety, frustration and resentment.

The negative effects of the outsourcing of manufacturing overseas along with advances in technology that supercharge productivity but have devastated the American workforce have been apparent for decades but have never been assimilated, or accepted, by those most adversely affected, and that group continues to grow.

Profit-driven capital markets have continued to boom, increasingly widening the gap between haves and have-nots. Our Supreme Court having determined that unlimited campaign contributions amount to free speech legalized political corruption and erased many of the gains in middle class life that characterized post-war America and which have acted as our societal template since then.

Having become reliant on enormous campaign contributions and the obligations that come with them, elected officials of both major parties are motivated to minimize these and other unpleasant realities of our time, and stick to topics voters have proven responsive to, whether meaningful in effecting systemic change, or more often, not.

Both a contributing factor and a purposeful distraction from this sea change in American life has been a strategic assault on the consensus reality at the core of United States law, social structure and our overall way of life — general agreement about true and false and right and wrong.

This assault is being led by elected and appointed Republican officials, aided and abetted by an industry of so-called Conservative media outlets (what’s ‘Conservative’ about bearing false witness?) together with conspiracy promoters and theorists, and the Russian government of Vladimir Putin, as confirmed by the Republican-led 2020 US Select Senate Committee’s Intelligence Report on Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The results of our 2024 election suggest that this behavior has been supported — or at least accepted — by a majority of Republican voters.

Most Americans haven’t wanted what Republicans have been offering in recent decades, and, tragically, since their losses in the 2012 national elections in particular, most Republicans seeking and holding public office have adapted by lying; about both their own policies and those of their competition. In recent years those lies have come to include lying about reality itself.

Priced-and-otherwise excluded from the American Dream and misled by a torrent of false information, increasing numbers of Americans have become discouraged, resentful and vulnerable to the siren song of fascism: The blaming of various ‘others’ for that which we the people are ultimately responsible and loud, persistent claims of simple solutions for complex challenges.

Meanwhile global air and water temperatures are increasing, the polar ice caps and the world’s glaciers melting, and ocean levels rising — all at an accelerating pace. The Amazon Rainforest — the earth’s lungs —is being stripped of its vegetation at an unsustainable rate. The marine life that supports much of the earth’s population is increasingly scarce and their habitat is increasingly polluted. The Great Barrier Reef is on the ropes.

Human behavior has caused these conditions and only human behavior can rectify them, by developing and adapting to systems for clean and renewable energy, disposing of our waste in a sustainable manner, and by bringing our election financing, taxation, healthcare, education, and social policies into accord with current reality, with the innovation that’s characteristic of our culture and a prominent feature of our history.

But that won’t happen through denial and deceit. False information leads to bad decisions. The challenges we face won’t be overcome, nor will our greatest opportunities be realized, through denial that they exist or surrender to fear that they can be managed. Honest dialogue will be needed if our Ship of State is to be set back on its intended course of expanding freedom, equal rights and equal justice under law for all Americans, regardless of sex, race, religion, national origin or political inclination.

Self-Evident LLC’s distress flag designs were created to focus attention on our nation’s foundational principles, juxtaposed with behavior — anyone’s behavior — that undermines efforts to form a more perfect Union.