About Self-Evident LLC
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 — is under assault. This assault is being led by current and previously elected Republican officials, aided and abetted by so-called Conservative media outlets (what’s ‘Conservative’ about bearing false witness?) and appears to have the support of a majority of Republican voters.
Along with new technologies replacing wage earners and manufacturing being outsourced overseas, the private financing of campaigns for public office — quasi-legal bribery — is the source of our current polarization, having led to ‘trickle-down’ economics, through which an enormous amount of wealth has instead trickled up, leaving Americans divided by wealth and opportunity to an extent not seen since the Gilded Age at the turn of the 19th century.
In1960 average Fortune 500 CEO pay was about 20 times greater than that of their average employee. In 1980 it was about 30 times greater. In this century it has been over 300 times greater. Yet during this period taxes on the wealthiest Americans and on corporations have been lowered, corporate profits have increased, and tax laws complied with less often.
As more and more wealth has accrued to those with the most and less and less to those with the least, societal discontent has expanded into the once-middle class, leaving more who’ve been priced-and-otherwise left out of the American Dream disenfranchised, resentful and vulnerable to the siren song of autocracy: Claims of simple solutions for complex challenges and a focus on blaming various ‘others’ for that which we the people are ourselves ultimately responsible.
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.
Our own behavior has created these conditions and we’re capable of rectifying them — of developing and adapting to systems for generating clean and renewable energy and disposing of our waste in a sustainable manner, and by bringing our taxation, education, healthcare and social programs in line with our current reality — with the innovation that’s a signature characteristic of our species and a defining force in American history.
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’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.
November 2022