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 exchanging 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% among us declined by nearly half while the share realized by the wealthiest 1% more than doubled.

Extraordinary though this transfer of wealth has been it seems also to have been an elephant in the national living room. While plainly visible it hasn’t been until recently that this shift has made its way into our general public discourse. The economy has been ever-prominent in the news but acknowledgement of the share of American wealth that has moved from the many to a relative few in a generation has not.

The majority of Americans are being left behind not only economically, but also educationally and socially, because our election campaign finance system has devolved into bribery. Vastly more money is being made by many fewer Americans, and the divergence in opportunities to earn a living wage — much less to engage in fulfilling work — as well as child and health care, affordable housing, education and family and leisure time are an increasing source of anxiety, discouragement, frustration and resentment for the majority.

Negative effects of the outsourcing of manufacturing overseas which characterized business in the late-20th century along with advances in technology that supercharge productivity but have also devastated our workforce became apparent earlier but have never been assimilated, or accepted, by those most adversely affected.

At he same time profit-driven capital markets have continued to boom, widening the gap between our haves and have-nots, and combined with the Citizens United ruling which determined that campaign contributions amount to freedom of speech, have fed political corruption and erased many of the gains in middle class life that characterized our post-war society and have been the cultural template ever since.

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, and largely stick to topics voters have proven responsive to, whether meaningful in effecting systemic change, or more often, not. Our government ‘of, by and for the people,’ has yet to make an effective response to this internal political stalemate which has come to define the present era.

Both a contributing factor and a purposeful, strategic distraction from this sea change in American life has been an 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 Republican officials and appointees, aided and abetted by an industry of so-called Conservative media outlets (what’s ‘Conservative’ about bearing false witness?) and conspiracy promoters and theorists. This cohort includes Americans 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. With the results of our 2024 presidential election this appears to have been supported — or at least accepted — by a majority of Republican voters.

The majority of Americans haven’t wanted what Republicans have been promoting in recent decades, and, tragically, most Republicans seeking and holding public office have adapted by lying about their own policies as well as 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 relentless torrent of false information, increasing numbers 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 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 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.