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 swapping 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.

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

More and more wealth is being held by fewer and fewer Americans, and diminished opportunities to earn a living wage — as well as to engage in fulfilling work — and have access to affordable health and child care, housing, education and family and leisure time are an increasing source of anxiety, frustration and resentment.

Negative effects of the outsourcing of manufacturing overseas, along with advances in technology that have supercharged productivity but have at the same time had a devastating effect on our workforce have been apparent for several decades but have never been assimilated, or accepted; especially by those most adversely affected. That group continues to grow.

Having become increasingly 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 elemental challenges of our time and stick to topics voters have proven responsive to, whether meaningful in effecting change or not.

Tragically, both a contributing cause and a purposeful distraction from this sea change in American life has been a purposeful, 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?) and conspiracy promoters, along with 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 promoting in recent decades, and, since their losses in the 2012 national elections in particular, Republicans seeking and holding national office have adapted by lying; near-unanimously about the results of the 2020 presidential election, and more generally about both their own policies and those of their competition. In recent years those lies have come to include lying about consensus 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’t 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.