About Self-Evident LLC

Increasingly since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980 and dramatically since the Citizens United decision of 2010, special interest groups, corporations and wealthy individuals have been succeeding at exchanging campaign contributions for supply-side, or ‘trickle-down’ economic policy, through which an enormous amount of wealth has 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 also seems to be something of an elephant in our national living room. Although plainly visible, not until the reelection of Donald Trump has it begun to widely discussed in the media. The state of the economy is a prominent feature of our public discourse but the amount of wealth that has shifted from the many to a few in the course of a generation has not been.

Both a cause of and a 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 and appointed Republican officials, aided and abetted by so-called Conservative media outlets (what’s ‘Conservative’ about bearing false witness?) and an industry of conspiracy inventors and promoters, along with the Russian government of Vladimir Putin. And with the results of the 2024 election it has been shown to have been supported — or at least accepted — by a majority of Republican voters.

Priced-and-otherwise excluded from the American Dream and misled by a torrent of false information, many 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 claims of simple solutions for complex problems.

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 program policies into line with current reality with the innovation that’s a signature characteristic of our species and a defining force in U.S. history.

But not through deceit. False information leads to bad decisions. The challenges Americans face won’t be overcome, nor will our opportunities be realized, through denial. 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.

The Self-Evident LLC 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.

January 2025