Mark and Anthony started out well but then stopped talking about what everything, EVERYTHING reduces to in politics, which is the rich evading all taxes and regulation. The billionaire is the enemy and nobody will say it because of a century of brainwashing that anything limiting wealth is satanic communism. Limiting wealth, which is power, and enforcing the rule of law, which is regulation, is not communism or even socialism, it is self-preservation. It is taking hand grenades away from children.
Reactionary and conservative is the very definition of stagnation and decline. Progressive and liberal is the very definition of renewal and expansion. Conservation of, for example, the environment, is a good, while liberal action in regard to tearing down all cultural norms is not good. What is happening is the predators are twisting and manipulating the public away from any functional mix of the two poles to end democracy and institute oligarchy. Even to the point of denying America is a democracy and redefining “Republic” as somehow about billionaires evading all taxation and regulation.
It is not hard to explain this in simple terms to the public as “a tug of war that must not end.” It can be characterized as the poor stealing from the rich and the rich stealing from the poor, but this is a mistake to assume it would be best to stop the steal. It can be more accurately portrayed as a pyramid. Inside the pyramid is all the wealth, which is the food and energy and technology and activity that embody civilization. This wealth creates the pyramid by concentrating upward to fewer and fewer individuals. The bottom is the workers, the base of the pyramid where most of the wealth is created. The big lie is that those few dancing around the tip of the pyramid are the wealth creators from which all must emanate. Those at the very bottom are being crushed by a lack of wealth as it concentrates upward. This seems “natural” and is reflected by the ideology of social Darwinism. In other words, they deserve to have everything, and we deserve to have nothing…or what they give us.
In fact, technology that enables civilization is fundamentally unnatural and makes possible a kind of anti-gravity that inverts the pyramid and balances it on the point. In this arrangement wealth flows downward to the very few who are in dire circumstances and need saving. The broad flat surface of the top is made up of the most functional and productive individuals who enjoy the most prosperity. Instead of the very few as a point this broad many-sided group at the top of an inverted pyramid are the majority.
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Conservative critics will express shock and outrage at this precarious picture of an upside-down pyramid balanced on a point. It is actually a true representation of a reality in which we all share the same collective fate of being born and eventually dying while trying to make the best life for all while we live. The “natural” pyramid can be interpreted as the ultimate rejection of this reality by absolute rulers absurdly pursuing their own immortality. The greatest good for the greatest number is the opposite of predation, competition, and hierarchy. Balancing this pyramid on the point is done by balancing that broad prosperous and functional majority at the top by way of a functioning democracy. This “turning the world upside down” has in the past been used as an allegory for America, where everyone is a king, and the state serves them instead of the opposite. But no more. Whether democracy will return in some form is the question no one is even asking.
Ice on the Moon 