Some of what is said here might exceed what is considered the "community consensus" or whatever. But I am not one to limit my freedom of speech or thought to conform to the restrictions placed by a publicly available forum, whether it is X, Threads, Reddit, or communities.win.

That being said, there should be a lot here that we all agree on and can build on based on shared values of being human being who want the best for our communities, our children, and future prospects for a bright future.

Here are some of my assumptions:

1. We all care about the future conditions under which our children and grandchildren will live.

2. All people have intrinsic value and the right to be respected as a human being.

3. We all want a system of governance that supports and enhances the rights of the individual and allows for expressions of dissent and provides recourse for the expression of grievances.

4. We all believe that the best form of government to achieve points 1-3 is representative democracy, a system that is provided to us by the U.S. Constitution.

5. Points 1-5 are threatened by an international cabal of elites that are largely unbound by national laws and are able to manipulate governments through the wielding of immense economic and political power that is concentrated in the hands of this tiny elite.

6. This international cabal of elites seeks to manipulate perceptions of the masses through control of mass media, particularly by controlling the flow of information through "news" outlets such as CNN, MSNBC, FOX, WaPo, NYT, etc.

I think we can at least agree on these points. But from there, though, I think there will be considerable divergence. I think the point of disagreement will hinge on identifying the "international cabal" that controls our economic reality.

First, let's look at the world system that this elite seeks to maintain.

Let's face it: We live in a world in which the economic system is entirely set up to maximize the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny global elite. When we think about how wealth is created and how it flows up in a reverse of the "trickle down" theory of Reaganomics, we can see that all the rules are set up to support and facilitate this concentration of wealth. The entire global economic system is purposely manipulated to maintain that flow of wealth such that even during times of recession, the wealth continue to maintain that flow of wealth, even in many cases, accelerating it during those times.

Do you disagree?

Pandemic boosts super-rich share of wealth

Billionaires' wealth rises to $10.2 trillion amid Covid crisis

Shareholder wealth soars, workers left behind

You might say, "I don't trust those sources." Ok, then what sources do you trust and what do they say?

So all of this was reported in the media, but then consigned to the "memory hole" and forgotten. What should be a major issue, the fact that wealthy just continue to get wealthier while the rest of us lose ground should be a major issue. There should be Congressional investigations, calls for reform of an economic system that is broken and not working for hundreds of millions of people, even billions globally.

Instead, we've been dealing with ridiculous stories about whether people should wear masks or not, a diversion played by both the right and the left. Seriously, who cares? if someone wants to wear a mask fine, if not, that's also fine. Or drag queens. If you think drag queen shows are "grooming events" then don't take your kids to them. That's your right. If the school is bringing a drag show (I would think not), opt your kids out, you have that right. Don't like certain books in the library, don't let your kid check them out.

These are all distractions brought to us by elites who want to keep us all bickering about things that will not affect the global economic structure which is the bottom line: maintaining a system that allows the rich to get richer and the non-rich to continue to lose ground.

You might think: the rich are rich through their own hard work and innovation and intellectual brilliance. That is false. In some cases, a very wealthy person had a great idea and has become enormously wealthy from it. But in fact most ideas came from somebody else and were either stolen or the rights manipulated or purchased with generational wealth.

Elon Musk bought the innovations for the Tesla electric automobile. He hired skilled engineers who did the work of developing the autos and now the space shit. And Elon had generational wealth to do that.

Jeff Bezos did have a good idea: selling books online. But does that idea entitle him to claim billions, often at the expense of paying workers a fair wage for the value of what they bring to his service.

In fact, that's how all capital is produced, by the difference between the value added by the workers and what the capitalist class skims off the top. That difference should be subject to negotiation and a fair distribution.

Should Bezos be rewarded for his contribution? Yes. The question is to what extent is it a fair distribution of the wealth created by the collaboration between the shareholders (owners) and workers? We live under rules that clearly favor the consolidation of wealth over the fair distribution of that wealth.

The rules of the game were designed by the wealthy and of course favor the interests of the wealthy. That should be obvious. And the wealthy do whatever it takes to maintain this system.

That's true even when there is a range of ultra wealthy people politically. They might disagree over the extent to which the collectively created wealth should be distributed, but they all agree that the system should allow for extreme concentration of wealth at the expense of the non-wealthy.

Bill Gates might say he's donating XX% of his wealth to "charity" but he still wants a system that allows him to garner that wealth and allow him the power to determine which "charities" are worthy of his attention and patronage. In essence, he's in favor of feudal system in which he is the lord determining who is worthy of largesse. The same is true of all the ultra-wealthy.

It doesn't matter what country or system we're talking about. The elite in "communist" China, the kleptocratic elite in Putin's Russia, the capitalist elite in the West, the oil elite in the Middle East. Every part of the global system, from extraction of raw resources, the manufacture of goods, to the financial markets, everything is tied to a system designed to extract wealth from the globe (resources and people) and consolidate it in the hands of the few.

It is that elite, not adrenochrome drinking liberals, at the root of a system that is exploiting all of us. Of course, this includes liberals, but is not limited to liberals. There is a conservative elite that is just as much a part of this cabal of elites that only seeks to maintain a system to exploit all of us. You and me, our neighbors, our children. (Show me evidence that liberals are drinking adrenochrome extracted from tortured children and then maybe I will believe it, until then, it is just another distraction).

If you think the elites that are exploiting us are all liberals, stop and do some research into the Council for National Policy. Learn about the dozens of astroturf organizations funded by the Kock network that masquerade as grass roots community groups. Look at the Heritage Foundation.

I am not saying there are no such groups like that on the left, but it's often ignored that such groups exist on both the left and the right and getting bogged down in one side or the other is simply a distraction from the main issue: the consolidation of global wealth in the hands of tiny elite.

I'm getting tired of typing now. I will leave off here for now. But as a preview of what is to come, think about this: the greatest threat to interests of the elite is democracy. They will do anything they can to either control democracy or end it. Right now, the elite has run out of excuses to maintain a clearly failing system. We can all see that as automation and AI continue to develop, the need to pay for human labor diminishes.

Jeremy Rifken predicted this decades ago in his book "The End of Work." If human beings are no longer needed or only minimally needed for the elite to continue to extract wealth from the planet, then what will that mean for quality of life of the majority of people on the planet? Yet, that is the direction we are headed.

And the greatest threat to interests of the elite is a democratic mechanism for placing limits on their consolidation of wealth. What we are seeing now and this is coming mostly from the RIGHT, is an outright attack on democratic institutions.

There is an unholy axis between the Libertarian Capitalist elite, Christian Nationalists, and anti-democratic fascists to end "liberal" democracy. And by liberal I mean democracy that includes universal suffrage. If you think that even in an ill-liberal system that you will be among the chosen, you are as deluded as a follower of the Jehovah's Witnesses who believes they will be included in the 144,000 even though there are millions of Witnesses around the world. Unless you are a member of one of the elite institutions, you will have no rights, no vote.

Let me be clear about this unholy axis: Capitalist elites are merely using Christian Nationalists for the purposes of mobilizing people power. They are not themselves Christian and they have no affinity with any of the goals or values of Christian Nationalists. They are only using them to destroy democratic values. We'll go on from here at a later date.

If you don't agree with this, please provide coherent explanations. I consider empty insults or demands that I leave this platform as intellectual weakness and cowardice. If you think you can have relevant thoughts on politics, you should be able to engage in ideas even when you disagree with them. you should be able to explain why you disagree and provide actual evidence to support your beliefs. Otherwise, you are actually exactly what you claim other are: a sheep. You're just following what other people tell you to follow. You don't have your own thoughts. You are manipulated by the very powers you rail against.