I’m starting to believe that there is an active, aggressive campaign to destroy the middle class. I think that there are broad attacks from people at a high (self-perceived) social class targeting the overwhelming majority of humanity.

These attacks are more blatant the lower you are on the social ladder, and more subtle, though still harmful, at the higher levels. The goal is to prevent upward mobility, and to destroy liberalism as a political ideology.

Public school funding in America could not be better designed to destroy social mobility, to exacerbate cultural differences, and to penalize anything but living at the limit of your income, maximizing debt and reducing the resilience of each American family to the inevitable complications.

The majority of Americans appear to be doing worse by many or most quality-of-life metrics than in the recent past, which I believe is due to a general stagnation of wages over time. I’ve been informed that benefits, such as healthcare costs, account for a large part of this. At the same time, we’re reducing investments in the public good. We’re impoverishing the commons, and our future, and suffering in ways that are simultaneously easy to observe and difficult to understand and explain unless you’re a social scientist.

In the 20th Century, decisions were made at high levels in American government to contribute to an environment in which a middle class would prosper. This middle class would be a bulwark against communism. It served its purpose, and since the 1980’s we have been dismantling it.

I don’t think anyone ever actually believed in the “Trickle Down” theory. It was always a convenient fiction. Social mobility, the Horatio Alger idea, has been nothing more than a convenient fiction for the past few decades.

I think the idea used to be “in America, anyone can become a millionaire if they work hard.” Today, we accept that millionaires aren’t actually that wealthy. Your chances of becoming one are slim. And you still have to spend very carefully, and very wisely, or risk destruction. It seems even a millionaire needs to always be hustling to avoid falling back into the middle class. A bout with cancer, or a bad divorce, or a lawsuit can ruin you. That’s not to say that millionaires have it any worse than anyone (except billionaires). Just that I feel, in a society with an eroded or completely absent safety net, we’re all acutely aware how much money you need to actually be “safe.”

I think this has led to reduced ambitions on the part of the middle class and working class. A kind of self-inflicted austerity. Simultaneously crowing about your high standard of living, with a big TV, while feeling shame for buying it and stress making the credit card payments.

Our cognitive biases and fallacies have built the trap in which we find ourselves, and are being ruthlessly exploited by people in power.

If a politician says something untrue to you, they’re not mistaken. They’re not, in most cases, stupid or misinformed, though they may be past their expiration date. They are deliberately lying to increase, maintain, and expand their hold on power.

Politicians work for us. We are many, they are few. The nice thing about this inverted management pyramid is that it makes it easy for us to micromanage them. Monitor their activities. Call them. I’ve called my senators and representative today, and I’d encourage you to do the same.

They can speak publicly and they can read and sign papers. That is the extent of their use to me. They are usually not wonks. They are not necessarily careful readers, or critical thinkers. A politically active constituency must collectively assume that role if we are to survive.

If you are a politician and you are not, at this moment, thinking critically, strategically, and effectively about how you will address the threats to the American public and to democracy throughout the world, you are my enemy.